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Where do you begin with SharePoint?

Whether you’ve just unwrapped the Christmas packaging off your shiny new SharePoint 2010 deployment, you’ve downloaded a trial version, or maybe SharePoint has been in place for a couple years but not really utilized and you’re trying to build a business case for a much broader deployment. Where to begin? I’ll tell you one place not to begin – Human Resources.

I’m not trying to beat up on HR, but it seems that every organization, when deploying SharePoint for the first time and thinking about building a business case, seems to focus in on some of the most common HR activities, such as automating expense reports, or maybe vacation requests. My money says that this is exactly where most of you started. And that’s fine when you’re learning the platform, doing a proof of concept, or experimenting with workflows. But don’t go that route and expect to wow anyone.

You might get some attention, get SharePoint approved. Inevitably, the vanilla version of SharePoint (the out of the box experience) is deployed, initial focus is spent on building your HR solutions, and life gets underway. Jump forward 3 months, and people have associated SharePoint with your non-business critical HR solutions. They lose interest. People will look at SharePoint as a bloated, wasted effort that automates HR stuff. And then management turns back to look at you, at the lost time, at the lost productivity.

HR is not the point here. My point is a focus on solutions that don’t mean much to the overall business….at least right now, in the early stages. Your strategy should be to focus on those areas that will drive value to the business first. Quickly routing expense reports, while wonderful to your accounting team, is not adding tremendous value to your business. Email will work fine for a few more weeks while you focus elsewhere. SharePoint deployments should (like everything else) follow the 80/20 rule: focus your efforts and deliver functionality to the 20% of your organization who will be doing 80% of the workload in SharePoint. Find those teams that **need** productivity solutions, and build to their requirements first.

A funny thing happens when you deliver to the needs of the smaller group of end users, that 20% of users who actually need SharePoint – they’ll become the platform’s strongest advocates, and do more for end user adoption for the other 80% than anything in your bag of tricks. But your management will need to see the numbers. Track the KPIs around their performance increases, measure it, report on it, and demonstrate ROI back to your executive team. From there, with that success in hand, you can think about building out broader solutions that will improve life for the other 80%. Like a vacation request form. Or an automated birthday reminder.

Ooh, I can feel the productivity bubbling up now….

Waking Up MVP

On Sunday, I joined the ranks of a very talented and passionate field of experts as a SharePoint Server MVP, and am very grateful to Microsoft, my team at Axceler, and the many members of the community for making this all possible.

It’s the influence of amazing people like Joel Oleson, Mike Watson, Bill Baer, Todd Baginski, Ben Curry, Ivan Sanders, Susan Lennon, Michael Lotter, Eric Harlan, Becky Isserman, Jason Himmelstein, Geoff Varosky, Mark Miller, Chris McNulty, Inna Gordin, Virgil Carroll, Christina Wheeler, Chris Beckett, Owen Allen, Fabian Williams, Jeff Shuey, and so many others that make this community so vibrant and exciting, and inspire me regularly to keep going, to keep doing what I do.

As some of you know, I had my first real experience with SharePoint back in 2005 when, as an independent consultant, I deployed WSS and attempted to get Project Server up and running at a customer site. While Project Server was problematic back in the day, SharePoint stuck (and is now widely deployed at the company) and got me interested enough to investigate opportunities working for Microsoft. Thanks to help from Joel Oleson,I found my first job at Microsoft, where we shared an office for a couple months before he wandered off to work on the product team.

It’s been an interesting ride at times, but very exciting to be a part of this space.

I have been thinking about what to write since Sunday. I thought about writing something outlining what an MVP means, what people can do to achieve it, yada yada. But that’s been done. However, there have been a few blog posts this week with people questioning the value of the MVP designation.

My position is simple, and aligns very closely with what internal Microsoft employees are told all the time: you own your career. You are responsible for getting value out of the MVP designation. It is not handed to you with a user’s manual. Microsoft has set up the framework, provides tools and access and recognition – but you have to do something with it.

I love the joke about the man who wanted to win the lottery, so he prayed every day that he would pick the winning numbers. Every day he prayed, and yet every day – nothing. Finally, he died and met St. Peter at the gates, and remarked “All I wanted was to win the lottery, just the once” to which St. peter replied “You never bought a lottery ticket.”

