buckleyPLANET

RTM of my first SharePoint book

We’re days away from the general availability of my 4th book, but the first I’ve done around SharePoint technology. Funny that my 3rd book on Rational Software technology was published a couple months into my start as a Microsoft employee in 2006, and it has taken me this long to work on another book. Why so long? For those who know my exploits, I publish 4-6 articles a week across various sites. So writing a book on SharePoint should have been a no-brainer, right? Something odd happens when a book proposal has been accepted, and a project plan agreed to by its authors – your workload quadruples, and all of it the highest urgency.

Thankfully I embarked on this project with some friends from the community who were supportive and easy to work with. The entire project was spearheaded by Jennifer Mason, who brought together myself, Wes Preston, and Brian Jackett. The idea was fairly simple: create a book that walked through, step-by-step, a number of no-code solutions that anyone could build to help them more quickly get value out of the platform. Each chapter follows the same template, walking you through the business analyst perspective to help you understand the scope and scale of what you are trying to build, and to help you involve all those who should have a voice in the process. The book also points out differences in SharePoint 2010 versions, so you know what is possible in Foundation vs Standard vs Enterprise vs Office365.

Here are the solutions we covered:

Chapter 1: Building a Project Management Solution

Chapter 2: Building a Training Registration Management System

Chapter 3: Building a Basic FAQ Solution

Chapter 4: Building a Learning Center

Chapter 5: Building a Help Desk Solution

Chapter 6: Building a Remote Teams Activity Site

Chapter 7: Building a Team Blog Platform

Chapter 8: Building a RFP Response Solution

Chapter 9: Building a Contact Management Solution

Chapter 10: Building a Resource Scheduling Solution

This book really will be a desktop reference for anyone trying to learn to master SharePoint. It was written for power users – people who understand the basics of SharePoint, and have the right permission level to build some solutions.

For those interested in buying a copy now, you can order an electronic “rough cut” version here, or pre-order a copy to be shipped in mid-March.

The Wave15 SharePoint Adoption Lifecycle

There are tremors being felt across Redmond, Washington.

As we prepare this year for major releases from the Microsoft Windows, Office, and SharePoint teams, waves of partners, customers, and employees from the various regions are beginning to converge on Redmond to learn more on what is coming. It's a fairly exciting time to be on campus, even as a non-employee.

Sorry, nothing to share as far as deep product insights about vNext here. As a perennial "marketing guy surrounded by engineers" who works for a Gold ISV partner and is now a SharePoint Server MVP, you'd expect some details on what is coming. Unfortunately, I am tightly bound by NDA to keep my mouth shut on what I do know. What I offer here is some perspective on how to approach this upcoming version.

My advice is fairly high-level: Keep a cool head, and focus on what you need to manage and grow your business. There is so much wrapped up into that one statement, and yet it is the best advice I can give. Everyone wants to be on the cutting edge of new technology. It's where all the hip kids play. But from a practical standpoint, the costs of being on the edge are high -- both in financial impact to your bottom line, and in potential productivity hits to your employees. Many companies run towards the new, shiny features with glee, only to quickly find themselves bogged down in the reality of upgrades, migrations, and re-mapping of architecture to fit the "new model." This is not a SharePoint thing - it's true for all enterprise applications.

When is it the right time to begin thinking about vNext, you ask? Good question. Depends largely on your business need (is the current platform just not providing the capabilities you require?), resource availability (do you even have the people to make the move?), and a clear picture of what needs to happen (what are you actually trying to accomplish?).

So, in my post that doesn't shed any light on new features, and which is in no way a reflection on what is coming, I thought I'd share some sound planning advice on when to consider moving to vNext. In all cases, do your homework. I am a HUGE advocate for building out your business case and understanding the business value of the bleeding edge.

