This is an excerpt from the EndUserSharePoint.com Weekly Newsletter that went out on February 3rd.

A friend of mine, Michael Cortez, introduced me to a birthday tradition he has in his family where the person having the birthday gives out gifts to everyone else in the family. I really like that a lot. Since today is my birthday, I’ve got a little gift for you, my extended SharePoint family.

“Leading the Dispersed Workforce” is a summary of research done by Richard R. Reilly and Karen Sobel Lojeski, describing their vision on what it takes to coordinate a project in virtual space. I hope you find it useful when thinking about how to setup your SharePoint site to be utilized by your virtual community.

Another little trinket in our birthday celebration is complimentary download access to the Keynote session of SharePoint Saturday EMEA. For those of you who could not attend, I will be making all 20 sessions available for download over the next few weeks.

On Monday, February 8th, Sharon Richardson, former Lead Technology Specialist for SharePoint across the UK and Europe, and I will be giving a free, live online workshop, Managing SharePoint 2007 Site Permissions. Register for the announcement list and I’ll send you the details.

Finally, to round out this little birthday bash, Microsoft has provided me a link to some training they’ve just completed: The New SharePoint 2010 User Interface. This walk through is a great introduction to some of the basic upgrades you’ll see when exploring SharePoint 2010.

Happy birthday to all! I hope your week continues to be a good one. — Mark