August Travel Planning

With next week begins an end-of-summer activity blitz that runs through the end of October, with first activity on the agenda to be SharePointFest DC. I’ll be traveling out early on Monday, heading for Bethesda, Maryland – because the only thing better than the heat of Houston in early July as I experienced at WPC last month, than the heat of the DC area in August. Woot.

I spent the day yesterday driving with my daughter back from college in Utah where its been averaging around 100F, and was so happy to find light rain to greet me on the western slopes of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, with an expected high of 66F today. Love it. But its off to DC for me, for two sessions that focus largely on one of the more successful themes of my SharePoint career: getting the most out of what you already own (versus moving to the latest/greatest platform).

My first session after lunch on Tuesday is a slightly updated version of one that I’ve been doing for about a year, “The 4 Facets of SharePoint Productivity” in which I guide Information Workers and business users through some hints and tips for improving productivity within SharePoint, and will be touching on some of the differences between the features in 2010, 2013, and Office365.

My second session after lunch on Wednesday is a new presentation “Understanding SharePoint Reporting in 2010, 2013, and O365,” again targeting IW and business users, helping explain some of the key differences in reporting between 2010, 2013, and O365 (er, I should say, the *lack of reporting* in O365) and where organizations should focus to track, measure, and manage the performance and productivity within their SharePoint environments. As this one will be new, I’m really looking forward to capturing questions and comments from the audience, and publishing a blog post or two with more detail in the coming weeks. I’m talking with one of my Solutions Engineers about doing a webinar later this fall on the topic, because I think its an important one.

Week after next, I’ll once again be presenting at SPTechCon in Boston, this time reducing my presentation load to four:

• On Monday, I’ll give the end of day lightning talk “27 Ways to Improve Collaboration Without SharePoint or Yammer” which I hope will be entertaining for everyone. Expect the usual roasting of various SharePoint notables.
• On Tuesday at 8:30am, I’ll once again present the popular “10 Best Features in SharePoint 2010 You’ve Never Used (But Should)” which has had over 50,000 views on SlideShare, and several thousand downloads. Wow.
• Wednesday morning at 8:30am, I’ll present my session “Productivity, Gamification, and SharePoint 2013” which is partly a walkthrough of some of the latest SP2013 features, and partly an academic review and discussion on what gamification means, and how to take advantage of its techniques to improve user engagement and overall productivity.
• Wednesday afternoon at 3:45pm, I’ll be presenting the all new “Managing Governance Across the Social Landscape” which breaks down some of the issues of governance across hybrid environments, and the current gaps in management and governance across SP2013 and Yammer features, with recommendations on where organizations should be filling the gaps.

Of course, if you have not attended an Axceler party in the past, you’ll definitely want to register to attend the SPTechCon After Party on Tuesday, August 13th from 9pm to 12am, sponsored by Axceler, Jornata, and Slalom Consulting. Register Now.

In September, I’ll be traveling to South Africa for SharePoint Saturday events in Cape Town and Durban, with several partner activities in-between where I’ll provide a couple keynotes, and will come home in time to help host SharePoint Saturday Redmond here on the Microsoft campus, and then hit the mid-west for another partner event. And in October, we’re holding our 3rd SharePoint Saturday Bend event on the 5th, and then the Iberian SharePoint Conference on October 10th will kick off an almost 3-week flurry of SPUG and partner events across Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and the UK.

After that, I’ll be taking some much-needed downtime at home while morning on some major content pieces, possibly traveling out a couple more times before the end of the year for customer engagements and possibly a SharePoint Saturday or two, but nothing major (fingers crossed on that one).