I hope to make the most of this. Thanks again, Microsoft.

Office365 Saturday Redmond (Call for Speakers)

What is it?

Office365 Saturday is a an educational, informative and lively day filled with sessions from respected professionals, MVPs, and Microsoft product team members, covering a wide variety of Office365 topics. The event is community-focused, coordinated and staffed by volunteers, and completely free to the public. Office365 Saturday Redmond will be the inaugural event for the newly formed Office365 Saturday group, taking a page from the highly successful SharePoint Saturday events, which is in its 4^th year of operation and has spread around the globe. We hope to extend this success with O365, but with content spread across SharePoint, Lync, Exchange, and Office365 best practices (topics such as migration, deployment, integration, development, public websites, and so forth).

The SharePoint community has responded to the Call for Speakers (and sponsors), and while the call is still open (until Jan 13^th), we’re really looking for experts on Lync, Exchange, and specifically O365 topics to submit their abstracts. This is a great opportunity for speakers to share their expertise, network with other experts and vendors in the space, and connect with Microsoft product team members.

What is needed?

Anyone interested in presenting should download the speaker form and submit to speakers@0365redmond.onmicrosoft.com. Sessions will be 75 minutes (including time for Q&A), and usually consist of a combination of PowerPoint and live demos.

When is it?

Office365 Saturday Redmond will be held all day Saturday, February 25^th on Microsoft’s main campus at the conference center (Building 33). We’ll have a speaker dinner the Friday night beforehand, which is always a great way to network, and a SharePint directly following the event on Saturday (another networking opportunity!).

What expenses are covered by the event?

These are community events, operated with minimal budget. All speakers and coordinators participate as volunteers. What we provide is a speaker shirt, dinner, and networking. Of course, you can’t underestimate the value of the connections you make. It’s just a great all-around opportunity.

Can my company sponsor?

You bet. We have 3 different sponsorship levels. They are first come, first served. You can find the form here.

How is the event being promoted?

You can find us on our website, on Twitter at #O365Redmond, on Facebook, and LinkedIn.

End of Year Recap? Suck It.

Sometimes the best comedy doesn’t come through intentional humor, but through the back and forth emails, tweets, and SMS messages that fill our days. My good friend Mike Watson (@jmikewatson) was complaining about the onslaught of year-end recaps this week, and was making me laugh, so I asked him to put together a more formal list of reasons why people should not recap the close of the year, which, as he puts it, “summarizes a bunch of content that, if we cared, we would have read the first time.”

I asked for a list, and he complied…and I had to share.So here it is:

Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Keep Your Recap To Yourself

10. Nobody reads your blog and you know it, so you can write anything you want. You might as well make it a good story. Don't bother with the truth. Your truth is boring.

9.  Ignore point 10, because unless you are a gifted, undiscovered writer, your fiction will suck too. I would recommend reading some real fiction such as Crichton or Clancy.

8.  No matter how many cool things you think you did this past year, they all tell one story. You are lame! How do I know? How often, when you do something really cool, is your first thought “Hmmm….I should go blog about this?” Answer = never.

7.  If you haven't read http://techprgems.com/2011/02/are-blogs-dead-the-new-york-times-would-have-you-think-so-you-old-codger/ then you wouldn’t know that the age of the blog is dead, so if you can't recap your year in a status update of 144 characters, you haven't summarized enough.

6. If you find that much of what your recap covers was also included in the holiday letter you sent to your family, get a clue. Your family reads it once, then tosses it out. And they are related to you. Get a clue.

5. No matter how good you think your content is, if I do happen to come across your blog, I'm going to skim through it and pick out the good bits. If there are any.

4. Were you as successful or awesome as you wanted to be last year? Yes? Congratulations! Then why are you wasting valuable time writing?

3. Do you want to be a writer when you grow up, and blogging is your way of cutting your teeth? I would suggest plan B.

2. Wait! Are you still reading? You really are lame!

1. If you had a hard time this year, ignore all previous points and tell us about it. We take pleasure in your misery.

 

Oh Mike, pure gold.

