Preparing for a West Coast Flyover

I’ve been getting used to this being-off-the-road-thing these past few weeks, enjoying the luxuries of sleep and regular exercise since before the holidays. It’s been an action-packed month, with a very busy week leading up to my Friday morning flight out. Aside from sales and customer activities, I’m toiling away on the next book and a couple whitepapers today and tomorrow, and getting ready for the weekend and another SharePoint Saturday. And then Thursday there’s an IAMCP networking event and luncheon and the Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group and board meeting. As I sit here and think about it, I have easily presented at 75+ SharePoint Saturday events in the past 5.5 years. Truly amazing. And many more to come, including another one in Redmond in October. Stay tuned!

If you’re following me on Twitter (@buckleyplanet) then you’ve probably seen an uptick in mentions of Glyma, one of my clients. We are starting to schedule private demos now that we have a couple key partners in place, and so I’ll be talking about that more and more in the coming weeks. I have a webinar scheduled with Glyma co-founder Paul Culmsee (@paulculmsee) on the 27th (details below), and will be planning some regional face-to-face presentations.

The other big news is that GTconsult co-founder and COO Craig Tarr (@craig_tarr) will be working from the Bellevue office for a couple months, which is very exciting. For those who did not get enough of Craig when he was here last, here’s your opportunity! And for those who saw far too much of Craig, my apologies. Craig and I have a joint webinar on January 28th, and then will be putting on an invitation-only road show event in late February. Oh, and he;s coming to his first SPTechCon, so that should be fun!

Overall, looking forward to a busy winter and spring! Here’s what is coming up in the next few weeks:

SharePoint Saturday Denver
Jan 17th, http://www.spsevents.org/city/denver/denver2015 
Keynote: Realigning SharePoint for the vNext Social Organization
The world is witnessing the dawn of the social organization, with rapidly evolving solutions that impact team dynamics, collaboration, and real-time communication. For many managers, it can difficult keeping up with all of the new features and shifting roadmaps coming out of Microsoft. New options within SharePoint, Office 365 and Yammer are exciting, but many teams struggle to develop a social strategy that aligns with their business needs. This keynote will provide attendees with insights into the changes required to move from document-centric collaboration toward the vNext social organization, sharing real-world examples and guidance to help them make more informed choices as they develop social strategies for their own organizations.
Session: Managing SharePoint On Prem vs Online: Compare and Contrast
The purpose of this session is to outline the major administrative differences between SharePoint on prem and SharePoint Online, comparing reporting, auditing, and information governance differences between the platforms. The intent is to help organizations make informed decisions about what it will take to transition to SharePoint in the cloud, either through a hybrid model or moving entirely to the cloud. In addition to showing administrative capabilities of both platforms, the session will walk through some management considerations for hybrid planning.

The #CollabTalk show: Episode 1
Jan 20th, 10am PT, http://www.itunity.com/webinar/collabtalk-sharepoint-office365-vlog-773 
For almost two years, monthly #CollabTalk tweetjams have brought together experts from around the SharePoint and Office 365 community to discuss important topics at length. Beginning January 20, 2015, #CollabTalk moves to IT Unity – and from Twitter to a video blog format. The monthly #CollabTalk show will continue to bring you expert opinions on the pressing issues of the day, and will be hosted by Office 365 MVPs Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet) and Naomi Moneypenny (@nmoneypenny) and SharePoint MVPs Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin) and Marc Anderson (@sympmarc). Join us for the inaugural broadcast of #CollabTalk in our new video format, and, as always, join the discussion on Twitter using the #CollabTalk hashtag.
For our inaugural show, we’ll discuss: Public sites in Office 365, Hybrid SharePoint environments, The new Office 365 Groups, and OfficeMix and Sway. We hope you can join us!

InfoGovCon Panel
Jan 21st, 11am PT, http://infogovcon.com/webinars/812-panel-guerrilla-tactics-infusing-information-governance-practices-via-subterfuge
Guerrilla Tactics: Infusing Information Governance Practices via Subterfuge
Join us for an innovative panel discussion around implementing Information Governance in an organization that may be hostile to the concept and by leveraging existing processes.
Many projects have no mandate related to Information Governance. We’ll discuss how good information governance practices can be infused, mainly through subterfuge. We’ll explore topics such as project team composition, requirements gathering, information architecture, and how to sneak your way in front of corporate governance councils. Every project needs to be framed by good Information Governance practices; this is how some of the leaders in the industry help make it happen.

IT Unity Webinar
Jan 27th, 1pm PT, http://www.itunity.com/webinar/rewriting-rule-book-managing-knowledge-755
Rewriting the Rulebook on Managing Knowledge
Managing knowledge in a business has always been tough, and these days it has become even tougher. The amount of information available has skyrocketed and so too have the formats, places and channels through which it is received. Complexity around how we gather, organize and effectively use information has magnified – and to deal with this complexity, we need a new approach.