1. You're on MOSS2007 and looking to leapfrog versions, build for the long-term.
   In all likelihood, its going to be a major shift between these versions. Honestly, the SharePoint maturity of an organization that has remained on the 2007 platform for so long may find it difficult to make the shift to 2015 (not sure that's what it'll be called, but referring to the Wave15 releases of Windows, Office, and SharePoint). It's not just technology you're swapping out, but fundamental differences in how people interact with the platform. Your organization may benefit from a graduated plan, moving to 2010 first and considering a later entrance into 2015. Then again, this leap could be a differentiator, and a rapid way to plug your organization into new tools and processes. Just be sure to have a plan, as mainstream support ends October 9th, 2012 for MOSS and April 10th, 2012 for WSS 3.0.
   
2. You're still on SPS2003 (or 2001, gasp!) and looking to catch up….with a vengeance.
   If you're still holding onto 2003, my advice above applies even more. I think you need to baby step it, and consider moving from 2003 to 2010 before even considering 2015. Thankfully there are tools that can help you do this with minimal risk. Oh, by the way, mainstream support ended January 13th, 2009, and extended support ends January 14th 2014.
   
3. You are stretching the boundaries of what SP2010 can do.
   Be careful with this one -- don't get sold on the marketing buzz of the next new thing until you fully understand the impacts of moving. While Microsoft does a fairly good job of mapping out the good, better, best between versions and doing some mapping between platforms (in fact, they have a doc called Good, Better, Best that maps key features between versions), you may be trading in your old problems (and platform limitations) for a whole new set of problems (and platform limitations).

Wow. Reading this back, I sound like such a downer. I'm basically telling people "don't upgrade." But not really. Just be smart about it. I run into far too many folks -- even so-called SharePoint experts -- who learned the hard way that SharePoint is much better consumed after going through a detailed planning and analysis phase. The more you can front-load your effort, the better, since the longer it takes to solve a problem, the higher the costs.

Now, completely ignore all of this and go crazy. Some of us want to learn from your mistakes :-)

SharePoint’s Circle of Life

When I joined Microsoft in 2006, it was at the tail-end of SPS2003, and organizations were preparing to make the move to MOSS2007. My team (which changed from MMS to BPOS-Dedicated to what is now Office365-D) was responsible for migrating internal Microsoft environments to the new platform, as well as building out a hosted platform for external customers. What was interesting about joining the company at that time was seeing the change in focus around content and community interest. In early 2007, I presented a session at the Microsoft internal conference TechReady4 with teammate Joel Oleson on the importance of governance.

And then MOSS2007 was released, and all chatter about governance, planning, and common sense was pushed to the back burner, replaced by the shiny new bells and whistles of new 2007 features and functionality. Suddenly, every expert was talking about “what” and nobody was talking about “why.”

In late 2009, I joined small SharePoint ISV echoTechnology (now part of Axceler), and started again writing about what I know: deployment, planning, strategy, and the importance of governance. Leading into the release of SP2010, the dialog within the community was clearly shifting toward the business value topics, and the need for alignment between corporate and platform governance.

And then 2010 reached RTM, and we were back swimming in feature-based content.

Clearly, there’s a pattern here. Of course there will be an emphasis on features after each new release, because people want to know what is new, how these new and updated features work, and want to get the most value of of their SharePoint investments. But it’s unfortunate that some of the common sense around planning and governance seems to get lost with each cycle of renewal.

Of course, I do think the cycle has shortened this time around. Both Microsoft and the expert community were much quicker in moving from pure technology conversations back to business drivers. The difference, I believe, is the shift within Microsoft away from a focus purely on net-new product licenses toward adoption of existing licenses. One of the reasons SharePoint grew so quickly was because the free version (WSS, now Foundation) was bundled with so many SKUs. Purchase any Windows server license, and SharePoint came with it. It was the equivalent of getting a free box of Gobstoppers with every popcorn/drink combo at the movie theater.

