Departing for the European SharePoint Conference 2013

I am sitting once again in the Seattle-Tacoma airport, waiting to board an overnight flight to EMEA. For those who know me, you know what this means: no sleep, half a dozen articles written, and 2 or 3 business magazines read cover to cover. Add to that the fact that I had a major hardware failure this past week, losing the use of my main laptop, and you’ll understand why my content has been light this past week – leaving me to tweet via my iPad and Windows phone all week as my primary technology outlet. I’m using a temporary laptop for the week, and I always have a full backup of my content – using both SkyDrive and an external drive (leaving nothing to chance), and hope to use this trip as an opportunity to catch up a bit on some writing.

This past week was spent in San Francisco where I was able to present at the Webtrends Engage 2013 event (#WTEngage) and the Emerging Media Conference (#EmMeCon) – both of which I plan to attend again, if not present at, if invited. Once back online with the loaner laptop, I was able to upload my slides from both sessions to SlideShare. At WTEngage, I presented with Webtrends engineer and product manager Paul Yawbaugh on the topic of SharePoint measurement, outlining the importance of metrics to system optimization and end user productivity. It was a fun session, and Paul and I will be joining forces once again to do the same topic in a webinar sometime soon (once we’re both off the road) and will include demo’s of both ControlPoint and Webtrend’s latest version. You can find our slides here. At EmMeCon, I discussed the connections between productivity, social, and taxonomy, sharing a couple real-world scenarios and personal stories into my presentation to help make the point. EmMeCon records all of their speakers, so you should see a video somewhere down the road – but until then, you can find my slides here.

In Copenhagen, I will have a full schedule, with presentations each day of the conference. On Tuesday, I’ll be talking about the 4 facets of SharePoint productivity. It’s a business-centric topic, geared toward business analysts, project managers, and decision-makers to help them understand the key drivers to increasing end user productivity (i.e. end user adoption) in SharePoint, and to plan accordingly. On Wednesday, I’ll be giving a SharePoint 101 talk on the importance of metadata and taxonomy. It’s for SharePoint noobies, not very technical, but has been one of my most-requested topics in the past 3 years. I’ve pulled the abstract from my list of speaking topics that I submit, but event organizers keep finding it online and requesting it. I trust the event organizers to know what their audiences want, and am happy to keep presenting this topic. It is SharePoint version-agnostic – it applies to whatever version you’re using, so if you want to understand why taxonomy is so important, it’s a great session to attend.

And finally, on Thursday I’ll be giving the morning keynote with my friend Dan Holme, as we talk about the importance of aligning your business requirements with your governance planning. It should be a great session, so don’t miss it! I’m sure someone will record the session on video, and I’ll provide links to the slides and recordings as soon as they’re available.

Alright, time to board my flight. See you in Copenhagen!