Victus pro Scientia Opus -- Food for the Knowledge Worker

MEC-ing Towards Ecstasy

This week, I had fun (don't tell my bosses, but I get paid for this) facilitating a series of hands-on workshops for clients and prospects.  They are jointly sponsored by Microsoft and partners like my firm, and are designed to give attendees a hands-on experience with the latest wave of Microsoft technologies. 

They were once called the Customer Immersion Experience (this Catholic-school boy can't help but to arch an eyebrow at THAT baptism metaphor), and are now called the MEC, or Microsoft Experience Center.  There are multiple editions and versions of the MEC, but this one features the newest version of Office, Office 365.

I have attended and delivered many of these sessions, and find them useful to our clients for a variety of reasons:

1.  They are business-oriented.  The content is directed toward business users,  not developers or IT professionals.  These are people who apply technology to solve business problems, not whose job it is to manage IT.  The content is more oriented toward business productivity than platform optimization.

2.  They are experiential.  Attendees get assigned a role in a "day in the life" script that shows how Microsoft technologies are used on a day-to-day basis by knowledge workers. There is also enough slack built into the sessions' schedule to allow attendees to play, experiment, and explore scenarios that are of particular relevance to them.  In so doing, attendees learn not only about how Microsoft technologies enable them to work differently, they can also learn about the limitations of these solutions as well.

3.  They are hands-on.  Microsoft ships ten laptops (pretty kickass Lenovo Yoga touch-enabled convertible tablets)  and ten headsets for integrated voice and video communications, and we build time into the day for experimentation, learning and play with new apps, capabilities, and devices.  This also includes showing how other devices like Surface tablets and other mobile devices like iPads use the  technologies we're using.

4.  They are turnkey.  The original edition of CIE/MEC required that customers come to a Microsoft Technology Center to attend a MEC session. In generation 2, the Mobile MEC, Microsoft had to ship computers and voice endpoints along with powerful servers capable of running virtual instances of all the required server technologies:  a domain controller, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, etc.  In the same way that computing pioneers look at ENIAC, then their smartphones, and shake their head, I do the same now that the server-side work can all be provisioned and run in Microsoft's cloud.  We can provision and manage full-featured environments (with data populated) in about 24 hours for the new Office 365 MEC, without shipping servers around.

All in all, if you're considering making an investment in Microsoft technologies or seeking better return on what you already own, the hands-on workshops and MEC scenarios are a great way to see how your knowledge workers can improve their productivity and save money via the latest Microsoft has to offer.

 

SharePoint Saturday Rhode Island Recap

I was honored to be selected to present at this weekend's (inaugural) SharePoint Saturday Rhode Island.  Organizers Jason Himmelstein, Chris McNulty, and Josh Cliff did yeoman's work in making it happen, the sponsors stepped up to fund it, and the speakers turned out and delivered a phenomenal day's worth of the best free SharePoint training.  Best of all, over 100 attendees came out, learned, and were active participants in the discussions.

Special thanks go out to the host venue, New Horizons Rhode Island, for graciously "lending" us their facility for this event, and to all of the new speakers (including my colleague John Mongell) who shared their stories, experiences, triumphs, and tribulations with us.

In the morning, I presented a session on SharePoint as a component of a more broadly integrated collaboration strategy (including voice, video, e-mail, etc.).  It was based on some ideas I hatched after reading Nancy Settle-Murphy's excellent book:  "Managing Effective Virtual Teams."  As promised, the slide deck is here:

I also promised to drop some basic templates for integrated communication/collaboration plans into my SkyDrive, and they can be found here, although they are much better when in the overall context of the book.