Happy New Year, Mike!

When Marketing is Effective

In the late 1990's, I took a role as Director of Project Management for a newly public technology company based south of market in San Francisco. Things were fairly fast-paced, the money was flowing in, we had really beautiful offices, and great Friday afternoon parties out on the balcony. My team was tasked with projects large and small, from helping define and orchestrate corporate and IT governance strategies, to deploying a new email campaign management tool, and the data collection and data management issues behind them.

Coming from the data warehousing side of things at the phone company, supporting the back end applications that captured, tracked, and provided business intelligence around all of their consumer data, I had a good feel for the data at this new company. However, this new role provided me with something new: first-hand experience on the campaign management systems. Part of my team spent their days drilling through lists of customer data, extending it through third-party geographic, demographic and psychographic data, working with marketing to outline very targeted campaign strategies, and partnering with companies like Microsoft and Radio Shack to develop programs, package offerings, and run email-based campaigns.

And that's where the real work began. Tracking the results was an impressive activity, reviewing response rates and website traffic for metrics, experimenting and adjusting our campaigns around highest-performing campaigns, and re-launching at a steady clip. Later in my career, I often made comparisons of these advanced campaign management tools to the supply chain modeling and software configuration management platforms that became central to my career. Remember, most of this was before the era of Search Engine Optimization roles. Very cutting edge stuff. It was an exciting time to be part of IT, and as part of the larger technical marketing organization (my teams were sometimes referred to as 'Marketing Operations').

So much of that function fits into my role now as a software evangelist. Not that the same definition can be claimed by all evangelists -- the role is very different depending on who you talk to, and their background. Most evangelists come more from a technical persuasion, and are the resident experts for their companies. For me, sitting in-between sales, marketing, and product is the sweet spot. The key performance indicators that drive me (and my commitments) also sit across those three areas. As I recently joked to the audience at the NY SPUG during a presentation, "My job is to be an instigator. My goal is to expand our customer and partner network, and I get to be very creative about what that means." It can also be a creative chore on how to measure those goals.

I often write very targeted content, looking at the language being used within the industry, and by partners and competitors, and then consciously going a different direction -- and then watch as things shift, how specific language I use gets picked up and adopted by others, and helps shape the dialog within the space. I am a big believer in the concepts within the book 'First, Break All the Rules' by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Don't bother trying to match the competition. Ignore them, and focus on your own path, on your customers, on your team. Be aware of what others do, use the data to inform your decisions. Lead, don't follow. (Another great book in this vein is 'Purple Cow' by Seth Godin)

Don't misinterpret this as an egotistical rant. It's more of an observation of the power of the written word, and the value of being consistent (and constant) in your messaging and the volume of that messaging. Effective marketing, I believe, has as much to do about tracking and measurement, and the ability to adapt and change based on those measurements, than it does on the message itself.

A solid message but crappy execution = FAIL.

Solid execution and weak messaging = ability to learn quickly and improve.

Of course, solid execution together with strong messaging = success. Just don't forget that running a campaign is only half of the execution equation. Tracking the results is the other half.

In my experience, there are some clear signs as to whether your marketing has been effective:

• Sales are up (duh)
• Website traffic increases, sales leads increase (again, duh)
• Lots of feedback (I know, another 'no-duh', but I'll expand on this: positive customer feedback, yes, but the feedback takes on a whole different level when partners, OEMs, and even competitors congratulate you on the quality of your content or campaign)
• Social indicators are growing (things like Twitter followers, LinkedIn requests, Facebook fans, blog RSS subscriptions, and so forth)
• Traffic from competitors increases (how many times they’ve hit your website, your target landing pages, attempted to download whitepapers or products, visited your LinkedIn page, favorite your tweets)
• Your competitors campaigns consist of nothing more than answering your content, instead of leading with their own ideas (the "me too!" mentality)
• Your competitors attempt to co-opt your wording, your terminology (two of my favorites, intentionally inserted into my own articles, have been "granular migration" and "full-fidelity migration")
• Your competition can't leave you alone at conferences (especially fun is when they come over and try to argue with you, right in front of your booth. What about defacing your signage and materials while you're at lunch break, in clear view of other vendors? I mean, who does that?)

