In Defense of the SharePoint Community
A personal message from Mark Miller, Founder and Editor of EndUserSharePont.com.
It was disconcerting, to say the least, to hear the personal attacks against Joel Oleson, and those against the SharePoint MVPs during this past week. I have stayed out of the fray, not from lack of desire to participate, but because I was too confused to comment. Through many years of being in business, I found there are always at least two versions of every story, but in this case, the story got lost in the vitriol and personal attacks which made up most of the discussion.
Putting the subject of merit of Joel’s idea aside, it was disheartening to see people making personal attacks against respected members of the SharePoint community, while hiding behind the veil of anonymity.
Comments directed at Joel included, “I know you Joel and this is purely a self serving move in disguise as a community effort”, “when the hell did you become such a tool?”, “Are you making the knights just so you can continually have INFLUENCE”, “I think you are upset about not being awarded MVP”.
I don’t know Joel on a personal level, but on a professional level these types of comments are not just insulting to him, but insulting to the community of SharePoint users worldwide who have benefited from his participation in any and all events when requested. Yes, he does get paid to participate, as some have pointed out, but does that lessen the impact of his personal contributions to the community?
From an MVPs perspective, Bob Fox said, “Do you people have a problem with me because im an MVP? Have i slighted one of you? I think not… whoever wants to bash me please go ahead and hell most of you dont leave your names anyway so no offense will be taken… ”
The tone of Bob’s response is defensive, and rightfully so, having to hear comments such as, “MVPs are great for: walking around during the day like they own the place and getting absolutely hammered at night”, “MVP program is an insular, elitist group of people who have a delusionally high opinion of themselves”, “elitist MVP’s who in my experience have over-inflated egos”, “MVP program has become an old boy network full of politics and ass kissing”.
Again, these types of anonymous comments are insulting to the entire SharePoint community, a community that has benefited from the participation of MVPs in everything SharePoint related. These people have received recognition from Microsoft for what they have done for the community, whether you agree with it or not. To attack the MVPs personally instead of the program itself, if that is where the problem lies, is to denigrate their contributions.
Friends can have a little public dustup and still come out friends, but to take anonymous shots at respected, community driven members is not only uncalled for and unprofessional, it’s cowardly.
The tempers have calmed down a bit, the twitterstorm is ebbing and the comments on Joel’s posts have pretty much subsided. What happened this week was harsh on a personal level, for both sides. What’s left is a loss of respect for, and from, the community in general.
Something like this doesn’t go away just because the conversation stops. The hurt feelings, the accusations, the verbal abuse, will be remembered and will continue to fracture the community.
In the overall scheme of things, I’m a very small, relatively unknown player in the SharePoint community, but I think I speak for many when I say what I saw this week was not just uncomfortable, but saddening.
Mark Miller, Founder and Editor
EndUserSharePoint.com
I have to agreewhole-heartedly with most of this post, but I also need to opionate on it. First, I think some attacks this week did get a little too personal. But I also have to say, given the nature of this community, I think there is a certain strengthening that happened this week, with a dose of realism. How so, you ask? Well, let’s face it, business is war and SharePoint has become a multi-billion dollar business. Members of the community compete quite agressively in this business. And the lines between personal and professional, with Facebook, twitter, etc., are nearly non-existent. Do I know Joel personally? Or bob fox? I don’t know. I like to think I do. And despite all this, the community has been very welcoming, loving, and accepting. It still believes in itself as a community. Things got a bit ugly this week, but these things happen. We are all only human. And the stakes and tensions have been constantly rising. But towards the end of the week it did cool. Call me an idealist or a romantic, but I honestly believe there is more to this community. It is a family. And families fight sometimes and members sometimes hold grudges, but they recognize there is a bond there that unites them. And we are a family.
I too stayed out of the fray most of the week. I entered it at the end by starting the SharePoint community union members, or #scum. I did this for 2 reasons, 1- to inject humor. To push things to the level of ridiculousnes. To remind each community member that we all sometimes take ourselves a little too seriously. To get people to lower their tension levels by tweeting “I am #scum” and in doing so, laugh. At themselves, at the awkward tension. At the irony of this group of highly competitive and highly cooperative geniuses. (that was a long 1!) and 2- because I have an ego too and always wanted my own, highly recognized SharePoint group and my own recognition and standing in the community.
Do my 1 and 2 seem contradictory? They probably are, and that’s the whole point. The whole community is contradictory. On so many levels. Yet it works. It is a family. And I do love and respect it and am glad to be a part of it. What can I say, I am scum. We all are.
Mark,
The comments, tweets, and blog posts made the last week struck a blow to the community. Not just because some people, anonymous or not, threw dirt in each other’s eyes, but because most of the accusations made confirmed that the personal agendas are very much present.
Personally, I don’t care at all whether someone is a knight or MVP or whatever title will come up next. The idea of ‘knighthood’ is one of service, not reward. Knights, in the truest term, care not for being knights, but rather for helping without reward or benefit. Such a title is more of burden than a help, so I don’t really see why people would want to be labeled as such anyway.
This also goes for MVP. I wouldn’t want to be an MVP, even if someone held me to a torture bench and forced the title down my throat. The people who earn my respect do so for what they do, not for their names or titles.
