February 2017 Content Wrap-Up

by · Published · Updated

SharePint in Bellevue 2017_3

For the shortest month of the year, it’s amazing how my activities at the start of February seem like they happened such a long, long time ago. So much happening on both the work and family fronts that I am rarely asleep before 1am – and up most days around 6am. Which all sounds exhausting, but I am really enjoying a lot of Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, indoorthe projects I am working on. The big item that most of you are aware of is the research project that I am working on with a team of graduate students from Brigham Young University – we’re quantifying the Hybrid SharePoint space, which is something that I had been thinking about for a couple years, going back to my time with No automatic alt text available.Axceler, in fact. As I outlined in a postthis past month, its an area that has lacked data – and we’re solving that. If you’ve not yet had a chance to take the hybrid SharePoint survey, please do. We’re running the survey through March 22nd, and delivering the results in mid-April.

But back to February activities: at the start of the month, I traveled back out to Seattle for 10 days to visit with friends and family, and connect with a number of Microsoft folks from around the world who were in town for Microsoft’s annual internal TechReady conference. While there, I was able to get lunch with Tom Resing (@resing) and stop by the #ShareQuilt in Building 34. In fact, I created the FourSquare checkin on the Swarm app at the ShareQuilt, if you’re ever in the vicinity. And then we stopped by Tom’s office, discussed instagram photography, and I took the epic picture to the right which looks like it belongs in the liner notes of the ABC album How to be a Zillionaire.

So after driving how in blizzard conditions on Snoqualmie Pass, much of the rest of the month is a blur. I worked on quite a few external posts and articles, which you can see below, and more than a dozen internal documents, ebooks, and whitepapers that you can’t yet see. And I organized two separate webinars, also included Image may contain: 1 person, sitting, screen, drink, laptop, table and indoorbelow. I’m exhausted just writing about them, but enjoyed much of it.

Image may contain: 5 people, people smiling, people standing, hat, outdoor and closeupOne of the highlights of the month, of course, was seeing so many friends here in the Salt lake City area for our 6th, I believe, SharePoint Saturday Utah, which once again took place at the University of Utah. I presented on the topic of finding a cultural fit for collaboration, handed out a bunch of Beezy swag, and worked with my research team from BYU to interview as many attendees, speakers, and sponsors as they could. Oh, and my research effort was the official sponsor of #ShareSki at Solitude, which was a blast – despite the fact that my car was rear-ended on the way to the slopes, and then we were delayed 4 hours in getting up the canyon due to an avalanche in Big Cottonwood Canyon.  We did, however, make it up the canyon, and I was reminded of how long it has been since I have skied, and how skiing works out muscles that don’t get much exercise when sitting at a desk all day.

While the event was smaller than past years, we still had an enthusiastic crowd and a great slate of speakers, and I thoroughly enjoyed the event. The organizing committee is already talking about what we can do better next year, and draw in a larger crowd.

image

As for content, here’s my list of public activities:  

The big push, as mentioned above, was the launch of the Hybrid SharePoint research project, which is being sponsored by Microsoft, PixelMill, B&R Business Solutions, Crow Canyon Systems, Rencore, Focal Point Solutions, tyGraph, AvePoint, Redmond Magazine, BZ Media, the European SharePoint Conference, and fiftyfiveandfive. We still have two Silver sponsorships available, f your company would like to get involved. Drop me an email and I’ll be happy to send out a prospectus. You can read more about it on the press release below.

I also launched a new CollabTalk website….sort of. Actually, I had problems with a WordPress template, ended up scrapping the whole thing, and then went live with a stub site which servers its purpose, but is not going to win any design awards. I’m working on an entirely new template, sticking with 99% out of the box functionality, and planning to release the site on April 3rd while I am at SPTechcon Austin AND will be refreshing my personal blog layout, as well. But I also want to thank my new blog sponsors over at buckleyPLANET.com: Exclaimer, tyGraph, and Colours

The other major activity took place on the 28th – the monthly CollabTalk tweetjam, which was based on a blog post over on the tyGraph website, regarding the organizational impact of Office 365 Groups. The Storify summary went up today, but here is what was produced in Feb:

I put together a couple Beezy webinars this past month, the first based on a recently completed eBook on 10 Tips for Collaboration Success – which should not to be confused with the Measure Collab Success initiative, which was discussed in a separate webinar with myself, Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield) and John White (@diverdown1964):

And here are a couple of the links from my travels:

Back in January, I also worked with the team at fiftyfiveandfive in London to produce an eBook on a topic that I am very passionate about: building your social capital. It is a key aspect of building your brand in this digital era, and a worthy read:

As always, I wrote a number of articles on various aspects of collaboration, beginning with what has been a very successful article on CMSWire with my thoughts on what it takes to develop a Digital Workplace. This content was largely pulled from a whitepaper that I finished off earlier this week for Beezy on the topic, and which is going through the editing process now, and I hope to see published within the next couple weeks;

And then somehow, these odds and ends found their way into existence, as well:

And finally, I am preparing to ship off my first newsletter in 5 or 6 years, and so I’ve been pushing my simple little subscription for to anyone who will listen. If you have not yet subscribed, please do so.

For March, I am looking forward to remaining home….although I did have a conversation with a friend about paying a visit to the east coast later this month. I hope we can work something out, because I think the content we’ll produce will be very valuable.

Other than that potential trip, I’ll definitely be in Austin again for SPTechCon…although no road trip to Roswell, NM this year. I still haven’t recovered from last year’s road trip with Matthias, Erwin and the Rencore team, and with Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin) riding shotgun in my car. I’m telling you, there is never a reason to drive between Dallas and Roswell. it’s a whole lot of nothing. And we paid the price with Erwin’s alien abduction, but that’s a story for another time…

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.

3 Responses

  1. Tom Resing says:
    March 29, 2017 at 10:03 am

    Fine. Peer pressure to use Swarm again is noted. I’ll download it if it’s still in the App Store. đŸ˜‰

  2. Christian Buckley says:
    March 29, 2017 at 9:40 am

    You are welcome. But are you going to allow Kashman to remain the Mayor of the Swarm check-in? Seems to me he is out of the country, and there’s nothing to stop you from stealing it away…

  3. Tom Resing says:
    March 29, 2017 at 9:38 am

    Hey Christian,
    Thanks for lending the #ShareQuilt to the OneDrive and SharePoint product team for display in Building 35’s lobby. It’s a great addition!
    Tom