If you haven't spent any time over at Bamboo's community sites, you're really missing out.  They've been working with a number of SharePoint MVPs and SharePoint experts on free content to really help the community.  Let me give you a few examples...

 

Site focused on SharePoint Project Management by Dux Raymond Sy - From Great articles on SharePoint as Project Management Solution for both managing solutions to SharePoint Project Management forums.  Dux is doing some great things in this space to make it easy to get the business organized and tactical around SharePoint deployments.  Look for the Bamboo Solutions Project Management Suite... a set of web parts and solutions to make project management even easier on SharePoint.

 

Bamboo Technical Advisors (Bamboo Guru Blogs) - I mentioned that I was on an advisory committee made up of SharePoint experts, writers,  and MVPs.  They contribute to a number of top blogs in their SharePoint Nation SharePoint Community blogs and syndicate snippets from featured SharePoint blogs (with permission).  They've essentially pulled together top experts and are leveraging their expertise to better address the needs of customers.  You don't have to look far to see they are truly seeking the problems so they can build solutions to your problems.  Have you seen they are having a SharePoint problem give away for a $500 gift certificate or Ipod shuffle to hear your problems?  They gave away cool hats and shirts at the SharePoint Conference for problems and ideas.  They've delivered on the most requested of those...

 

Bamboo Team Blog - It's impressive.  The Bamboo guys have hit the nail on the head with this one.  Why be secretive about what you're fixing, and what you've built.  This bamboo team blog which has some awesome posts

 

Bamboo Labs - Ok, this is worth it's own post, but let me give you a glimpse here.  Free Sharepoint products that you can use with no license while things are under development.  Bamboo easily demonstrates that it's a community player, by opening up the gates to show you they are listening.  If you want something they will build it and you can give them feedback along the way with this program.  Give MashPoint a roll.  Mashpoint will knock your socks off.  Not only is it a free product, it is one of the most powerful, yet simple solutions you'll find. 

 

I recommend you get to know Jonas Nilsson, he's the architect behind these awesome SharePoint solutions you find.  Not only Mashpoint, but the free solution for putting SharePoint on Vista is something he came up with.  Very slick.  (No need to ask MS if it's supported, it's not.  Definitely don't try to run production on it, but it may come in handy for a developer.) 

 

Another not to miss is the new SharePoint Licensing Calculator, of course you should consult with a MS rep, but this tool is a great start for estimating costs of pricing and licensing.  A very handy tool to combine with the Microsoft System Center SharePoint Capacity Planning tool (models from the solution accelerator team thanks Satish/Peschka and even a few of my own contributions) for determining high level hardware requirements.

 

Bamboo Nation Community Forums - Don't Forget the Content Rich and High Resonse Rate Forums - Not only will you find a high response rate, but you'll find an extremely rich set of Q/A and discussions.  Here's the most recent stats: 342 users have contributed to 654 threads and 730 posts...  Not bad for as short as it's been around.