In the afternoon, I presented a closing session about how to go back to your boss, your project sponsor, your CFO, etc. and get funding for all the cool SharePoint projects you learned about at SharePoint Saturday.  The organizers told me to make it quick and fun, TED-talk style, and the energy was great in the room, so I hope it worked out. The deck is here:

SPSRI - how do i get this funded closing final from Mike Gilronan

and I think that this video captures the premise (not premises, more on that in a future post) of the discussion, even if it was a competitor to Microsoft who originally created it:

All in all, this was a great event with great flow of ideas from a great community.  Thanks to all who made it happen!

SharePoint Saturday Philly -- Recap and Presentation

I had an absolute blast presenting "A Decade of SharePoint Adoption Strategies" at SharePoint Saturday Philly this past weekend.  In addition to the usual friendly, motley band of itinerant SharePoint speakers from various ISVs and consultancies, there were several hundred attendees (about 450 overall). 

As one would expect from a group of people freely giving up their Saturday to learn about SharePoint, folks were engaged and enthusiastic about the subject matter, and my session was full of questions, cross-talk, and attendees sharing their ideas, successes, and challenges.  Their participation certainly made the 75 minutes fly by, and the conversations continued into the hallway and beyond.

I'd like to send a public shout-out to Mike Mukalian, David Mann, and the rest of the organizers, to Chris McNulty, who co-authored the presentation with me when we presented it at SharePoint Saturday - The Conference (DC) last summer, and to Sentri's Jason Himmelstein, with whom I drove down and who filled my brain with many great ideas about future presentation content.

The slides are here: 

A Decade of SharePoint Adoption Best Practices

View more PowerPoint from Mike Gilronan

SharePoint Conference 2011 Recap -- Live Event

KMA was fortunate to have been able to send six people to SPC 2011 in Anaheim, CA last month, and although we've done our share of blogging and presenting about it, we're most pleased to present this week's in-person event for our clients and prospects:  a half-day recap of the conference highlights, presented by colleagues as follows:

• Amy Talhouk summarizing the best of Project Server and SharePoint
• Deanne Damato discussing what's new in InfoPath and workflows
• Karina Vatynskaya joining special guest, Microsoft's Chris Bortlik to discuss patterns and practices in SharePoint adoption
• Derek Cash-Peterson reviewing what we learned about SharePoint for external-facing (extranet and WWW) sites
• Distinguished KMA alumnus and special guest, Quest Software's Chris McNulty demonstrating new capabilities of SQL Server 2012 and PowerView (nee Denali and Crescent, respectively)

I'll be anchoring this shindig and reviewing how organizations are driving productivity via SharePoint's social capabilities. 

We look forward to delivering a crisp rendition of SPC, somehow distilling highlights from 5 days worth of content into 3.5 hours.  Buckle up -- we're gonna move fast!

Impressions of the 2011 SharePoint Conference, Part 6 (Expert Best Practices)

The second “Best Practices” type of session I attended was SPC245, “Making SharePoint 2010 Collaboration Rock by Increasing Findability” presented by Jornata’s Scott Jamison.  Although he is a principal at a competitor, he is also a top-notch presenter, and I always enjoy and get value from Scott’s presentations.

Clearly vying for the title of “Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” Scott, in his third presentation of the day, blitzed through many specific, practical tips on how to make SharePoint more usable and information more findable, including the following highlights:

• Folders (great for contributors, especially incumbents who have a general sense of where things belong via “tribal knowledge”) vs metadata (great for consumers who understand metadata, but can be tedious for contributors if they have to tag content manually).   One key “Go Do” item Scott frequently advises is to create separate user experiences (via default views) for contributors vs consumers.
• Improving search results by paying attention to how things are named (especially the critical “Title” field) and where stored (e.g., the fewer slashes in the path, the higher-ranked in search)
• Improving search results by measuring their effectiveness with out-of-the-box reports from SharePoint:  search queries that returned no results or no best bets.
• Changing default navigation in simple but effective ways like getting rid of the default left-hand navigation where it works counter to how users will find their way through a portal.

All of the techniques that Scott related were in response to common user challenges that each of us has seen “in the wild,” and they were crisply and artfully presented. 

