April 2017 Content Wrap-Up

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Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. With a couple major projects wrapping up at the end of March, and a couple new projects starting up to replace them in April, I had expected things to calm down a bit by end of month. Apparently not. In the midst of customer projects, I also managed to launch the sparse-but-live CollabTalk.com website. Still a ton of work to do there, which I’ll whittle away at all month.

SPTechCon Austin 2017_2Of course, the biggest news of the month was the completion of the Hybrid SharePoint research project, sponsored by a few names in the ecosystem: Microsoft, PixelMill, B&R Business Solutions, AvePoint, Crow Canyon Software, Focal Point Solutions, Rencore, tyGraph, and media sponsors BZ Media, Collab365, European SharePoint/O365/Azure Conference, fiftyfiveandfive, Redmond Magazine, and ShareThePoint. The final report went live on April 17th, as promised, and the response has been really positive. If you’ve not yet had a chance to download your free copy, you can get it from any of the sponsors (I’m sure your inbox has been full) or download it at http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com

Of course, the published paper was not the end of our efforts. You’ll see a steady stream of content over the next few months, as I continue to work with several of the sponsors to review the raw data and analysis our findings. However, as for the research team, they wrapped up their findings in a final presentation down at the Tanner building at Brigham Young University, which is where the Marriott School of management is housed. The team did a fantastic job, and while one of these MBA students has graduated, and another started an internship with Microsoft (so cool!), I’ll continue to tap into the team for their thoughts and feedback on the research results in the coming weeks.

SPTechCon Austin 2017_3Other activities around this hybrid SharePoint content included a couple journalist interviews, some great support from our sponsors who have been promoted the report and sharing their own thoughts on the results, and the start of a hybrid resource page on this blog. I’m building out a page with details on any and all quality content on the topic, so watch for that in May.

In case you missed SPTechCon Austin, I also moderated a panel discussion (which was live streamed on Facebook) on the state of the Hybrid SharePoint ecosystem, with Mark Kashman (@mkashman, Microsoft), and three MVPs from some of our research sponsors, including Eric Overfield (@EricOverfield, PixelMill), D’arce Hess (@DarceHess, AvePoint), and John White (@diverdown1964, UnlimitedViz and tyGraph). Thank you again to our panel sponsor, AvePoint, for your support — and to Dave Rubinstein and team at SPTechCon for pulling it all together. Of course, I also conducted two sessions: ‘The Nuts and Bolts of Teams, Groups and Conversation as-a-Service’ and ‘Top 20 Office and Office 365 Productivity Features You Need to Know’ which you can find in the links below.

You can watch the entire panel discussion here:

 

On Monday, April 24th, I was joined by Eric Overfield for a European SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Conference webinar (@EuropeanSP or #ESPC)“SharePoint Customer Survey Results: The State of the Hybrid SharePoint Ecosystem” which is now available on-demand.

And then there was the April #CollabTalk tweetjam, also sponsored by AvePoint, which focused on “Hybrid SharePoint as a Strategy.” As always, it was a great discussion with a ton of insights coming out of it, which I’ll include in some upcoming posts — and on the new research page that I am building. Hybrid as a strategy was also the topic of a Podcast recording with AvePoint last week with myself, Rick Taylor (@slkrck), and John Peluso (@johnconnected). In fact, keep watching the twitters and AvePoint channels, as I am planning to do a few more things with them as they build up their hybrid content and focus. Very excited about what is happening there over the next few months. Once again, I’d like to thank AvePoint (@AvePoint_Inc) for sponsoring this month’s topic, and tyGraph for the amazing stats, with this last event generating 673 tweets, reaching 125,000 Twitter profiles, and creating 2.59 million impressions–all in one hour, which is pretty amazing. Of note: Questions 5 and 6 had the highest sentiment level on record since we started capturing data with tyGraph! You can check out the details (and much more than these top stats) at http://bit.ly/CollabTweets

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Speaking of tyGraph, I cannot forget that the team launched tyGraph for Groups while we were at SPTechCon Austin. If you are concerned about the proliferation of Office 365 Groups — not only how you’ll manage them, but more practically speaking, navigate the ones you keep — then you need to take a look at this new product at http://promo.tygraph.com/

Ok, as for content this past month, I am still waiting on a number of content pieces to be published by their respective owners, but there’s still much you can see from my public activities. On the broader topic of improving collaboration, I managed to publish a handful of posts:

My focus is increasingly moving toward Office 365, and especially around Groups and Teams, since that is how I now run my business. CollabTalk LLC officially went live on January 1st, and we immediately started on Teams as our primary tool — leveraging Yammer, Skype, Exchange, and yes, SharePoint, for my small but growing team. You’ll see some of that surface through the content I write, as the new features and capabilities are very much top of mind:

Not surprisingly, I created a few pieces around the Hybrid SharePoint research study, which you can download at http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com, and read about through a number of articles below — which also includes a few mentions from others:

There was also an excellent, in-depth discussion on hybrid from the team at Collab365, who were one of the media sponsors of the research:

  • Collab365 Live Show, podcast & video – Hybrid SharePoint Discussion (Collab365 Community mention) http://bit.ly/2qpP15y

There are MAJOR activities happening in May, with four road trips planned to Minneapolis, Redmond, Auckland, and Denver. I blogged about it back in March, if you’re interested. I am also launching the CollabTalk podcast, which is in production right now. There’s a bit of a backlog in content there, but it’ll soon be made available (along with the “official” CollabTalk bumper music).

So much going on this month, so keep reading for updates. And I’d like to once again thank my blog sponsors this month: Exclaimer, tyGraph, and Colours

 Exclaimer-banner-maze-400x100  TyGraph  CB Ad

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.