EndUserSharePoint.com: I will never be Joel Oleson
I know this might come as a shock to you, but I came to a very harsh realization last week in Seattle: I will never be Joel Oleson. Or Andrew Connell. Or Todd Baginski. Not even close.
Where did this clarification come from… why all of a sudden did I get stopped in my tracks and forced to reassess my SharePoint capabilities?
My purpose in going to the Seattle SharePoint Conference was two fold: pick up some solid info for End Users and meet the “Big Guys” to see what they’ve got that I haven’t. You know what they have? An extremely advanced knowledge of how SharePoint works, how to make the thing dance through gyrations with the machine, how to make things work through extending the platform.
The big brain bust happened when I tried to sit through Andrew Connell’s session on “Structured Approach to Building MOSS 2007 Publishing Sites“. The session was for an hour and fifteen minutes. After ten minutes, I said to myself “I can hang with this.” After thirty minutes I was thinking “What the hell am I doing here? Is he speaking Klingon or what?” After fifty five minutes, I was done, not even comprehending every other word. I thought I was going to get nauseous from brain overload. And the guy was only working at half speed because he was sick! Give me a friggin’ break…
I went away from that session extremely depressed. Where do I fit into this SharePoint scheme after all? Do I fit in? What do I have to offer the SharePoint community that these guys don’t already do ten fold?
I was exchanging thoughts with Paul Galvin a few days after the conference. He said something very astute: “I find it very strange that your site, with its End User focus, is in something of a minority in the sense that I really can’t think of any other end user focused site out there. Yet, there are far more end users than developers. I bet the ratio is 10,000:1!“. That’s when the bomb hit…
My place in SharePoint is not at a Joel Oleson, Andrew Connell, Todd Baginski level. They will never be pointing to my work as a potential solution for a problem. That’s not what they do. That’s not how they think.
My purpose it to help End Users, the bottom of the pyramid, get their minds around how to use this thing in their everyday work environment.
When I first started EndUserSharePoint.com, I had a clear vision. I started to lose focus when I saw people like Joel and Andrew, and how they were galvanizing the community to do very cool stuff. The problem is that their level of user is not my community!
There it was… my community is the End User. I had forgotten that. My audience is the one who doesn’t care how SharePoint works. They are only interested in how to use it, why they would use it and the things they can do to make their life more productive. It has nothing to do with code. It’s all about why and how.
When I first started working with Dr. Susan Zolla-Pazner to coordinate AIDS Vaccine Research using SharePoint, I remember her interrupting me on the first day: “I don’t care how it does what it does. Just tell me what I have to do!“
Thinking about all of this has helped clarify my direction and put me back on track. I setup a check list to run through before I posted anything else:
- Concentrate on the novice End User
- Explain why you would do something, not just how to do it
- Use simple English
I have an audience, there is no doubt about that. My web stats confirm it. The problem seems to be how to reach those new people who are just at the beginning. When someone first starts working with SharePoint, where do they turn for help? How do I become the entrance point for people beginning to use SharePoint? That’s my dilemma. I’ll be working on an answer for the next couple months.
No offense Joel, but I’m happy being myself again.
Mark
Excellent posting! I completely agree. It is so easy to get caught up in the newest, latest, most advanced. However, the people who get things done in the real world are like you. You have to take what you learn and apply it in the most useful way for the end user.
My background is web designs and programming, but I diverged for a few years into purchasing/customer service management. I learned some valuable lessons as a manager. You have to find solutions to problems that the majority can use and understand. You have to fill a business need. It helps me stay calm when I see that just because Silverlight looks cool, I have to justify why I would spend all my time on it. The question always ends up being, “How can my company benefit from this technology?”.
Thanks again for bringing me back to center,
Matt
Well said. SharePoint is a very big tent and there is room for everyone inside. We each have our area of specialization and it’s important that we focus on the value the we bring to the collective community. Keep on keeping on!
Mark,
Working with end users and trying to get them to understand and appreciate the wonders of SharePoint is a very laudable (and not easy!) goal. SharePoint development is very necessary, of course, but ultimately the end users need to be able to easily navigate SharePoint sites, find what they are looking for, and use it for their own purposes. That’s why I stress the necessity of good SharePoint branding, design, and user interface. As we can all agree, the OOTB SharePoint design is not very intuitive for most users!
Good luck and definitely keep us updated!
Carol
I agree and thanks!
I smell MVP Status? :D
Wait!! Don’t leave ….. You’re point of focusing on the “novice End User” is – in my opinon – one peg too low.
There is a cadre of “power users” or non-programmer administrators out here who DO EVERYTHING but detailed/extensive programming (that get’s sub-contracted) – and we love the front-end complexities that you address.
A lot of SMBs can only afford one person to “do it all” – (and no trips to Seattle to stand in the hallway ;); we make it work for the novice end user who doesn’t care about content types or connection libraries. We do our best to keep MOSS sustainable,scalable, and responsive to the end user — don’t leave us behind!!
