I recently gave a talk at the local .NET User Group in Kingsport, TN on SharePoint 2010, generally what it is (for those that have never used it), and all of the features that are available to developers in this newest version. Right off the bat, the best thing about it is that you can develop for SharePoint 2010 using your Windows 7 machine, which is a huge improvement over 2007 (It forced you to develop on Windows Server! *shudder*).
If you didn’t get a chance to attend, I’ll try to give you in one paragraph why I’m excited about using SharePoint 2010 as a development platform. Basically: it makes my life as a developer not suck as bad. Like Visual Studio 2010 generates code for me that I would have had to write myself 5 years ago, SharePoint 2010 gives me CRUD screens, reports and deep analysis on ALL of an organization’s data, gives me a way to offload tedious one-off requests from uses by empowering them with SharePoint Designer and SharePoint Workspace. Generally SharePoint 2010 makes my life as a developer simpler, so I can focus on writing code that provides direct business value and makes money!
For all those who did make it, here are the slides, which contain the resources I went over during the talk. If you were one of the many who is interested in forming a SharePoint User Group, head over to my contact page or follow me on Twitter and send me a message with your contact info so we can get things rolling. Also, thanks for coming!