At the end of the day, the best way to guarantee marketing success is to provide the best products and services, and then be open and honest with the community and prospective customers about what you can and cannot do for them.

My advice: be authentic in your marketing. Prospective customers (and you better believe your competition) can see right through inauthenticity. I sure do.

How Do You Define Full-Fidelity Migrations?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Axceler, through its acquisition of echoTechnology in early 2010, has been migrating Nintex Workflows since the MOSS 2007 platform. Echo was known within the industry for our comprehensive support for Nintex. We have a long history together, going back to the founding of the two companies. In fact, almost every migration demo we provide showcases a Nintex workflow migration.

Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010 doesn’t just move some aspects of Nintex workflows – we move everything. And we’re the only company that does it. When we say “full-fidelity,” we mean it. We move the Nintex web parts. We move the Nintex workflow definitions and versions. We move the Nintex workflow history and tasks. We move the Nintex constants and variables. We move the Nintex message templates and settings. We fully support all 120 Nintex activities. And we fully support all 22 Nintex workflow templates.

Our competitors would love to make these claims. But they can’t.

And that’s not the only unique functionality within Davinci. We offer a robust query and reporting interface unlike any other competitive offering, allowing you to understand what is in your environment, and how best to plan your migration.  And we also provide pre-migration analysis, identifying potential issues (such as sites with uncompleted Nintex workflow activities) before you migrate. It is simply the most granular and powerful migration tool on the market.

If you’ve not yet seen a demo, it’s time you took a look at Davinci Migrator from Axceler (datasheet here, schedule a demo here).

From SPSUtah to SPSSouthFla

I am amazed at how quickly this year has flown by. This time last year I was doing multiple demos each day of our newly launched migration platform (Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010) and getting ready to launch  handful of videos as part of a new interview series with SharePoint experts and MVPs from around the world called The One Thing. As of this weekend, the total count of videos created for this series is 135, which could grow by a couple more before I disappear for 2 weeks for a much needed family vacation of Christmas.

Also central to my 2011 plans was participation in (and organization of) a number of SharePoint Saturday community events. My goal at the beginning of the year was to host a couple, and to present at another 7 or 8. With SharePoint Saturday Utah taking place in Sandy Utah on December 3rd, the number of events I helped coordinate this year was 5 (including Los Angeles, Redmond WA, Sacramento, and Bend OR). And with SharePoint Saturday South Florida this past weekend, taking place in Ft. Lauderdale FL, I have presented at 17 SharePoint Saturday events this year. Yes, I know that is insane. I didn’t set out to reach that marker, and I don’t “plan” to equal it in 2012. but in my role as Evangelist at Axceler – and with my passion for pulling together community events – it just worked out to be a busy year of SPS activity.

SPSUTAH was an opportunity to yet again break new ground as I have helped do in Los Angeles, San Francisco East Bay, Sacramento, and Bend, and expand the SPS brand across the western US. And it was an opportunity to work with my good friend Joel Oleson and the Utah SPUG President, Josef Nielsen, to bring more SharePoint to the Wasatch front (Salt Lake and Utah counties). We found an excellent venue in the Salt Lake City community College Miller Conference Center in Sandy, and had a very energetic roster of speakers, with SharePoint MVP Liam Cleary from SusQTech (Washington DC) as our keynote. I presented my session 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations, and worked with Joel and Josef, and many speakers and volunteers to pull together a #ShareSki event at Solitude, a fabulous speaker dinner (with massive quantities of Brazilian BBQ), and #SharePint after the event. Everyone pitched in to keep registration moving, and attendees engaged. The sponsor support was overwhelming, with a couple last minute adds allowing us to take a second trip to the store to purchase raffle prizes. We gave away 5 XBox360’s, folks, as well as flat screen TVs, video cameras, printers, and a grand prize of the first FULL season of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. That guy was ecstatic – almost as much as the UofU fan who received the BYU travel mug. To cap off the event, we took some folks on a detailed tour of the Christmas lights at Temple Square. Overall, a great inaugural event, and we’re already discussing dates for next year (and a possible 6-month rotation).