Most organizations had the platform, but a huge portion of those licenses were going unused. And while I was on the MMS/BPOS team, my impression was that my management chain couldn’t really care less about this metric. But that has changed. Product and service management teams now have metrics that tie directly to user adoption, which is a good thing for Microsoft (think license renewals) and for customers (more of a focus on productivity). Case in point: the last SharePoint Conference, held in Los Angeles, had no new product announcements (except for a really cool Denali demo). The theme? Productivity Delivered. And it was an excellent conference.

My point here is that we’re coming up on a new SharePoint release, and we will most definitely will go through this cycle again. Scan the various SharePoint portals and aggregate news sites today and you’ll see plenty of business-centric content about SharePoint (as well as solution-centric content, which seeks to apply feature-based information to business content). Very soon it will all shift to the new bells and whistles. It’s all part of the SharePoint circle of life.

What should you do? Be patient. Ask your partners and vendors to help you understand the business value of the new features. I suspect the cycle will be even shorter, because the maturity of the product and the needs of customers will demand it. Just my two cents.

Q1 is Ramping Up

After a massive 2011 Q4 travel schedule followed by two weeks of vacation (I don’t think I’ve taken that long of a vacation in 10+ years), the year has been relatively quiet. After a great SharePoint Saturday event in Virginia Beach, I spent a week in Boston with the entire Axceler North American and Asia Pacific sales organizations, sharing with them a snapshot of evangelism activities in 2011 and our strategy for 2012. It was a great event, and I left feeling extremely energized, and ready for SharePoint Saturday Austin.

And then Seattle experienced “Snowpocalypse 2012” and I found myself working from home for a week while Puget Sound authorities debated the evils of throwing salt on the roads (it kills salmon, you know) or maybe investing in some snow removal equipment (just not a priority). That debate will rage on, and in the meantime Seattle residents will need to fend for themselves if snow reappears.

It seems strange to go from seventeen SharePoint Saturdays in 2011 to only two in Q1….and I couldn’t even get to the Austin event due to SeaTac’s inability to deal with a couple inches of snow. But I’ve been keeping busy. I have some big writing projects coming up over the next couple months, and some large events. Here’s where I’ll be in the remaining weeks of Q1:

• San Fernando Valley SharePoint User Group (#SFVSPUG) was last night (2/8). I presented “The Connection Between Metadata, Social Tools, and Personal Productivity.” A version of my slides are here, and you can register to attend future SFVSPUG meetings here.
• IAMCP Seattle chapter meeting on Thursday, Feb 16th. This month we’ll be doing a speed networking event as a way to better get to know each other, and introduce the board members to the community. Event registration is here. I’m planning to stick around the Civica Building in Bellevue to join the Puget Sound SharePoint User Group later that evening.
• Office365 Saturday Redmond (#o365redmond), Saturday Feb 25th. Chris Beckett and I are organizing this event, with Steven Fowler, Owen Allen, Erica Toelle, Carsten Winsnes, and Leroy Collinwood rounding out the committee. We’re taking a page from the SharePoint Saturday playbook with a day of Office365 content around SharePoint, Lync and Exchange. I am also participating in an “Ask the Experts” panel on planning, strategy, and governance which should be very insightful. The event website is here, and registration is here.
• SPTechCon San Francisco. I’m flying down to SFO Sunday afternoon, attending an O’Reilly party that night, and then flying out late Monday night. I have two main sessions during the day, and am doing a “lightning talk” Monday night which should not be missed. My regular sessions include “Mastering SharePoint Migration Planning” and the popular “Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do.” Axceler is also hosting “the” party at SPTechCon, called SharePoint Nomikai. Register for SPTechCon here, and for the Nomikai party here
• MVP Summit runs all week, which is why I am leaving SPTechCon so early. It’s unfortunate that these two events overlap, as SPTechCon is one of the best conference out there. As this is my first summit as a newly minted SharePoint MVP, I am looking forward to spending some quality time with the product team and with my fellow MVPs from around the world.
• Australia SharePoint Conference (#AUSPC).takes place March 20th and 21st in Melbourne, Australia. I am heading down under that weekend, arriving Monday the 19th in time to participate in some customer meetings followed by the speaker dinner. Axceler is sponsoring the event, and we’ll have a booth, so please come say hello. My session will be a new version of “The Connection Between Metadata, Social Tools, and Personal Productivity.”  You can register for the event here.
• Following AUSPC, I am heading to Perth for a couple days of Microsoft, customer and partner meetings, and plan to organize a SharePint  on Friday, March 23rd. I’ll be tweeting details from the road.
• New Zealand SharePoint Conference (#NZSPC) takes place March 28th and 29th in Auckland. I’ll be repeating my session from Australia, but I’ll be adding a few unique items. Register for the event here.

