July 2014 Content Wrap-Up

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Well, I sure let this one slip past me. For those of you not paying attention, I hit the road the last couple days of July, and just got home this week….so I’ve been kind of busy driving just over 8,200 miles across 25 states + DC, and speaking at 4 SharePoint user groups (Nashua, Providence, Richmond, and Salt Lake City) and the inaugural Office 365 Ramp-Up Day in Reston, VA. While I did take a few vacations days between events, it was very much a working trip. And it was an adventure, to be sure. I’ll have to blog on the trip and share a few pictures, although I was posting to Facebook and Twitter throughout.

I started the month off preparing to attend my fifth Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (#WPC14) in Washington DC, where I gave two presentations in the #SocialHub on, what else – social. And then I wrapped up the month with my first tour stop on my “Epic Road Trip” by presenting to a large crowd at the Utah SharePoint User Group. I’d love to get out and do more of these kinds of multi-event road trips in the future, maybe hitting the southern US states, as well as touring the West Coast from Vancouver to San Diego. Maybe I’ll organize a series of events with a few others and make it happen.

Until then, I’ll continue to write. August has been a quiet month due to all of the drive time, and I’m a bit heads down on a few things – especially prepping for my keynote at #InfoGovCon in Hartford, CT next month, followed by another SPTechCon in Boston, which is one of my favorite events.

My topics this year have been very cloud-focused, but last month I had some thoughts rolling around my head on the topic of the SharePoint user experience, a remnant of the June #CollabTalk tweetjam on the same topic. Productivity and UX were both themes of WPC, and I incorporated these ideas into a CMSWire article that garnered a lot of attention:

SharePoint governance continues to be a theme for me, and I was able to conduct a webinar with Metalogix SE Shaun Nichols from our Los Angeles office on the topic of security:

As always, I wrote a few articles on the topic of social technology – which is a theme I am been writing about since 1998, and was the original focus of this blog when it was launched back in 2002. I was grateful for the invitation from Microsoft to present two sessions on social and Yammer at WPC, my second year presenting, and also of participating in the Social Squad. It’s pretty cool to have press access to the WPC keynotes, and hang out with people like Scott Bekker, Barb Levisay, and Mary Jo Foley. I’ll have more content appearing on Microsoft’s DigitalWPC.com website in the coming weeks.

During the event, following one of my presentations, I was interviewed by Spanish-language site El Economista to get my thoughts on the direction of Office365 and Microsoft’s social tools:

  • Yammer se destaca como red social corporativa en WPC (Interview with El Economista) http://bit.ly/UaEv04

I had a few folks approach me in July, at WPC and online, about the role of evangelism in their companies, and so I followed up with a quick blog post:

I wrote a handful of articles on cloud migration and planning:

In addition to a summary of my own WPC takeaways and travel plans, I posted news about changes to the IAMCP Seattle chapter presidency changes (I stepped down after 3 years, and Jeff Shuey took the role) and confirmed dates for SharePoint Saturday Bend (October 4th) and SharePoint Saturday Redmond (October 11th), both of which are open for registration – and are looking for sponsors!

At least once or twice a month, I will continue to publish broader business and marketing topics through LinkedIn. These posts are getting decent views, and are a way for me to flesh out ideas from my reading, as well as from my startup and entrepreneurial experiences.

Something new that I am looking forward to doing more of is the “SharePoint 5 Minute Chat” with Brad Geldenhuys from GTconsult and others from the community. We tested the waters last month before I hit the road, but plan on making this a regular occurrence, possibly weekly.

I’ve probably missed a few items, but I am out the door heading to the Puget Sound SPUG tonight, and then am up early for a 5:30am flight heading back east to Columbus, Ohio for another SPS event. If you’re in the vicinity, please come say hello.

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is a startup advisor and investor, and an independent consultant providing fractional marketing and channel development services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, weekly #ProjectFailureFiles series, monthly Guardians of M365 Governance (#GoM365gov) series, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.