Impressions of the 2011 SharePoint Conference, Part 4 (Microsoft Roadmaps)

A second Microsoft roadmap session I attended at last weeks’ SPC was session SPC271, David Pae’s “SharePoint 2010:  Improving Productivity with Social.”  It was actually somewhere between a roadmap session and a case study session, with examples of social computing inside Microsoft (and of course, Contoso) that illustrate where SharePoint 2010 and complementary products can foster social computing initiatives.

David Pae and colleague Paul Javid (Social Product Manager) walked us through the history of social computing, Microsoft’s Enterprise Social Strategy, some specific examples and demonstrations of social capabilities of SharePoint and other complementary Microsoft technologies.

The most noteworthy things from this session:

1. A REALLY cool demo of Lync doing real-time English-Spanish translation of an instant messaging thread – I’m dying to see more of this, and think that the Lync/SharePoint combination provides an unparalleled communications and collaboration platform.
2. A good audience question about a limitation of the “noteboard” capability in SharePoint 2010.  Out of the box, it is not possible to comment on a comment, or to “like” or rate a comment.  [This question underscored how hard the presenters’ job is in a conference where Microsoft has committed to not discuss product futures, and it’s not fair to certain ISVs to discuss/promote others. (cough:  NewsGator!)]
3. The Microsoft products NOT mentioned.  Although Microsoft does a nice job of presenting a story that incorporates SharePoint, Exchange and Lync (on-premise or in-cloud or hybrid), the following technologies with social or collaboration indications were prominently NOT mentioned: 
   1. Skype, a social and collaboration tool with a huge user base, but what feels like a lack of an enterprise integration story ready to be told by Microsoft (whether for statutory or strategic reasons)? 
   2. SharePoint Workspace – how does the offline client, a necessity to many mobile information workers, impact the social computing experience?
   3. OneNote – shared note-taking is at least as social as IM, and the syncing capabilities with SharePoint create interesting opportunities.

Overall, this session provided a solid overview of out-of-the-box social computing capabilities of SharePoint, although not too much of it would be new to our clients running SharePoint 2010.  There will be, however, some more details gleaned from customer case study sessions (still to come)...

Impressions of the 2011 SharePoint Conference, Part 3 (Microsoft Roadmaps)

I grouped sessions I wanted to attend at SPC 2011 into three waves: 

1. Overview/roadmap sessions from Microsoft about areas important to me
2. Expert “best practices” sessions
3. Customer case studies

This is the start of the first wave:   Microsoft overview/roadmap sessions.

The first session I attended Monday was SPC249, “Microsoft’s Vision and Strategy for the Future of Business Intelligence [BI],” featuring speakers Steve Tullis and Kamal Hathi.  In addition to the themes of creativity and discovery, and their clear vision about “democratization” of BI (not new, but clearer and closer than ever), the most interesting things they presented in the session were demonstrations:

1. A demo of Microsoft’s “Pivot” technology for information visualization using images.  The demo showed a sales performance dashboard mashed up with Facebook-style avatar and profile information so that salespeople’s pictures are grouped into red/yellow/green groups based on performance vs goal, and a dashboard user can “pivot” to dynamically regroup the pictures by data elements such as time, region, product line, sales manager, etc. The Pivot technologies add an element of fun to the act of discovering trends in data in a very “self-service” way.  I nevr get tired of seeing these demos, and would love to see KMA’s Mekko Graphics product mashed up with “Pivot” to incorporate rich image data into really advanced charts, like Marimekko charts, in the future.
2. A demo of report creation using “Crescent,” Microsoft’s new tool for ad hoc visual reporting that will ship with SQL Reporting Services in the next version of SQL Server, code-named Denali.  Easy “drag and drop” reporting and time series animations were some of the highlights of this demo.