Leaving Utah, I took a red eye Sunday night to Boston to visit Axceler headquarters in Woburn, MA (#TheWoo) for a couple days before heading south to NYC to present at the SPUG on the following:

Cleaning Up Information Architecture in SharePoint and Other Jedi Mind Tricks

View more presentations from Christian Buckley

I was joined at the event by Gail Shlansky, Axceler’s Director of Product Management, and our sales team for the region, Andrew Duplin and Nick Harvey. After a day of customer visits and attempting to get some work done with a less-than-stellar hotel wi-fi connection, I made my way south again, this time to warmer climates.

SharePoint Saturday South Florida was my 3rd SharePoint event in the state (SPSTampa and DevConnections Orlando were the others), and a great way to wrap up the year of travels (although, technically, I close out the year by presenting to my local Puget Sound SPUG later this week). Many of my good friends were also presenting, and it was a very relaxed atmosphere. I presented the sessions Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do and The Connection Between Metadata, Social, and Personal Productivity and had some excellent feedback and conversations with the audience during and following my sessions. In case you weren’t aware, metadata and social are two of my favorite topics, and I can get quite animated when I present. Hopefully people got some value out of participating.

Following the event, a sizeable crowd made their way to the Hard Rock casino and the Murphy’s Law Irish Pub for SharePint before breaking off to visit a local Jamaican deli for some authentic jerk pork, chicken, and oxtail. It was fantastic (thanks to Fabian for pointing us there!).Thank you to Michael Hinckley, David Griffiths, and the rest of the organizing team for inviting me to participate and for your hospitality. Looking forward to next year’s event.

What’s on the agenda for 2012? Great question. So much opportunity, and I hope to be able to continue “seeding” these events across the west, helping identify local leaders to establish their own annual events, and lending my experience to get their inaugural events up and running. SharePoint Saturday activities on my radar so far include:

• Virginia Beach (presenting and platinum sponsor, so Axceler will be there in a big way)
• Austin (presenting and also sponsoring)
• Sacramento (scheduled for March 10th, more news on this in the next week)
• Portland (planning meeting scheduled, and we’re actively looking at venues)
• Los Angeles (date has been set, and a new location)
• Boston (I will continue to submit and attend these, as they are in Axceler’s backyard)
• Utah (we’re looking at a May date, with September as a backup)
• East Bay / Silicon Valley (planning discussions underway)
• Bend (we’re going to rinse, repeat on this. Need to set our date)
• Mexico City (this one might be big. Planning meeting scheduled later this week)
• Boise (Joel and I plan to join forces on this one)
• Redmond (dates are being discussed for both a summer SharePoint event, as well as an Office365 event earlier in the year. More news on them soon)

Other locations high on my list of priorities are Houston, UK, Vancouver, and at least one of the Florida events. I suspect 2012 will be just as busy as 2011, but I need to prioritize these events and my participation. To be honest, I’d rather focus on these events and the community rather than the large trade shows, so that may be how I balance life and travel next year. We’ll see.

My Adventure in Israel

When you tell people that you are an evangelist for a software company and that you travel the country and the world speaking at events and meeting with customers, partners, and members of the community to talk technology, they think its all fun – like an extended vacation with a little work sprinkled in there. Hardly. It’s a good job, to be sure, but most of my trips are literally airport to hotel to event location back to hotel then back to airport. And while on the long flights (during which I can’t sleep, no matter how long the flight) I am doing a whole lot of writing. Once in a while, I am able to take a look around the destination, wandering the streets of Berlin for an evening, or taking a couple hours to walk around downtown Sydney. On a rare occasion, I may have a weekend overlap where I am able to take some personal time to do some exploring.

Last year, I was able to visit Prague in-between visits to Berlin and London, and I was able to work remotely (yes, still worked) from Scotland where I stayed with friends for a couple days before flying home. This year has been a sprint, but in March I was able to explore the north island of New Zealand on the weekend in-between SharePoint Conferences in Australia and New Zealand (where I got to hike Mount Doom), and on my most recent European expedition, I took a couple days off to visit Israel.

