SharePoint Business Community Pre-Announcement and Events

by Richard Harbridge on November 3, 2010

So over the past while I have been up to quite a lot! From working with many new exciting clients, to engaging with different SharePoint Community initiatives.

The SharePoint Business Community

Shortly there should be an announcement outlining the SharePoint Business Community. This is a very big investment of energy and time from me, but after considering book authoring, event organizing, speaking and other things I was working on I think this has the best benefit for the most people. As such this is my number one personal priority for the upcoming year.

  • This new site will be announced very soon and will be replacing/merging/migrating SPDevWiki, EndUserSharePoint.com, SharePointJoel.com and many other blogs/sites!
  • The site will be made of four areas of interest: SharePoint End Users, SharePoint Developers, SharePoint Administrators/IT Pros, and the SharePoint Business Community.
  • The SharePoint Business Community will be completely vendor and partner neutral.

There are a few challenges that exist in the SharePoint world and I hope the SharePoint Business Community will help solve them all:

  • There is no single listing of all the people speaking, or contributing passionately about the non-technical business topics for SharePoint.
  • The biggest reason that SharePoint projects, implementations and solutions have failed is a result of non-technical business related challenges.
  • There is no single place for people to find SharePoint non-technical business resources, references and support for SharePoint.

There are a number of people identified that have similar interests and passions around project management, user adoption, governance, business analysis, ROI, training, support, buy in, information architecture and other business/non-technical factors of SharePoint. When I started trying to compile a list of these people I realized it would be impossible for me to discover and identify everyone. So one of the first things I will be focusing on after site release is getting a comprehensive listing of people passionate about these kinds of topics.

In the mean time feel free to let me know if you are interested, would like to author articles, or would like to help build useful resources/collateral.

Teaser:
There are a number of other really cool things that will be in this community that Business Community members and I have started planning such as a Governance site template (WSP) filled with tons of samples, and starting documents, policies, standards, and lists for managing SharePoint Governance.

So I hope you are as excited as I am and if you have more ideas let me know!

Speaking Updates (Brief)

The SharePoint events, conferences, and webinars are getting better and better. You can really see the industry maturing and the impact this has on clearer messaging, clearer communication, and better organization. I expect more specialized SharePoint conferences going forward like ones that focus on specific industries (Health, Manufacturing, Education etc) or ones that focus on targeted audiences (SharePoint Developer Conference, SharePoint Administrator Conference, Sharepoint End User Conference etc)

Some upcoming events I will be speaking at before the end of the year are:

A few of the events that I was recently at/spoke at that were wonderfully organized and extremely engaging were:

It’s just an awesome time right now in the SharePoint world.

Hope you are all doing well,
Richard Harbridge

P.S – The SharePoint Business Community is engaging all known SharePoint Business related sites, publishers, analysts, and thought leaders but to be quite honest I just can’t find all of them. So beyond sharing with people you know who are passionate please feel free to post links to sites, articles, or items of interest like SharePointGovernance.org, or specific SharePoint whitepapers like Sue and Scott’s 2010 Governance one to my blog or email me them when you have a chance so I make sure I collect/collate/or link to these from the new site.

{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Erica T November 3, 2010 at 3:23 pm

Thank you Richard for creating this much needed community! Your time is very appreciated!

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2 Richard Harbridge November 3, 2010 at 5:39 pm

Thanks Erica! You too! I really appreciate the authors who have stepped up to the plate already. Can’t wait to read your first article. 🙂

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3 Veronique Palmer November 3, 2010 at 5:05 pm

I can’t wait to see it!!!! Going to send it to all my clients. Good luck with the lauch.

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4 Veronique Palmer November 3, 2010 at 5:06 pm

Sorry about the spelling error, new keyboard…

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5 Richard Harbridge November 3, 2010 at 5:39 pm

Haha I can’t wait to see your contibutions, comments, and shared thoughts Veronique! 🙂

P.S – I saw you are going to Summit? Are you going to any other SharePoint NA events like the next Best Practices?

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6 Rene November 4, 2010 at 12:08 am
7 Debbie Ireland November 4, 2010 at 1:51 am

I love it! And fits well with the SPC’s we organise down under (and a little further north) – NZ, AUS, Southeast Asia, and soon to be South Africa! – where we get approximately 50% of audience that are business people – thank you!

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