.b
Yes after reading some of the comments it did give me a bit of a sick feeling in my gut. I’m relatively new to the SharePoint community and I’ve found most all of the people to be some of the most intellectually giving and personally open bunch I’ve ever met. I met Joel back in January when he was the keynote speaker at a local event. I was presenting three topics on SharePoint, my first go at it, and he and Tony Lanni treated me as if they’ve known me my whole life. The people at the computer firm I presented for and all of the SharePoint attendees and presenters were fantastic. I’ve been totally hooked into the community ever since. I think we’ll all be able to move beyond this fairly quickly. It seems most everyone, MVPs or not, like each other on a personal level. At least based on my observation at the two other events I’ve attended. I personally have a very high respect for MVP accomplishments but I also have the same high regard to Joel, Tony, you Mark, and many many others in the SharePoint community. Let’s get a few more events under everyone’s belt, start talking about the upcoming SharePoint 2010, and enjoy each other’s company. We’ll all be fine.
Rick Black
I enjoy this community even more than the technology. The people, energy, and ideas shared so freely help better each and every one of us.
I was also disappointed and saddened to see the comments on Joel’s post. There are some remarkable people in the SharePoint community, we will get past all of this, and I hope it serves as an example of what not to do. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Time to get back to the basics and do what we’re good at and known for: collaboration.
Since no other MVP’s have stepped up in these comments, I will do the honors. What everyone is missing in this whole scenario is that it was more than one post from Joel that caused tempers to boil over. Since leaving Microsoft, Joel has continually and shamelessly self-promoted to the detriment of the community as a whole. There is a whole pile of dirty laundry here that we have left out of the public sphere on purpose – people just don’t need to know about some of the ugly stuff that happens behind the scenes.
Suffice it to say there were many, many good reasons for the strong reactions that Joel’s post evoked. Were the comments justified? You (and others) may not think so because you only see one or two threads and assume that comprises the entire story but you are wrong; you can only truly understand the depth of betrayal that the MVP’s felt if you have the entire story. I tend to agree that the personal attacks should be kept private which is why I stayed out of the comment-fest as well but that doesn’t mean they weren’t justified.
Before people assume that the MVP’s are just a bunch of elitist good-old-boys (gee, I wonder how insulted Heather, Callahan, Amanda and all the other female MVP’s were by that idiotic statement?), it might behoove people to step back and say to themselves “Gee, there are some angry MVP’s out there over this – I wonder why?”. People who throw comments up on blogs and do little else have no idea how much many of us sacrifice for the community. I personally spent days undoing doing the damage Joel did with his misguided posts. So I really get my ire up when people leap to defend someone who gets paid to do “community” work while I spend hundreds of hours every year dedicating my time – for free – to true community efforts.
I’m sorry to have to point this out to all the Joelites but what he did was self-serving, misguided, and just plain wrong (not to mention all the confidences he betrayed and personal promised he broke). Joel does NOT have any special insight into the MVP program as he has never been one. He doesn’t know what information is exchanged on the MVP DL because he isn’t on it. He doesn’t – and never did – get any special information from MVP leads nor does he get to sit in on our interactions with the product team. To hear him pontificate on what’s wrong with the MVP program is just plain insulting.
To everyone who agrees with the negative comments towards the MVP’s, I would invite you to come hang out with us at TechEd, SharePoint Conference, or any other event where we congregate. You’ll find a group of people willing to share their knowledge and insights with anyone who asks. There’s no attitude of entitlement or superiority here – we’re just hardworking people who care deeply about the community. Come find out for yourself – don’t take the word of someone who lashes out because his own actions kept him out of the group he desperately wants to be part of.
I’ll throw my hat in the ring here and agree with Eric; it’s very easy for bystanders who only see one person out on the street with his clothes thrown out after him to take sides with this poor schmuck without knowing why the wife threw him out (if you pardon my analogue).
I won’t let my personal opinion of Joel weigh in here as I only know him through his posts but I will say that I personally know one MVP (not a lot of them around here) and he is a great person – not at all the type Joel describes.
Would we all benefit from some “Joelgate” investigative journalism? Probably not. Let’s stop rubbernecking and let Joel and the MVP’s sort this out on their own.
If the SharePoint community is such a great community it should be able to survive this debacle.
Mark – I agree with you 100%. I was not a part of the riot mob that attacked Joel. I have privately expressed my chagrin to other MVPs about what happened. And yet I am still not at peace with what happened. It was simply shameful.
S
#SCUM <—- enough said.
Eric, I love you. I love most of the mvps. You, and all the ones I have known, are great people. I understand why you are upset. I know a lot of the back story. But the one point I think we are making, and that I want to make clear, is that the community is bigger than this. It’s bigger than Joel, it’s bigger than the mvps. I don’t blame you for taking Joel’s attacks personally. I would have too. And I do like Joel, but he has upset me on occassion as well. But again, the community is bigger than all of us and is bigger than this fight. In much the same way that SharePoint is bigger than Microsoft. That’s my point, and that’s why I think, no matter what, we are all #scum.
Tony is right and so is Martin – the community is bigger than all of us, which is exactly how it should be. We are here to serve and expand the community and some of us are very passionate about it. That sometimes leads to taking things personally that should otherwise be overlooked. If we all focus on the importance of the community as a whole episodes like this will be no more than ripples in a very big pond. We must constantly be wary of promoting any kind of personality cult which undermines the contibutions of any particular member, whether or not they are an MVP, RD, Joe the Blogger, or anyone else. That would be disastrous. Let’s keep our eye collectively on the ball and not get sidetracked.