It’s a lot cheaper to fly to and from Israel from London that Seattle. The plan was to meet up with my brother-in-law David, who works for Microsoft and manages a development team in Tel Aviv. I’d explore Tel Aviv for a day, meeting up with him in the afternoon, and then together we’d explore Jerusalem for a full day before an early morning flight home the third day. So I booked my flight and took two days off from work. Non-refundable flights, of course. And then David’s trip to Tel Aviv was cancelled. And so there I was, flying into Israel, alone for almost 3 days to explore on my own.

Security in London took over two hours, but they were very respectful. My SharePoint Saturday NYC backpack was not cleared to fly, so its contents were sent to Israel in a box (the bag later cleared, and was sent to my hotel 2 days later). Since I was alone, I decided to simplify my plans and only stay in Jerusalem. I figured I’d come back in a year or two and check out an expanded area when I had travel companions (this turned out to be a good plan). I arrived at my hotel (the Jerusalem Inn, no less), walking distance from the Old City and Jaffa Gate, after 11pm, and had a hard time falling asleep out of excitement. I was ready to see the city.

Day 1 was spent entirely in the Old City, with tours of David’s Citadel, the Western Wall, and the Davidson Center with the archeological digs around the western and southern walls of the Temple Mount. I walked around the Jewish, Armenian, and Christian Quarters, with every taxi slowing down as they passed, honking to try and catch my attention. with headphones in and Muse, Duran Duran, Mutemath, and LCD Soundsystem in heavy rotation, I hardly noticed.

I enjoyed walking through the narrow alleys, exploring the markets and vendor stalls, and watching the local children interact and play in the passages between ancient structures. I spent about 3 hours or more in the citadel on a detailed tour. The guide was a woman with a thick New York accent and attitude to match that could have been the long-lost sister of my Axceler peer, Gail Shlansky (so much so that I took a picture, and have suggested to Gail that DNA testing take place). The highlight of the day, however, was my solitary exploration of the western and southern walls, with the ruins of the Robinson Arch (the ancient stairway on the south-west corner, named after the archeologist who uncovered its remnants) that they believe is where Christ climbed when he drove out the money changers. And the steps leading to the Temple Mount were incredible, with layers of walls and buildings, passageways, and bathing pools for purification (before entering the Temple Mount) have been uncovered. I love that stuff.

On Day 2, I walked clockwise around the Old City, visiting Golgotha, with the distinctive skull hill and the garden tomb, then made my way over to the Temple Mount entrance, up Al Mujahideen Road and through the Lion Gate, where I chatted with the Israeli soldiers guarding the entrance (non-Muslims can only enter for a couple hours each Sunday), and then walked down the hill (along the Kidron Valley) to Gethsemane and the church standing on the site. I walked up the path to the Mount of Olives, which skirts alongside a massive Jewish cemetery that covers the mount, reaching the top and spending an hour or so just staring out across the valley to the Temple Mount, the Old City, and the surrounding view. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe I was standing there.

After a short break at a roadside stand where I talked with a local merchant and two of his sons, I walked back down the Kidron Valley and headed south past the Siloam Pillar (towers and caves cut into the Mount of Olives at the bottom of the valley), climbing up the the south-east corner of the Temple Mount, and then following the wall north, which weaves through hundreds of Muslim gravesites. When I reached the Lion Gate again, I paused to watch the hundreds of people exiting the Temple Mount, then finally merged with the crowd and walked north and then west until I reached Herod’s Gate on the north. After wandering through the Muslim Quarter for a while, I made my way over to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where I was able to catch on video and pictures a ceremony inside, before exploring the church for about 90 minutes. At the end of the day, I made my way back to the hotel, and then out to find some dinner. (Some advice – there are not a lot of restaurants open in downtown Jerusalem late on a Friday night, so plan ahead) I ended up finding a fantastic Korean restaurant, and then retired to my hotel for a 4am wakeup and taxi ride back to Tel Aviv.

