December 2014 Content Wrap-Up

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What is amazing about this monthly process of cataloging my content is that it allows me to look back over my body of work, the themes and topics, and figure out a plan for where I need to spend more time in the next month. What's funny is that I really felt like this past month was a slow content month because of all of the planning I was doing for Q1. December tends to be a slower month, with many companies closing down for the extended holiday period. But aside from a couple days off with the family, things have been quite busy, with about half my time billable to clients and the other half trying to build a consulting practice. So much still to do, but I am enjoying the journey — and I have been able to spend much more time with my family, which is fantastic.

With all of the end of year noise (to which I was a very active participant) it can be easy to lose some really great content, and so I'll probably wait a couple weeks or so and then expand on some of the predictions I have made for 2015 and beyond, and maybe get the input from other well-known community members. If you missed the posts, webinars, and tweets, here is a listing of my 2014 summaries, predictions for the new year, and a little bit (or a lot) of self-promotion:

One of the writing highlights of my fall was preparing a whitepaper for GRADIENT on the topic of adoption and engagement, and specifically, focusing on the end user experience. I find myself saying again and again at various events and conferences that if you don't involve the end user in the deployment process, they are less likely to support the end result. At the end of the day, you might have built the most beautiful, technology advanced solution in the world, but if end users aren't using it — you have failed. But it's not just about capturing their requirements: it's equally important to get their help in designing, building, testing, and administrating the solution.

Having joined a company with managed services IP that allow customers to outsource some of their SharePoint administration needs, you'll see me writing more about administration and governance. Shocking, I know. Increasingly, I'll be talking about the issues surrounding the transition toward the cloud, and I hope to highlight some customer and partner case studies that show companies making the successful move to hybrid and pure-cloud platforms:

While cloud permeates most of my content these days, I did write some cloud-specific posts on planning and management, as well:

Likewise, I can't go a month without writing something about migration:

November and December were big months for me around social technologies, having keynoted the SharePoint Connect 2014 conference in Amsterdam on the topic, and then participating in an ITUnity panel and webinar on Office Graph and Delve, specifically. So much happening in this space. Even those organizations who are still reluctant to fully invest in social, I think 2015 is going to be a breakout year for social in the enterprise, and many large organizations will finally figure out their path forward (to the delight of their end users):

Of course, I am still generating a couple evangelism and business-related topics per month. Historically, these articles have been the result of my reading various business and tech magazines, but honestly, I have a stack of unopened and un-read Harvard Business Review magazines that I need to catch up on. So this list will likely grow over the next two months as I catch back up.

December was also a good month for mentions. Got some love from DigitalWPC and CMSWire:

  • 2nd most popular partner blog post over on Microsoft's DigitalWPC website http://bit.ly/1K7CS9W
  • Had the 1st and 9th most popular SharePoint articles on CMSWire in 2014 (but alas, did not three-peat on top 10 bloggers this year. Need to increase my volume over there, I think) http://bit.ly/1tHDONr
  • Overall on CMSWire in 2014, I had the 5th most popular article on the site http://bit.ly/1wLldKC

As you can see, what was supposed to be a slow content month was actually pretty full. And January should be even bigger, with the launch of the new #CollabTalk show over on ITUnity (with my endless stream of Instagram imagery in support of our launch, seen below), and with several GTconsult, ITUnity, and European SharePoint community webinars in the pipeline. I'll provide more details around my travel plans and speaking engagements next week.

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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.