Steve and Kamal also presented a final illustration of their vision of “democratization” of BI by likening it to slides:

When we more, ahem, “senior” folks needed presentation slides years ago, there was a whole complicated process around creation of artwork, sending them out to professional preparers, and use of specialized equipment such as carousel projectors to show them.  Creation of slide decks has now been simplified enough by products like PowerPoint that most 9 year-olds would have no problem creating a slide deck for a school project.  This is Microsoft’s vision for business intelligence:  rather than having to submit requests to the “report Gods” on high with access to the data warehouse and specialized tools, users are being empowered to work with large data sets themselves, create models and reports quickly and easily, slice and dice the data, and to play with the data to see what they can learn. 

If the business intelligence tools Microsoft is putting out there live up to their promise of insight through promoting play, fun, and discovery, I’m really excited about what business users are going to be able to do with them in the future.

Impressions of the 2011 SharePoint Conference, Part 1 (Monday Keynotes)

This week, I was fortunate to attend Microsoft's SharePoint Conference (SPC) in Anaheim, CA, and to meet and learn from some of the most talented SharePoint people in the world.  I’m summarizing some key take-aways from the conference via a series of blog articles.

The conference opened with keynotes by Microsoft’s Jared Spataro, Jeff Teper, and Kurt  Del Bene. There were approximately 7,500 users in attendance, many of them passionate advocates for SharePoint.   

 
Perhaps I’ve been jaded by 5 Worldwide Partner Conferences and other events such as Convergence and past SharePoint Conferences, but I wake up early to get to keynotes in order to hear the words “We are pleased to announce…” followed by a momentous announcement.  As Microsoft was disinclined to discuss the next version of Office and SharePoint, there were few momentous announcements in the keynotes, and most attendees I spoke to said the same. 

These keynotes were generally celebratory in tone, including such data points as:

• 125 million licenses of SharePoint in use at over 65,000 customers
• 67% of all enterprise customers have rolled out SharePoint to everyone in their enterprise

For me, the highlight of the keynote, however, was a demo of the failover capabilities of the newest version of SQL Server, code-named “Denali,” which entailed a helpful assistant taking down a server (literally unplugging the network cable from a giant rack of servers/storage on-stage, pictured here with my colleague Deanne), then watching an enormous SharePoint 2010 content database running on Denali under an enormous workload (7,500 concurrent users, a 14 TB content database, 107 million records in search results) recover from this total failover in about 40 seconds – a remarkable feat of high availability.

The rest of the keynote was organized around three main themes:

Re-defining collaboration:  It’s not too hard to argue that the prevalence of SharePoint in many organizations has changed the way workers collaborate over the last ten years, and a nod was given to the future in the form of a discussion about self-service business intelligence redefining and democratizing BI in the same way (data in SQL, presentation via SharePoint, analysis in Excel).

A rich ecosystem:  The explosion of SharePoint adoption has been a boon to many system integrator and ISV partners, as well as to Microsoft.  Given that, if SharePoint were its own company, it would still be one of the 50 largest software companies in the world, and the heuristic that each dollar of SharePoint licensing generally begets $8-10 in services revenue, it is no small wonder that the shortage of SharePoint talent is top of mind for every SharePoint partner I spoke to.

An end-to-end platform:  Microsoft has continually improved their story about both host (on-premises, hybrid, third-party host, or Microsoft cloud) and client (PC, tablet, phone) options for SharePoint.

No jaw-dropping product announcements, just good solid “blocking and tackling” for a mature, enterprise-class platform which, perhaps, is what Microsoft wanted us to take away.

Other announcements of note:

• The next (due Q4, CY2011, if I heard correctly) version of Office 365 will support read/write integration with external data sources using Business Connectivity Services 
• A new, elite-level SharePoint certification:  Microsoft Certified Architect
• A great template from Microsoft’s Visio team documenting a SharePoint farm topology automatically, with gorgeous Visio-based graphics. 

 

Semantic Taint: Don’t Talk About SharePoint!