Everyone had warned me that security leaving Israel is even more stringent than entering the country, but I was through in about 45 minutes – mostly because of mu decision to remain in Jerusalem, and not explore outside of Israeli-controlled areas. All in all, it was a wonderful experience, but I feel like I just scratched the surface. I hope to go back for a few more days next year, and visit Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, and even head north to visit Galilee, the ruins of Jericho, and some of the other historical sites. Until then, I’ll just enjoy the hundreds of photos I took.

Robin Hood and a Game for Pale Young Boys

November has been a mad dash. After an incredibly busy October, how else to calm things down but to present at SharePoint Saturday Richmond (VA), followed by 3 SharePoint user groups in 3 nights (Tri-State PA, Princeton NJ, and DC/Reston VA), and then hop on a plane for SharePoint Saturday Nottingham and then south to London for a couple days in the office? Sounds like a great way to spend a couple weeks. I do have to admit that the SPUG events are always fun – any time you get to spend quality time with end users, answering (and asking) questions about their experiences on the platform, is always time well spent. Thanks again to Virgil, who traveled and presented with me at each SPUG, and of course to the user group leaders for inviting us out. We had a blast, and hopefully shared some valuable content.

While I have visited London numerous times, its always the same: fly into Heathrow, train and taxi to hotel, back and forth to the office or convention hall, taxi and train back to the airport, home. This was the second time I was able to escape London, grabbing a train north to Nottingham and SharePoint Saturday UK. Nottingham is, of course, the home of Robin Hood, and while under the rule of the Saxons, was known as Snotingaham (after the Saxon chieftain named Snot, of course). I much prefer Nottingham. Much more marketable.

From a company standpoint, it was a huge success, with dozens on new leads, and some great interactions with existing customers. Axceler had a full team on site, and kept quite bust throughout the event with demos and deals. My session (The Connection Between Metadata, Social, and Personal Productivity) had a full room, and the feedback was very positive. I published the slides online the next day, available here:

The Connection Between Metadata, Social, and Personal Productivity

View more presentations from Christian Buckley

Following the event and a well-attended SharePint, I made my way back down into London to spend a couple days in the office with the full team. Always a pleasure to meet with the energetic Axceler London team, and share stories from across the pond. To round out my visit, a couple of the guys were nice enough to take me along to a football game at Wembley, where England beat Sweden 1-0, and we froze our butts off. Thanks again to Adam and Kristian for braving the crowds and the cold in an effort to convince me that soccer is for more than 6 year-olds. (While still a basketball guy, I did have fun). I’ll have to try it again when things warm up a bit more.

The Problem With Community

Building community takes time and effort. The problem is that few are willing to do what it takes, and in a sustained manner, to be successful. What does that mean, exactly? Well, a successful community needs a driver -- someone to get things started, to keep things running. Look to the success of any community program and you'll find one or more drivers. For example, look at the Boy Scouts. Many scouting programs at the local level can point to one or two individuals who go out of their way to ensure that the boys are engaged, requirements are being met, and that the boys are progressing through the program and achievements to the best of their abilities. These people are connectors, network drivers, and in most instances type-A personalities that constantly push, that take action, that continually look for ways that they can improve and make a difference.

It takes effort. And the problem with effort is that you cannot, generally speaking, pass it off on others, or hope that the sheer momentum of the group or the activity will simply propel things forward. In my own experience, co-founding a non-profit that was merged with another non-profit, it was painful to watch our years of hard work flittered away because the new organization did not put the time and effort into maintaining, much less expand on, the success we had built. They thought that the community would grow itself. Not only did it not grow, but it quite rapidly deteriorated without constant renewal, without someone stoking the fire.

At the SharePoint Saturday Richmond (#SPSRIC) event this past weekend, I presented a session on building the SharePoint community that walked through a number of ideas for how an individual or an organization can create or extend community, whether internally (as with a user group) or externally. Having run several user groups and through my experience as a manager and an evangelist, I was able to share some of my experiences and ideas that helped grow communities that I was a part of.

My slides are available here:

Networking science has shown that at the heart of every network (or community) there is at least one influencer who is planning, managing, convincing, initiating, collaborating, compelling, and doing many other descriptive activities. I'm not going to sugar-coat it -- building a community takes a lot of energy. That's why it often takes a certain personality type to do it. But the personal and professional rewards are well-worth the effort.