February 2016 Content Wrap-Up

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I’m going to keep the synopsis brief this month, because I’m sitting in a hotel room in Denver trying to get a couple major pieces of content edited – but I don’t want to push off this post at all. Getting ready for another SharePointFest Denver event….trying to remember if this is my 2nd time at this particular event or 3rd. Oh well. This comes on the heels of SharePoint Saturday Utah, followed by SPTechCon Austin last week, a presentation and panel at the Dallas Ft. Worth SPUG a day later, and then a road trip with fellow MVPs Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin), Matthias Einig (@mattein), and Erwin van Hunen (@erwinvanhunen) and team as we traveled from Austin to Dallas to Roswell, New Mexico, and then up to Denver. We had quite the adventure.

12790832_10154036529972642_2918130143754839803_nYou may have seen the pictures on Twitter and Facebook – but here are a few more. The giant head photos were given as gifts to the speakers at SPTechCon and they made quite a memorable series of photos on our road trip and alien adventure. Every so often we’d pull off the highway and take some random photos…which was an excellent way for all of us to stay awake on what is a very flat and largely uninteresting drive through western Texas and eastern New Mexico. (In fact, the border crossing into Colorado is quite dramatic as the landscape changes within a mile of the Colorado welcome sign)

12801530_10154687062551808_7082133091929437545_nFebruary included a number of online activities, including a demo with CardioLog Analytics and Jussi Mori (@jussimori) from Peaches Industries, and a session and panel on Unity Connect Online. The CollabTalk panel also met and discussed the latest Office 365 and SharePoint happenings….but no tweetjam this past month. No time, no time. But don’t worry, it’ll be back in March.

As for content, I’m always amazed at how it adds up at the end of the month. In my mind this was an incredibly light output month as I was focusing on some large content items. But there was still a sizeable chunk of content output, for sure. I’m writing more and more about different aspects of the Office 365 platform, and I expect this to continue. With the rapid pace of change, it can be difficult to keep up with everything. Writing is a great way to test out ideas, and experiment with the technology, pushing it through various scenarios. More of this in the coming months.

I've written a number of times on the shift toward social collaboration tools — and network science, in general – and have really been pushing the topic of the “modalities” of collaboration that Microsoft supports, because customers I talk to are confused by the veritable cornucopia of options available.

As I do every month, I enjoy exploring different ideas within the broader collaboration spectrum, often focusing on the strategy and planning side of things. These articles are mostly targeting the BDM crowd (business decision-makers) rather than IT Pros and Devs.

And for those looking for product or feature-specific topics, I’m trying to dig more into specific social collaboration areas. In fact, my content schedule over the next couple months is very feature-specific. Watch for it.

March is fully underway with SPFest Denver, but after a couple weeks on the road, I am really looking forward to heading home. Next week will be SharePoint Saturday Vancouver, and then after that I believe I’ll be home through early April. Avoiding looking at my schedule right now so that I can focus on what is in front of me, but home time is always nice.

Until then, you know how to reach me. @buckleyplanet

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.