October 2011 Activities

I’m in a sprint to get work done before disappearing into the ether for a week while on the road in Germany and Belgium. I keep telling my wife that it doesn’t stop until just before Christmas, but I think the last couple months of relatively short travel times has lulled her into a false sense of security. Coming up are the European SharePoint Conference, the CTG Experience Day, the Taxonomy Bootcamp, SharePoint Saturday events in Nottingham UK and Richmond, Virginia, and presentations at the SharePoint user groups in Princeton NJ, Philadelphia PA, and Reston VA.

And that’s just before Thanksgiving. I’m also slipping into the mix a three-day adventure to Israel, where I am going to meet up with my brother in law. Never been there, very excited to visit both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, possibly Bethlehem if we can find someone to give us a tour (hint hint).

For those interested in catching one of my sessions, here are the details for this month:

European SharePoint Conference, Berlin Germany
http://www.sharepointeurope.com

Tuesday, October 18th
SharePoint’s Social Computing Scorecard
A deep dive into the leading social networking contenders (Facebook, Ning, Wave, Jive, Box, etc), comparing and contrasting their capabilities against SP2010 capabilities, and why they are important to the enterprise. This session will catalog the rise of commercial social media tools, outline social media in the enterprise (business value, changes to social informatics in the workplace, data and intellectual property concerns), and present a scorecard of the primary features of the leading solutions against SharePoint 2010 features in the enterprise, with guidance on how to build comparable solutions in SharePoint, and with answers to concerns about security, IP rights, data management, network impact, and employee productivity. Attendees will walk away with a better understanding of what SharePoint 2010 is capable of, and some ideas for how they can augment their own designs and planning.

Wednesday, October 19th
11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration
Migration is a roadblock to moving forward with your SharePoint strategy. Migration is phased, iterative, and error prone. But migration itself is not the goal – an optimized and user-friendly environment is your goal. Beyond the Microsoft-provided overview of how to plan for an upgrade and migration, there is a lot of room for error. This presentation outlines 11 critical strategies for migration planning that no project should move forward without. (based on article published in ECM Connections 11/2/2010) Attendees will walk away with a detailed action plan for their migrations to SharePoint 2010.

CTG Experience Day, Brussels, Belgium
http://experienceday.ctg.com/

Thursday, October 20th
Mastering SharePoint Migration Planning
In this session, we will walk through a five-point migration methodology that supplements existing project management processes with a more holistic view of what it takes to successfully migrate your environments. We’ll examine tactical steps, and provide guidance on this iterative approach, focusing heavily on information architecture and governance. Attendees will leave with a clear picture of the gaps within their current planning efforts, and actionable steps to get back on track.

Taxonomy Bootcamp, Washington DC
http://www.taxonomybootcamp.com/2011/

Monday, October 31st
Enabling Social Media Through Metadata
Many companies, whether considering further investment in their SharePoint 2007 deployments or planning upgrades to SharePoint 2010, are reviewing their social media strategies. Users are chomping at the bit to deploy and use the new, natively supported social media features in SharePoint 2010. But most administrators do not fully understand the taxonomy and data governance issues within SharePoint that are associated with these kinds of solutions. Christian Buckley walks participants through the taxonomy and governance implications of the social media capabilities within SharePoint 2007 and 2010. He provides information to prepare organizations for these tools, as well as examples on how to approach setting up and managing metadata, aligning these tools with their broader corporate content management strategies, and maintaining manageability of a SharePoint environment through governance.

Tuesday, November 1st
Looking Under the Hood: Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do
How important is the metadata and a taxonomy strategy? Using some common end-user scenarios with SharePoint (i.e., adding documents to a library, participating in enterprise workflow, finding technical expertise through new social search features in SharePoint 2010), Christian Buckley illustrates how the lack of a strategy can impact these common scenarios and the ability to leverage the full functionality of SharePoint.

I enjoy the travel and the interaction with the community around the world, but I have to be honest: I am feeling a bit tired already just looking at my travel this month.Somewhere amidst all these flights and hotel rooms, I need to finish some book chapters for Implementing Real-World Solutions in SharePoint 2010, co-authored by myself, Brian Jackett, and SharePoint MVPs Wes Preston and Jennifer Mason, coming soon from Microsoft Press. Come to think of it, I should be working on it right now…