Collaboration is still about Search

Does anyone remember a few years back when Google ran an ad campaign about how “It’s all about search?” I remember thinking to myself, “What a dumb ad. The internet is not just about search – its about a billion different things.” And yet they were spot on. If you have no way of finding those billion different things, the internet becomes less useful, less transformative. And the same goes for our document and collaboration management platforms. We get all crazed over the next new thing in social or compliance management or communication, but ultimately it comes down to the search experience. All of these features add context, create additional content, and allow us to become more engaged – but at the center of it all is the search experience.

With the launch of the #CollabTalk show on IT Unity this month, there was the tiniest bit of consternation with fans of the 2-year old #CollabTalk tweetjams about whether that model would go away. No folks, the “show” and the “tweetjam” are two very different things. The #CollabTalk show is about the latest news and community chatter around SharePoint, Office 365, et al. The tweetjam remains as a deep-dive into a specific topic each month, as with last month’s focus on SharePoint predictions for 2015 that drew more than 100 participants and generated over 4.2 million impressions (wow). And now that episode 1 of the show is in the can, its time to break the internet by hosting another tweetjam.

This month, the topic is “The Future of SharePoint Search” and will include some of the leading voices in search from the community. Please join us this Friday, January 30th at 9am PST as we explore this topic in depth.

What is a tweetjam, you ask? It’s a gathering of experts on a very public channel (Twitter) allowing anyone to watch or participate. We provide a site at Twubs.com/CollabTalk to capture the conversation, or you can use Twitter or Hootsuite or any other platform you’d like to follow along or jump in. Over the course of the hour, we’ll walk through 7 main questions and give our panelists and participants a chance to answer, share links and experiences, and to ask their own follow up questions, The only guidance is to remember to include the #CollabTalk hashtag and, where relevant, the question/answer number so that people can follow the conversation.

The questions we'll be asking include:

1. What are 3 essential steps when planning your SharePoint search strategy?
2. How important is search to a hybrid SharePoint deployment, and why?
3. What aspects of SharePoint 2013 search capability do organizations fail to take full advantage of?
4. What do admins need to know about the search management experience?
5. How does Delve and the Office Graph change your search strategy, if at all?
6. How does search fit into the NextGen portals strategy?
7. What are the biggest gaps in SharePoint's search roadmap, whether on prem or online?

For this month’s event, the following experts will be participating in our panel (with more to be added):

• Jeff Fried (@jefffried), cto and vp of engineering at BA Insight
• Agnes Molnar (@molnaragnes), SharePoint MVP, founder and managing consultant at Search Explained
• Marc Anderson (@sympmarc), consultant at Sympraxis Consulting
• Naomi Moneypenny (@nmoneypenny), Office365 MVP and cto at ManyWorlds
• Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin), SharePoint MVP and evangelist at ShareGate 
• Jeffrey Schwartz (@JeffreySchwartz), editor at 1105 Media, including Redmond and Redmond Channel
• Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle 
• Scot Hillier (@scothillier), SharePoint MVP and independent consultant 
• Jeff Willinger (@jwillie), director of collaboration and social business at Rightpoint 
• Dan Holme (@danholme), Office365 MVP, evangelist, and co-founder of ITUnity
• Craig Tarr (@craig_tarr_, co-founder and COO at GTconsult 
• Edin Kapic (@ekapic), SharePoint MVP and architect at Spenta 
• Gokan Ozcifci (@gokanozcifci), SharePoint MVP and IT infrastructure consultant at Neoxy
• Brett Hill (@bretthill), Office365 MVP (one of the very first!) and manager of technical marketing at Riverbed Technology
• Robert Toro (@SharePointToro), SharePoint practice director at Slalom 
• Barry Jinks (@BJinks), founder and ceo at Colligo
• Chris Tomich (@christomich82), SharePoint consultant, dialogue mapper, and co-founder of Glyma
• Dan Barker (@barkingd), global product manager at Dell Software 
• Jeff Shuey (@jshuey), chief evangelist at K2
• Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), owner of Focal Point Solutions 
• Kanwal Khipple (@kkhipple), Office 365 MVP and founder of 2toLead 
• Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), branding expert and author, founder of PixelMill 
• Sean McNeill (@S_McNeill), Office365 MVP and senior account executive at SkyKick 
• Erica Toelle (@EricaToelle), business architect at Buildingi
• Jason Himmelstein (@sharepointlhorn), SharePoint MVP and senior technical director of SharePoint at Atrion
• James Fowell (@jdfowell), partner manager at Metalogix
• Michelle Caldwell (@shellecaldwell), SharePoint MVP and director of collaboration at Avanade 
• Ben Curry (@curryben), SharePoint MVP, principal architect and managing partner at Summit 7 Systems  
• Paul Stork (@pstork), SharePoint MVP and MCM, principal architect at BlueChip 
• Fabian Williams (@fabianwilliams), SharePoint MVP and senior consultant at Planet Technologies 
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Office365 MVP and Managing Director, Americas for GTconsult 

As always, I expect quite a few more people to drop in for the live event, and encourage any readers to also join us. Feel free to lurk, or to get engaged in the discussion. Either way, its going to be action-packed and a great source of expertise and opinion. And if you’re interested in more of this kind of discussion, don’t miss episode 2 of the #CollabTalk show on IT Unity taking place February 24th at 10am PST (register here).