While this may seem like a lot of activity to some, to me it feels like a calm before the storm. Q2 will once again be insane. The extra time at home is allowing me to work on several key pieces of content coming out before the end of the quarter, as well as more time working with the extended Axceler team to better connect with the SharePoint community and our customers and partners.Add to all that my regular posts to the Axceler blog, AIIM.org, CMSWire, and other portals, it’s a full docket. We had an amazing 2011, but we’re looking forward to an even better 2012.

Where do you begin with SharePoint?

Whether you’ve just unwrapped the Christmas packaging off your shiny new SharePoint 2010 deployment, you’ve downloaded a trial version, or maybe SharePoint has been in place for a couple years but not really utilized and you’re trying to build a business case for a much broader deployment. Where to begin? I’ll tell you one place not to begin – Human Resources.

I’m not trying to beat up on HR, but it seems that every organization, when deploying SharePoint for the first time and thinking about building a business case, seems to focus in on some of the most common HR activities, such as automating expense reports, or maybe vacation requests. My money says that this is exactly where most of you started. And that’s fine when you’re learning the platform, doing a proof of concept, or experimenting with workflows. But don’t go that route and expect to wow anyone.

You might get some attention, get SharePoint approved. Inevitably, the vanilla version of SharePoint (the out of the box experience) is deployed, initial focus is spent on building your HR solutions, and life gets underway. Jump forward 3 months, and people have associated SharePoint with your non-business critical HR solutions. They lose interest. People will look at SharePoint as a bloated, wasted effort that automates HR stuff. And then management turns back to look at you, at the lost time, at the lost productivity.

HR is not the point here. My point is a focus on solutions that don’t mean much to the overall business….at least right now, in the early stages. Your strategy should be to focus on those areas that will drive value to the business first. Quickly routing expense reports, while wonderful to your accounting team, is not adding tremendous value to your business. Email will work fine for a few more weeks while you focus elsewhere. SharePoint deployments should (like everything else) follow the 80/20 rule: focus your efforts and deliver functionality to the 20% of your organization who will be doing 80% of the workload in SharePoint. Find those teams that **need** productivity solutions, and build to their requirements first.

A funny thing happens when you deliver to the needs of the smaller group of end users, that 20% of users who actually need SharePoint – they’ll become the platform’s strongest advocates, and do more for end user adoption for the other 80% than anything in your bag of tricks. But your management will need to see the numbers. Track the KPIs around their performance increases, measure it, report on it, and demonstrate ROI back to your executive team. From there, with that success in hand, you can think about building out broader solutions that will improve life for the other 80%. Like a vacation request form. Or an automated birthday reminder.

Ooh, I can feel the productivity bubbling up now….

Waking Up MVP

On Sunday, I joined the ranks of a very talented and passionate field of experts as a SharePoint Server MVP, and am very grateful to Microsoft, my team at Axceler, and the many members of the community for making this all possible.

It’s the influence of amazing people like Joel Oleson, Mike Watson, Bill Baer, Todd Baginski, Ben Curry, Ivan Sanders, Susan Lennon, Michael Lotter, Eric Harlan, Becky Isserman, Jason Himmelstein, Geoff Varosky, Mark Miller, Chris McNulty, Inna Gordin, Virgil Carroll, Christina Wheeler, Chris Beckett, Owen Allen, Fabian Williams, Jeff Shuey, and so many others that make this community so vibrant and exciting, and inspire me regularly to keep going, to keep doing what I do.