In this webinar, Australian-based information management strategist, SharePoint guru, and award-winning author Paul Culmsee will be joined by Office 365 MVP and well-known SharePoint and social strategist Christian Buckley to help participants rewrite the rulebook on managing their intellectual capital. Find out about new approaches, techniques and tools that can be used within your organization to help better leverage your existing knowledge stores and intellectual capital all using SharePoint and featuring Glyma. 

Key topics that we will cover include:

• Avoiding the “what happens when Jeff leaves” brain drain crisis
• Tapping into “what’s in the head” and turning it into usable assets for the business
• Bringing a halt to the revolving cycle of “re-inventing the wheel”
• Stopping the nonsensical repetition of costly mistakes

GTconsult Webinar
Jan 28th, 10am PT, http://icont.ac/2K5VG
Building Dynamic SharePoint Applications on Both Office 365 and On-premise
One of the major concerns of organizations investigating or upgrading to Office 365 is whether the solutions they've come to rely on with SharePoint on prem can be duplicated online without code. From workflow and forms to branding and personalization, this webinar will look at techniques and solutions that can be used on SharePoint Online and on prem, enabling rich and dynamic functionality regardless of your environment. Join GTconsult co-founder and COO Craig Tarr, with Office 365 MVP Christian Buckley, as they demonstrate the latest SharePoint capabilities.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand some of the key differences between SharePoint online and on prem
• Learn how powerful solutions, such as project hubs, shopping carts, information roll-ups and other solutions can be built without code
• Pick up some great tips and tricks to make your end users more productive

GTconsult Webinar
Feb 4th, 9am PT, (registration not yet open)
Gaining Deeper Insights Into SharePoint Performance, History, and Trends with Umlindi
Creating and tracking metrics is good, but correlating various data points to identify insights is where the real business benefit is realized. In this webinar, hosted by GTconsult co-founder and CEO Bradley Geldenhuys, with Office365 MVP Christian Buckley, we will demonstrate how to use real time data and historic trends to provide proactive maintenance of your SharePoint environments, using real data that matter to end users, such as page load times and IIS connections. Join this webinar to learn how GTconsult’s Umlindi platform can improve the performance and manageability of SharePoint.

Vancouver SPUG
Feb 5th, 6pm PT, http://www.vanspug.org/
Still waiting to hear from the VANSPUG on which topic I’ll be presenting, but I will definitely be driving up to Vancouver for the evening, and participating in a SharePint following the event. Also presenting will be Barry Jinks, CEO of Colligo. Follow @VanSPUG for more details.

SPTechCon Austin
Feb 9th through 11th, http://www.sptechcon.com/ 
Session: Baby-Stepping Into the Cloud with Hybrid Workloads
As organizations begin to think about their roadmap toward the cloud, they need to consider how best to move away from their on-premises infrastructure investments. There are multiple paths into the cloud, depending on the goals and needs of the business. This class walks through some of the various hybrid options – what they are, what they take to implement, and the risks, feature gaps, and overhead for deploying them.

EuropeanSP Webinar  
Feb 19th, 7am PT, (registration not open yet)
The Business Value of Social
End users want business tools that more closely match their personal online experience, but many businesses struggle to understand how these tools will actually provide business benefit. The goal of this session is to help participants understand the social features within SharePoint 2013, Office 365, and Yammer – and provide key use cases for each platform. We’ll discuss Delve and the Office Graph, the new inline social and Groups functionality, and outline the business value of social — showcasing how social features will help your organization improve user adoption of SharePoint, and increase overall end user productivity.

The #CollabTalk show: Episode 2
Feb 24th, 10am PT 
Tune in for our second episode! We’ll discuss 3 or 4 new topics, and may possibly have a special guest! 

GTconsult Road Show
Feb 25th, 9am to 1pm
This invitation-only event for partners and customers will walk through the migration and on-boarding path from SharePoint on prem to Office 365, showcasing a number of powerful solutions that can be built in SharePoint Online without needing to code. Speakers will include Christian Buckley and Craig Tarr from GTconsult, Jared Shockley from Microsoft IT, and one or two other guest speakers.

I hope you can all make it to one or more of these events! As always, slides will be published to my SlideShare profile, and webinar recordings made available to registrants within a day or two of each event.

On a personal note, the other big activity happening this next month is that my daughter (my oldest) returns from her 18-month LDS mission to San Pablo, Philippines in early February, and at the end of March my oldest (of three) son returns from his 2-year LDS mission to Scottsdale, Arizona. We’re very excited to have them both home, if only for a few weeks before they both return to school, work, and normal life. I’m often reflecting on changes within the SharePoint community, but what is truly amazing is that all 4 of my kids are grown up and just about all moved out. Oh, and that 2 (soon to be all 3) of my boys are taller than me. Life goes by so fast.