Mark,
I can’t tell you the number of times in a day I will refer someone to your site for the purpose of understanding SharePoint. That is what first attracted me to the site. I can’t tell you the number of links on our internal SharePoint implementation point to your site! You definately fill a needed void. Users aren’t interested in how a piece of code is better written in this language or using this part of the object model… they want to know why it is better to upload a document to SharePoint rather than a file share, or how SharePoint can reduce the number of documents circulating as email attachments. That’s where you fit — and I’m glad you’ve endeavored to provide this resource! So, thanks for you contributions to this massive movement called SharePoint!
I’ve just stumbled accross your site because I was looking for a resource for just the audience you describe.
I have 700 end users who need help understanding sharepoint and how it can work for them and there are almost no resources to point them towards. They are a severaly under addressed audience. The too-smart guys at the SP Conferences assume it’s easily enough to understand without help and that is just not the case.
Kudo’s to you for seeing it and doing something about it – in that way you ARE a pioneer.
Melissa – First, welcome onboard. I can always use another “700″ readers!
Regarding the “too-smart” guys, let’s look at it from another perspective. Joel, Andrew, Todd and that crew have been buried in SharePoint for so long that they think of it in a different way than the entrance level user would.
As in any subject, once you have been immersed in it, you go beyond the concrete, “What is this and how do I use it”, to the more conceptual view that doesn’t necessarily need concrete examples. They think more in terms of theory and capability.
This was clarified for me in the “Made to Stick” book by Chip and Dan Heath. There is a chapter called “Concrete”. Reading that helped clarify for me the two different ways of thinking and why it is so hard for the “too-smart” guys to pull back and stop speaking “geek”.
In Joel’s defence, the sessions he delivered at the SharePoint 2008 Conference played the middle ground. He did an admirable job, not just of presenting material, but providing handout materials to help with planning a SharePoint implementation for the mid-level users.
There’s a lot more on this topic, which is probably worth a post in itself.
Thanks for participating in the discussion.
Mark
One of my favorite quotes is:
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
I like it because it shows the struggle between understanding the people you’re trying to help and understanding the thing you’re trying to help them with.
I run in the crowd of which you speak and I can say with certainty that it’s hard to understand multiple points of view, to really understand the end user.
There are plenty of folks talking about Infrastructure, WCM, Development, and Workflow… feel free to make it all useful with the end user.
I tried doing that with “The SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide for End Users” — but there’s a ton more work to be done.
Robert – I’ve been meaning to do a review of your book. It looks exactly like what should be sitting on every End User’s desk. I’ll see if I can get it downloaded by the end of the week. I’m in New Hampshire teaching next week so I should have some time in the evenings to give it a good look.
For those of you who haven’t seen, Robert’s book “The SharePoint Shepherd’s Guide for End Users” is available at Lulu.com. Should definitely be worth checking out.
This is a very interesting dilemma I also struggled with. My audience was ideally supposed to be IT Management and business decision makers. Therefore I try and focus on governance, ROI, process improvement, etc.
But it’s hard – so often you will hit a technical problem, half explained or poorly explained by programming oriented blogs. So I end up doing x part epic’s to try and cater for that more broad audience.
Let me tell you, that is tough, and sometimes my fingers hurt from typing so much :-)
Mark
As plenty of other posters have seemed to indicate, I think the concept of what you’re doing is fabulous, and that you’re pointing it at the novice- or beginner- or mid-level SharePoint user is excellent.
As a SharePoint consulting company, we always look for ways to educate our new clients – especially the ones very very new to SharePoint. There is an OVERLOAD of information out there, and it is very hard sometimes to dig through tens of RSS feeds looking for just that right tidbit of info to pass on.
For example, I actually got this link from SharePoint Buzz, and now I’m going to really dig through this site and start recommending these posts to those I think can use it. I’m a custom developer, but we interface very closely with clients – we NEED to NOT speak geek!
Keep chugging!
Sue
Susan – Welcome and thank you for your support. I hope your SharePoint clients will find as much value as you have from the site.
Mark
I think it’s a bit unfair to paint this broad brush on people you have only interacted with by attending a session they presented at a conference or what they say in a blog. This product is absolutely huge and no one person can say they are an expert across the whole stack… those that do are quite simply lying through their teeth. Everyone has a specality: Joel does admin/scalability/DR/governance, Todd & I focus more on the dev side… me personally, I put a lot of my effort into the WCM space and dig into using SharePoint as an app dev platform. But with that being said, I don’t ignore the end user in any way. When working with clients & teaching classes, the first thing you do to every problem is “what is the OOTB fix for this” only going to the customization / extensibility bit when necessary. Most of the people who take my class have never seen SharePoint… they class wouldn’t successful and the evals wouldn’t be positive if they didn’t get out of the class what they were looking for: understanding SharePoint better so it isn’t nearly as intimidating.
Your blog has a great place: end user content. You won’t see that on my blog because that’s just not what people are expecting from me. We all have different areas of interest and that’s why you’ll see more of the WCM & dev content on my blog compared to others. RobB’s book on end user tasks is also a fantastic resource. Joel’s post in response to this was also a great resource.
I hope you see my point and why it is a bit frustrating that you think that I’m too entrenched in the product to help even the novice or those who only focus on SharePoint from the browser-based experience and don’t go any deeper than that.