As some of you know, I had my first real experience with SharePoint back in 2005 when, as an independent consultant, I deployed WSS and attempted to get Project Server up and running at a customer site. While Project Server was problematic back in the day, SharePoint stuck (and is now widely deployed at the company) and got me interested enough to investigate opportunities working for Microsoft. Thanks to help from Joel Oleson,I found my first job at Microsoft, where we shared an office for a couple months before he wandered off to work on the product team.

It’s been an interesting ride at times, but very exciting to be a part of this space.

I have been thinking about what to write since Sunday. I thought about writing something outlining what an MVP means, what people can do to achieve it, yada yada. But that’s been done. However, there have been a few blog posts this week with people questioning the value of the MVP designation.

My position is simple, and aligns very closely with what internal Microsoft employees are told all the time: you own your career. You are responsible for getting value out of the MVP designation. It is not handed to you with a user’s manual. Microsoft has set up the framework, provides tools and access and recognition – but you have to do something with it.

I love the joke about the man who wanted to win the lottery, so he prayed every day that he would pick the winning numbers. Every day he prayed, and yet every day – nothing. Finally, he died and met St. Peter at the gates, and remarked “All I wanted was to win the lottery, just the once” to which St. peter replied “You never bought a lottery ticket.”

I hope to make the most of this. Thanks again, Microsoft.

How Do You Define Full-Fidelity Migrations?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Axceler, through its acquisition of echoTechnology in early 2010, has been migrating Nintex Workflows since the MOSS 2007 platform. Echo was known within the industry for our comprehensive support for Nintex. We have a long history together, going back to the founding of the two companies. In fact, almost every migration demo we provide showcases a Nintex workflow migration.

Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010 doesn’t just move some aspects of Nintex workflows – we move everything. And we’re the only company that does it. When we say “full-fidelity,” we mean it. We move the Nintex web parts. We move the Nintex workflow definitions and versions. We move the Nintex workflow history and tasks. We move the Nintex constants and variables. We move the Nintex message templates and settings. We fully support all 120 Nintex activities. And we fully support all 22 Nintex workflow templates.

Our competitors would love to make these claims. But they can’t.

And that’s not the only unique functionality within Davinci. We offer a robust query and reporting interface unlike any other competitive offering, allowing you to understand what is in your environment, and how best to plan your migration.  And we also provide pre-migration analysis, identifying potential issues (such as sites with uncompleted Nintex workflow activities) before you migrate. It is simply the most granular and powerful migration tool on the market.

If you’ve not yet seen a demo, it’s time you took a look at Davinci Migrator from Axceler (datasheet here, schedule a demo here).

From SPSUtah to SPSSouthFla

I am amazed at how quickly this year has flown by. This time last year I was doing multiple demos each day of our newly launched migration platform (Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010) and getting ready to launch  handful of videos as part of a new interview series with SharePoint experts and MVPs from around the world called The One Thing. As of this weekend, the total count of videos created for this series is 135, which could grow by a couple more before I disappear for 2 weeks for a much needed family vacation of Christmas.

Also central to my 2011 plans was participation in (and organization of) a number of SharePoint Saturday community events. My goal at the beginning of the year was to host a couple, and to present at another 7 or 8. With SharePoint Saturday Utah taking place in Sandy Utah on December 3rd, the number of events I helped coordinate this year was 5 (including Los Angeles, Redmond WA, Sacramento, and Bend OR). And with SharePoint Saturday South Florida this past weekend, taking place in Ft. Lauderdale FL, I have presented at 17 SharePoint Saturday events this year. Yes, I know that is insane. I didn’t set out to reach that marker, and I don’t “plan” to equal it in 2012. but in my role as Evangelist at Axceler – and with my passion for pulling together community events – it just worked out to be a busy year of SPS activity.

