The first SharePoint Saturday in New Zealand was held in Christchurch this past weekend. I attended (and spoke), and took my 14-year old son too. He was the youngest by a long shot.

I attended various sessions throughout the day: Chan from KnowledgeCue on SharePoint 2010 Operational Management, Alan Marshall from Gen-i on SharePoint Information Architecture, Mark Orange from KnowledgeCue on Metadata and Content Types, Debbie Ireland from envisionIT on Planning for Training, and Kathy Hughes (over from Sydney) on SharePoint Designer.

I don’t know the final attendance number, but it think it was in the range of 100-120 people. Many of the sessions I attended were in the business track, and attracted 15-25 people per session. The other two tracks were more technical – an IT Pro and Developer track – so they must have garnered the bulk of attendees. Nonetheless, it was a good day, and it was good to be a part of it. The highlight for me though, was when my 14-year old son had his evaluation form pulled out of the box during the prize draw, and he won a 12 megapixel digital camera. That was really cool.

Thanks to Nick Hadlee and the rest of the team that pulled the event together. Great job all around. And definite thanks to the sponsors for making the day happen too …