I'm reading a GREAT book that's a compilation of articles from the acclaimed journal for word lovers called "Verbatim," (note: link is to the mostly defunct web site) and am really enjoying the linguistic gymnastics that skilled writers have created for my entertainment. 

The latest article I read appears to have been originally published (per this blog) in 1986, and it introduces me to the term "semantic taint." 

Semantic taint is the phenomenon of a word inheriting a "distinctive coloring" (usually negative, sometimes scatalogical or sexual) due to its association with other words.  Some examples include:

• appeasement (forever associated with Munich, and not in a good way)
• diaphragm (there's a great Steve Martin bit about this that I'll leave it to you to find)
• erection (for my friends in construction, of course), etc.

I think that the word "SharePoint" is a dangerous word to use when talking about and building support among business stakeholders for a new collaboration toolset, intranet, extranet, portal, knowledge management system, or digital workplace.  It could either be a foreign, techie-sounding word, or could evoke a technology project from days/years past (hint:  most of these fail -- you know this, right?). Now, SharePoint is a wonderful set of technologies, blessed with phenomenal adoption, a great partner ecosystem, and one of the absolute dominant players in the software world behind it.  It, in many cases, is inevitable.  But, if you are defining your project in terms if SharePoint, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

As many of the speakers discussed at this week's Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, start with the business value ("we will create and publish content more efficiently," "we will build a workspace where we can collaborate on documents and other content with our partners," etc.), decide on a platform, and CALL IT SOMETHING ELSE.

“Our SharePoint initiative” conjures images of an IT-driven technology-centric project, while most potential users of SharePoint have never heard of it, and (rightfully) will not care a whit about it unless they understand first how it will make THEIR jobs easier, and THEIR lives better. (Think:  "What's in it for me?")

This is 100-level stuff, but it's both validating (in our jobs as SharePoint consultants) and aggravating to see the same mistakes time and time again.  So, rather than “our SharePoint initiative,” or “the portal,” consider such examples as:

KMANet  -- OK, this one is not super-inventive, but at least it is about the organization, not the technology.  And, it's succinct, which is always important.

Cramerville  -- By, of, and for “creatives” at a top interactive agency, and those who support them.  Great name for a family-owned business with a strong sense of community and great internal brand.

Shmoogle  -- Perhaps not the most Microsoft-friendly, but it’s about the client, not the software, and it evokes a place to go to learn/know everything about the organization and they, a Jewish philanthropic organization, got a kick out of it.

Better yet, make it your choice of business-relevant, user-selected, and fun/memorable title.  Some great resources on this topic are:

• Microsoft's SharePoint 2010 Adoption Best Practices White Paper,
• The Nielsen Norman Group's annual report on best intranets
• The Intranet Benchmarking Forum
• Your local SharePoint Saturday, in the end-user track.

If all else fails, remember the first rule of Fight Club (hover over link if you don't remember)!

Tip of the Week: Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax

I have espoused David Weinberger's views and approach to storing information for quite some time ("Everything is Miscellaneous"), and as I get more used to Windows 7 and Office 2010, I'm finding that I'm using metadata and searching more than ever to quickly find content stored on the web, my organization's network, and my own computer.

I recently came across an excellent article from Microsoft about Advanced Query Syntax.  It captured my interest, and I expect to use it frequently to make my search queries more precise in the future.

The article contains query syntax to limit results by:

• common file properties (e.g., author)
• date ranges
• file size
• data store
• assorted file types (contacts, e-mails, calendar entries, documents, media)

So if I want to find, for example:

• PowerPoint presentations
• longer than 20 slides
• stored as attachments to my last week's e-mail messages,

I could use Windows Search, right from the "Start" button, to enter:

"store:mapi isattachment:true modified:lastweek slides:>20"

and get those precise results (see below). 

This precision will save me so much time that this article, for me, achieves "print-worthy" status, and will be tacked to my office wall for frequent reference.  I hope you find it similarly useful.