SPSUTAH was an opportunity to yet again break new ground as I have helped do in Los Angeles, San Francisco East Bay, Sacramento, and Bend, and expand the SPS brand across the western US. And it was an opportunity to work with my good friend Joel Oleson and the Utah SPUG President, Josef Nielsen, to bring more SharePoint to the Wasatch front (Salt Lake and Utah counties). We found an excellent venue in the Salt Lake City community College Miller Conference Center in Sandy, and had a very energetic roster of speakers, with SharePoint MVP Liam Cleary from SusQTech (Washington DC) as our keynote. I presented my session 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations, and worked with Joel and Josef, and many speakers and volunteers to pull together a #ShareSki event at Solitude, a fabulous speaker dinner (with massive quantities of Brazilian BBQ), and #SharePint after the event. Everyone pitched in to keep registration moving, and attendees engaged. The sponsor support was overwhelming, with a couple last minute adds allowing us to take a second trip to the store to purchase raffle prizes. We gave away 5 XBox360’s, folks, as well as flat screen TVs, video cameras, printers, and a grand prize of the first FULL season of Fresh Prince of Bel Air. That guy was ecstatic – almost as much as the UofU fan who received the BYU travel mug. To cap off the event, we took some folks on a detailed tour of the Christmas lights at Temple Square. Overall, a great inaugural event, and we’re already discussing dates for next year (and a possible 6-month rotation).

Leaving Utah, I took a red eye Sunday night to Boston to visit Axceler headquarters in Woburn, MA (#TheWoo) for a couple days before heading south to NYC to present at the SPUG on the following:

Cleaning Up Information Architecture in SharePoint and Other Jedi Mind Tricks

View more presentations from Christian Buckley

I was joined at the event by Gail Shlansky, Axceler’s Director of Product Management, and our sales team for the region, Andrew Duplin and Nick Harvey. After a day of customer visits and attempting to get some work done with a less-than-stellar hotel wi-fi connection, I made my way south again, this time to warmer climates.

SharePoint Saturday South Florida was my 3rd SharePoint event in the state (SPSTampa and DevConnections Orlando were the others), and a great way to wrap up the year of travels (although, technically, I close out the year by presenting to my local Puget Sound SPUG later this week). Many of my good friends were also presenting, and it was a very relaxed atmosphere. I presented the sessions Looking Under the Hood: How Your Metadata Strategy Impacts Everything You Do and The Connection Between Metadata, Social, and Personal Productivity and had some excellent feedback and conversations with the audience during and following my sessions. In case you weren’t aware, metadata and social are two of my favorite topics, and I can get quite animated when I present. Hopefully people got some value out of participating.

Following the event, a sizeable crowd made their way to the Hard Rock casino and the Murphy’s Law Irish Pub for SharePint before breaking off to visit a local Jamaican deli for some authentic jerk pork, chicken, and oxtail. It was fantastic (thanks to Fabian for pointing us there!).Thank you to Michael Hinckley, David Griffiths, and the rest of the organizing team for inviting me to participate and for your hospitality. Looking forward to next year’s event.

What’s on the agenda for 2012? Great question. So much opportunity, and I hope to be able to continue “seeding” these events across the west, helping identify local leaders to establish their own annual events, and lending my experience to get their inaugural events up and running. SharePoint Saturday activities on my radar so far include:

• Virginia Beach (presenting and platinum sponsor, so Axceler will be there in a big way)
• Austin (presenting and also sponsoring)
• Sacramento (scheduled for March 10th, more news on this in the next week)
• Portland (planning meeting scheduled, and we’re actively looking at venues)
• Los Angeles (date has been set, and a new location)
• Boston (I will continue to submit and attend these, as they are in Axceler’s backyard)
• Utah (we’re looking at a May date, with September as a backup)
• East Bay / Silicon Valley (planning discussions underway)
• Bend (we’re going to rinse, repeat on this. Need to set our date)
• Mexico City (this one might be big. Planning meeting scheduled later this week)
• Boise (Joel and I plan to join forces on this one)
• Redmond (dates are being discussed for both a summer SharePoint event, as well as an Office365 event earlier in the year. More news on them soon)

Other locations high on my list of priorities are Houston, UK, Vancouver, and at least one of the Florida events. I suspect 2012 will be just as busy as 2011, but I need to prioritize these events and my participation. To be honest, I’d rather focus on these events and the community rather than the large trade shows, so that may be how I balance life and travel next year. We’ll see.

