Ramping Up for the Next Roadtrip

I’m going through a backlog of items this week in preparation for a mega-road trip to Europe, starting my journey this weekend as I fly to Barcelona for the European SharePoint Conference, also spending some time in London and Geneva doing some customer and partner visits, with a short trip through Paris on my way to London. Lots going on, so I thought I’d throw together a quick synopsis email of last week’s SPTechCon content, with links to what is coming up next:

Last week: SPTechCon San Francisco
I’m not sure how many SPTechCon events I’ve been to, but this is still my favorite SharePoint event in the US outside of Microsoft’s own SPC, and am already looking forward to Boston in September. I presented three new sessions in San Francisco, and uploaded each of the decks to SlideShare, which you can review here:

 

As per tradition, I once again took the last spot on the opening evening’s Lightning Talks to provide some humor in what I am calling my own personal “Rick Astley moment.”  My usual schtick is to provide an addendum to “my ongoing research project” within the SharePoint community, but thought I’d do something different this time around, putting my feelings into song in what I call “The Most Mind-Blowingly Epic SharePoint Song, Ever!” Enjoy.

 

Next up: European SharePoint Conference in Barcelona
This is my fourth time presenting at ESPC, and my first time visiting Barcelona – and I am excited about both. The ESPC team do a fantastic job putting on the largest SharePoint conference in Europe, and this year I’ll be presenting a keynote, a regular session, and leading a panel event. My abstracts and times for each are as follows:

8 Things to Consider as SharePoint Moves to the Cloud
Tuesday, May 6th at 3:15pm
Over the next 3 to 5 years, Microsoft estimates that 50% or more of the existing SharePoint customer base will maintain a hybrid environment. As companies make this transition, do you understand the true cost and governance impacts of moving to the cloud?In this session, attendees will get an overview of the many different paths from SharePoint on premises to the cloud — with an outline of the costs, risks, and considerations so that companies can properly prepare for the move. While the session will cover some technical aspects of SharePoint’s architecture, the goal is to provide business owners and administrators alike with a firm understanding of the hidden costs of implementing and maintaining a hybrid SharePoint environment, or a pure cloud SharePoint.

An overview of the many business considerations around moving SharePoint from on premises to the cloud. The goal is to help the attendee understand the cost benefits, as well as some of the hidden costs and management headaches, of moving to the cloud. Attendees will also get a wake up around what it takes to implement and maintain a hybrid SharePoint environment. You will Learn:

• Understand the major platform parity gaps between on prem, cloud, and hybrid
• Understand the governance and administrative gaps between versions.
• Best practices that will help mitigate the inherent risks of making this transition

Keynote: What It Takes to Make Social Successful
Wednesday morning Keynote, May 7th at 9am, co-presented with Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft.
Successful social deployments take more than a software deployment or subscription. Social collaboration has more to do with the cultural change these technologies bring to the enterprise than the features you deploy — so its important to begin your social journey with a firm understanding of what it takes to deploy, configure, and manage social across the enterprise.

The goal of this presentation is to share both the Microsoft and community perspectives on what it takes to build out an enterprise social collaboration solution on premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, and clarify community questions about what it really takes to make social successful with Yammer and SharePoint 2013.

How to Track, Measure, and Get Business Value Out of Social Influence
Wednesday, May 7th at 2pm, panel event including Mark Fidelman (Evolve Inc), Mark Kashman (Microsoft), Naomi Moneypenny (Synxi), Jussi Mori (Peaches Industries), and Edin Kapic (Spenta).
Social influence, and its value within the enterprise, is becoming an increasingly importance topic. Social and documen
t collaboration platforms have been slowly integrating new features (Yammer is partnering with Klout, for example) to allow organizations to better understand the impact of influence on building complex networks and driving engagement.

This session will include a panel of social collaboration experts, as well as audience participation. The goal of the session is to discuss real-world deployment scenarios, and different perspectives on the need for social influence within the enterprise, and limitations of current platforms and methodologies to capture this data.

It will be a deep dive into the topic of social influence, and its growing importance within the enterprise to track and measure engagement and complex networks.

There are limited tools to track social influence in SharePoint or Yammer today, but this is a growing segment of the social conversation. I’ll explain what it is, discuss some of the leading platforms today to track and define social influence (Klout, Kred, PeerIndex) and talk about what can be done in SP and Yammer (Yammer has an integration with Klout, for example) and what this means for the enterprise.

Attendees will get a more academic insight into the topic, rather than practical knowledge, as it is still a very young technology category, and very bleeding-edge in the social space. But the session will welcome questions and audience participation. You Will Learn:

• A better understanding of social influence and its role in developing complex networks
• Understanding of what SharePoint and Yammer offer natively or through integration to provide social influence data
• Understanding of the big data potential of social influence data

Following Barcelona, I’ll be on the road for a week visiting customers and partners in Europe, before heading home and planning for my next events. In June I’ll be back down in South Africa for another SHARE event, as well as customer visits with our partner GTconsult. Always happy to return to beautiful SA and spend time with my good friends there. And in July there is WPC in Washington DC, followed by NZSPC in Auckland. It’s going to be a busy summer once again!