Defining and Measuring Success in Collaboration

Within the life of any collaboration project – whether it be the roll out of a SharePoint environment, adopting some new instant messaging or real-time communication tool, or moving your entire company to a cloud-based content and document management system – you will be asked to “prove” that what you’re using is providing value to your company. We inherently understand that
when people are talking more, sharing more, and capturing their knowledge into a repository where everyone will have access, it’s generating value for our company. And yet claims of “intuitive value” will not impress your manager, much less your board of directors. How clearly have you defined your goals for collaboration, and how are you tracking against those goals? What are the qualitative and quantitative measurements you use to sell everyone on the solutions you’ve put in place? Join us on Friday, January 29th at 9am PST as we take an hour to discuss “How Do You Measure Success in Collaboration?” with a panel of experts, MVPs, and community members from around the world.

If you’ve never participated in one of these tweetjams, no worries – anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twubs, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow up questions, share relevant links, retweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session include:

1. What does "collaboration success" look like?
2. What are the factors that lead to collaboration success?
3. What are the issues keeping you from successful collaboration?
4. What are your key organizational measurements for collaboration?
5. Are your collaboration efforts aligned with your business? How, or why not?
6. What are the tools, solutions and vendors you use to measure collaboration?'
7. What advice would you give a team embarking on their first collaboration effort?

Of course, there will be side-questions, side-conversations, and wise-cracking throughout. The dialog is usually thought-provoking but also fun. Participating on this panel are a number of MVPs and experts on SharePoint and Office 365. Of course, this is open to the public, so please join in the discussion!

• Kanwal Khipple (@kkhipple),SharePoint and Office 365 MVP, ceo of 2toLead
• Jason Himmelstein (@sharepointlhorn), SharePoint MVP and Office 365 advisory services manager at Rackspace
• Jeffrey Schwartz (@jeffreyschwartz), editor-in-chief of Redmond Magazine, Redmond Channel Partner
• John White (@diverdown1964), SharePoint MVP and cto at UnlimitedViz Inc. 
• Jared Shockley (@jshoq), senior service engineer at Microsoft IT
• Michael Greth (@mysharepoint), Microsoft MVP, podcaster, SharePoint and Office 365 specialist
• Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin), Office 365 MVP and evangelist at ShareGate 
• Barry Jinks (@BJinks), founder and ceo at Colligo
• Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), Office Servers and Services MVP, founder of PixelMill 
• Heather Newman (@heddanewman), co-founder and cmo of ContentPanda
• Richard Harbridge (@rharbridge), Office Server and Services MVP, cto of 2toLead
• Hans Brender (@hansbrender), SharePoint MVP and solution architect at BitTitan
• Rene Modery (@modery), Office 365 MVP, collaboration and SharePoint applications manager
• Andrew Simmonds (@innovationbrokr), consulting director at Clustre
• Andrea Cifor (@andreaci), director of actuarial data governance at Nationwide Insurance
• Eli Robillard (@erobillard), SharePoint MVP, musician, fly-fisher, collaboration technology guy
• Robert Toro (@SharePointToro), SharePoint practice director at Slalom 
• Rick Garcia (@houstontechfest), SharePoint project manager at United Airlines
• Marc Anderson (@sympmarc), SharePoint MVP and co-founder, president of Sympraxis Consulting
• Jussi Mori (@JussiMori), SharePoint MVP, social expert and consultant at Peaches Industries
• Naomi Moneypenny (@nmoneypenny), Office365 MVP and cto at ManyWorlds
• Jeff Fried (@jefffried), cto and vp of engineering at BA Insight 
• Dean Swann (@sdeanswann), social collaborator, growth hacker and product manager for UnlimitedViz
• Ryan Schouten (@shrpntknight), sr. SharePoint architect and evangelist at ZAACT
• Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), owner of Focal Point Solutions
• Gina Montgomery (@ginammontgomery), vp of corporate strategy at Softmart
• Patrick Curran (@pcfromdc), director, federal group at Plan et Technologies
• Robert Bogue (@RobBogue), author, speaker, strategist and consultant at Thor Projects
• Eric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle  
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Office Server and Services MVP and cmo for Beezy

The panel size may increase over the next couple days, but as always everyone is invited to participate whether or not you’re part of the panel. Join the conversation using the #CollabTalk hashtag and share your thoughts!