Launch of the SharePoint Migration Kit

A majority of companies who built out their intranets using SharePoint 2007 have not yet fully moved to the 2010 platform, but this statistic will likely accelerate over the next 12 to 18 months. In an effort to assist SharePoint farm administrators with the details and best practices around securely and efficiently moving their 2007 9and 2003) environments to SharePoint 2010, the Axceler team has put together a collection of content, videos, and tools to help with migration planning and preparation.

If you are a SharePoint administrator looking for guidance on migrations, this free migration kit is an excellent resource to help you get started, including the new whitepaper “Five Essential Steps for mastering SharePoint Migration Planning” with sidebars from Chris McNulty (formerly with KMA, now with Quest), Ben Curry (Summit 7 Systems), Dux Raymond Sy (Innovative-e), and Mike Watson (SeriousLabz and SnapWorkSocial).

The kit includes:

• Free application: SharePoint application that scans your SharePoint 2007 environment to tell you how ready you are to upgrade to SharePoint 2010
• Video: Interview with Axceler's development team on the three main steps for effective SharePoint migration: Discovery, Planning, and Migration
• Video: SharePoint Migration tips with Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010
• Report: Five Essential Steps for Mastering SharePoint Migration Planning
• Report: Determining Your SharePoint Architecture: Centralized or Decentralized?
• Report: When and How to Include End Users in SharePoint Migration Planning
• Report: 11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migration
• Report: The Insider's Guide to Upgrading to SharePoint 2010
• Data Sheet: Overview of award-winning SharePoint migration product, Davinci
• Data Sheet: Overview of FileLoader 2010 to securely move files from folders into SharePoint

You can download the SharePoint Migration Kit here

Over the next couple weeks, I plan to record video interviews with each of the whitepaper contributors above to further explore their perspectives on what makes a successful migration. Watch for it.

SharePoint in Berlin

After a couple days of sleep, I’m just getting back up to speed following a week on the road in Germany and Belgium. After a false start at SeaTac on the 15th with a cancelled flight due to mechanical issues (never a good sign), I was able to get on a flight mid-day Sunday, arriving in Berlin mid-day Monday (after a lovely 5-hour layover in Amsterdam). This was my second time to Berlin, and my first European SharePoint Conference.

With over 700 participants at the Estrel Convention Center, the Axceler booth saw a constant stream of activity, and I found myself booting up my laptop to provide additional demos as the two main monitors were constantly busy. While I am not much of a nightlife guy, we were able to pull together a SharePint event at the AM to PM Bar and Lounge with several other vendors, and spent some quality time with members of the SharePoint community outside of the convention center. Carrie Page provided a summary on the company blog here.

My presentations from the event have been updated (with some new content and links) below:

#EuropeanSP--SharePoint's Social Media Scorecard

#EuropeanSP--11 Strategic Considerations for SharePoint Migrations

After three days in Berlin, I made my way over to Aalst, Belgium for a partner event, where I presented ‘Mastering SharePoint Migration Planning’ at CTG’s Experience Day event, spending a good portion of the day providing demos and meeting with regional Microsoft contacts and other key partners in the government, biopharm, and software sectors. The following day was spent on-site with CTG, before catching my flight (and, unfortunately, a cold) back to Seattle.

It’s good to be home, but there’s a hectic schedule ahead leading straight into the holiday season. I’m head down this week on a number of writing projects, preparing for travel to Washington DC this weekend, presenting two sessions at KMWorld’s Taxonomy Bootcamp early next week.