-AC
From Andrew: “I think it’s a bit unfair to paint this broad brush on people you have only interacted with by attending a session they presented at a conference or what they say in a blog.”
Response from Mark: But that’s all I have to work with. This is the public face that is recognized as ‘AC’.
From Andrew: “I hope you see my point and why it is a bit frustrating that you think that I’m too entrenched in the product to help even the novice”
The post wasn’t meant as a criticism of you, I actually meant it as a compliment. The level of expertise you have with the platform is so deep, it is a waste of you as a community resource to be handling basic, day-to-day issues at the End User level.
I used your presentation at the conference as an example of someone so far beyond me that I couldn’t even comprehend what was being covered… my shortcoming, not yours. The audience who was ready for you were ecstatic with the information presented.
All said, I admire what you are doing from a distance because I don’t speak the language at your level.
Regards,
Mark
Mark-
Thanks for the response… glad it was more of a misunderstanding. We all have our places. To be brutally honest, people like myself and Todd were more of an exception to the rule as the SharePoint Conference was much more admin/IT/IW/end user focused… with some sporatic developer content. If you had seen the other talk (ECMS301… basically intro to WCM), you would have had a different perception. :)
From Mark: “But that’s all I have to work with. This is the public face that is recognized as ‘AC’.”
Understood, but there’s always more to the story and I just felt like I was being painted with a broad brush. I don’t think it’s a waste of my time to talk about end user stuff… but what you see me blog & speak about are topics that I am more passionate about.
Cheers and kee it up!
-AC
Mark, great job on the site and the focus on the end user. Andrew appears a little defensive, but he’s a great writer and I’ve relied on his books and website on a few projects. I’d say one guy you left out is Dustin Miller. He was at the conference and presented on SharePoint Designer. I don’t know if you were able to attend, but I wonder how you feel about SharePoint Designer content for the end user.
-Tom
Tom – Yes, I was at Dustin’s session. I actually learned something interesting related to presentation skills from him.
Remember how big the room was… a couple thousand seats? Five minutes before the presentation, Dustin had the audience clap and cheer whenever they saw the phrase “Go SharePoint!” on the screen. He did it three times and by the third time everyone in the hallway outside the room was curious as to what was going on and came into the room. That’s the best marketing scheme I’ve seen in a long time.
Regarding SPD for End Users, at the most basic level, I’d say no, it is not a tool that should be introduced to get people started. In my experience, the End User needs to wrap their head around Information Architecture (site planning) and the OOTB functionality. By the time they reach the point of needing SPD to create complex workflows or site design, the shortcomings of the OOTB will become apparent and they will be ready for the tool.
I’m open to discussion, but, to use Andrew’s term, that’s the “broad stroke” when talking about when to introduce SPD to the End User.
Mark
Thank you so much for creating this site!!! Finally, somebody who truly truly understands our dilema!
I am based in Thailand and unable to find any live Sharepoint training. I need to roll out our district site next month and havent had a decent training (have been relying on books/blogs so far). I probably need to make do with the online trainings. I need something comprehensive – from basic to workflow/data view level. I want to use infopath forms and sharepoint designer. Found some sites but i’m really not sure which one will best speak a non-programmer’s language. Would you happen to have any recommendations?
Thank you so much!
Shell – Don’t know of anyone who is doing the type of training that you are asking for online.
There are two resources I would start using right away. Start with Bob Mixon’s site and research Information Architecture. You need to make sure you have the information structured properly before you start building things out.
The other immediate resource is the SharePointU.com forums run by Dustin Miller. There are a lot of good people there that can help answer any of your questions as you are starting to get setup.
Gook luck on your rollout.
Mark
Check out the Ted Pattison Group’s training. We have hands-on and online (Live Meeting) based classes (www.tedpattison.net) on admin, business users & power users. Yes, I am affiliated with the Ted Pattison Group as I teach through them as well.
SharePointU is a great resource… also check out the MSDN Online Forums: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=328&SiteID=1
Yes, yes, yes!!!! Keep up the great work! And THANK YOU.
My audience is the one who doesn’t care how SharePoint works. They are only interested in how to use it, why they would use it and the things they can do to make their life more productive. It has nothing to do with code. It’s all about why and how.
Mark/AC .. thanks! I am going thru the recommended sites! checked out Ted pattison’s and found the course outline excellent however it is too expensive for me. :)
Thanks again for keeping this site up and running!
Just stay like you are, and many thanks for your infos and this BLOG. EROL.
All I can say is thank you for this Blog site. I enjoy the fact there is a place I can go and ask simple question and get simple answers. As for trainnig I was given a cd “Sharepoint2007 Become an expert”. That will give you all the basics. And I must say “WAY TO GO DUSTIN MILLER” I went to the Bootcamp in Anaheim and he was very good.
This posting certainly hit home. I aim my own SharePoint blog at the SharePoint Project Teams and people thinking about SharePoint. There does seem a lot of ‘techie’ developers out there (many doing brilliant work) but very few places where SharePoint articles are actually readable.
Blog : http://andydalesharepoint.blogspot.com/