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Oct
26
New Markets and the Future of SharePoint
I received an email from Brian Cornelius, one of the EndUserSharePoint.com live bloggers, right after the completion of the SharePoint conference:
The last session I went to yesterday was on End User Adoption. I think it was pretty much everything I already knew. In any case the presenter was answering questions at the end and a lady wanted to know when his book was going to be translated into Dutch. He made a comment about it being a small market, etc. but did say the only non-English translation was into Chinese.
Fast forward a number of hours. On the plane towards Seattle, in my row was Jeff Teper. I recognized him from the keynote address. I noted before I tried to catch a nap that he was reading a book that was in Chinese. I didn’t see English anywhere on that book. He was taking notes in the margins as he was turning the pages. Probably not the speed of a native speaker, but it’s obvious he’s learned Chinese and it’s likely job related.
Two and two says that’s where Jeff and Microsoft see as the next major market for SharePoint. Maybe that’s the next market for the EUSP empire as well.
My Response:
Thanks for the note. Very interesting observation. I have recently researched translation capabilities for the site, and actually have one of my trainers based in Shanghai. I was in Asia last year, myself, to deliver SharePoint presentations in Shanghai and Singapore.
It seems that the industry, even in China, is willing to use English as the foundation of SharePoint. It would be interesting to have a formalized study to see what is really happening.
Mark – how about directly asking Jeff Teper?
SharePoint in China means offshoring or subsidiaries of Western companies, so the common language is English. The challenge, as I already commented in the post about Africa, is that many key resources like blogs (including endusersharepoint.com) or videos are blocked for Chinese users.