How did you learn about SharePoint?
There’s a HUGE discussion going on in LinkedIn about how people learned about SharePoint. Since that’s a locked community, I thought I’d provide an open forum here.
So how DID you learn about SharePoint? All stories welcome.
I started off using SharePoint to integrate information for AIDS Vaccine Research. There was a project with five labs in different parts of the world and they needed a way to share the information generated, other than at their 6 month meetings. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation popped in and created the CAVD, The Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Development, providing a full MOSS implementation and some funding dollars to kickstart the project.
I got started, like most of you here, with no idea of what SharePoint was or what it could do. You can actually trace the origins of EndUserSharePoint.com back to that initial project, where I started documenting some of the things I was playing with. I searched the net, answered and asked questions on SharePointU.com, and built a network of people I trusted to help me solve problems.
The rest, as they say is history…
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. What’s yours? Really looking forward to the discussion.
Mark
I had a very little bit of self-initiated learning-by-trying on our 2003 WSS platform, but the real understanding began when I attended the 4-day Core Features course at SharePoint Solutions (instructor Ricky Spears), in preparation for our launch of MOSS. And I do mean “began”, as we all know that the rest of the learning comes from hands-on time, and by keeping tabs on the blogosphere. Especially EUSP, of course! …The learning never really ends.
I started to learn about SharePoint 3 years ago for a governmental project. As a knowledge management consultant, we had to build an extranet for 800 and more workers and 30 teams, so as to share information, document, and knowledge. Such a great adventure for me. We began with a collaboration scope, so as to share documents within teams or between them, and then we started to get it bigger and bigger: collaboration tools, document management, approval workflows, project management and governance tools, crossed-lists, record management.
And since then, I keep going on what I call my “love and hate” professional life with SharePoint :-)
Every piece of blog, tweets, and forum topics help me to find some great ideas for my clients.
“Some men are born with SharePoint, others have SharePoint thrust upon them” or something like that. My predecessor in my job somehow ended up working in MOSS 2007 in an organic (ie. no-governance-nor-clue-what-sharepoint-does) implementation and setup some pretty nifty things before I came on-board. He introduced me to the concepts of sharepoint and some of its capabilities at the time and I ended up tinkering with it and creating training classes around it and, eventually, creating infopath forms and SPD workflows for several projects and banging my head against the door every time I learned of a new limitation (ie. cascading dropdowns, parameterized queries, ootb workflows being evil, workflow 60-day history, having a good-looking sharepoint deployment when no web designer would touch it, etc.). Similar to above, it’s a love-hate relationship with ‘07…maybe better once we roll out ‘10.
I got started on SharePoint as part of the learning process in my company. I got so much impressed even by SPS 2003 that I decided to make the swich from .NET developer to SharePoint world. Then came MOSS 2007 which really made my decision a true success!! Due to my exposure to SPS 2003 I started playing with MOSS 2007 since beta 1 and now SharePoint 2010…..I am really enjoying my work since I have switched to SharePoint.
SharePoint – Long live the wonderful collaboration platfor and my saviour!
I learned Sharepoint in my engineering days while attempting to pimp the SP 2003 stylesheets and concluding that at least 3 different people had worked on the style since there were 3 different naming conventions used and none implemented CSS correctly. After that got stuck fixing all different types of CAS issues in 2003. People were trying to figure out how and if Sharepoint was an adequate DMS. With all that shizzle going on they quickly abandoned. How the Sharepoint world has changed since then… thank heavens! :-)
I was introduced to SharePoint a few years ago by way of a migration from Novell to Microsoft. We used to be primarily a Novell shop wih only an NT4 domain to run a specific app. When we made the decision to ditch Novell and move solely to Microsoft, we were left with a bit of a problem: Novell’s GroupWise had what was essentially public folders with a whole bunch of documents stored within. At the time, we were told that Microsoft were diching Exchange public folders so were left with the dilema of where do we store these documents (that were accessed by the whole user base across our geographially disperse firm).
That’s when we were shown SharePoint (WSS 2.0) and it was installed and hosting the shared documents within minutes. I was blown away and that started the fire in the belly for me and I’ve been learning SharePoint ever since. I did go on a WSS config course but in all honesty, you simply cannot beat getting down and dirty with a VM and playing about.
The biggest learning curve was moving from WSS 2.0 to WSS 3.0 but getting it all up and running gave me such a kick.
I’m now really looking forward to using and learning more and more about SharePoint 2010 – I’m on my way back from the spevo conference as I type and it’s an awesome platform!
Mark, I met a SharePoint enduser trainer at the conference and she was saying how little exposure this side of SharePoint gets in these conferences. Is this something you come across as well? I have pointed her to EUSP.com so was doing some advertising for you in your absence :)
About 6 years ago it was THRUSTED on me. I didn’t like it at all, I thought it was plain and limited at first but after learning on my own and with WSS upgrade (still struggled) and of course MOSS I love it!! With all the different networking options and user groups it has made my SharePoint experience very positive. I am still straddling between different versions of SP as well as .NET at my company. With Mark and Christophe (as starters) both have made my life so much easier and to think outside the O-T-B scenerio.
I started with SPS2003 back in 2004 when I was hired on as a part-time employee in the web department for my local community college. I was going to school there in the CIS program (web specialty), and had been working at the Help Desk (like most CIS students) – after a few months, I convinced the IT director and web director to let me switch over to web since thats what I was in school for – they both agreed, and thus I started my current career.
When I became part-time staff, they gave me the task of focusing on our recently deployed Intranet (based on SPS2003). Since I had no idea really what SharePoint was, I started scouring the web looking for anything that could help. The forums at SharePointU.com was really my first and favorite place to learn. I became a member of the site, started asking questions, and even answered a few (with my limited knowledge at the time). Sometime around 6 months or so after I started with their site, they had a major hardware failure (if I remember right) that brought the entire thing down…which for me, was a very sad sad thing since that was my main source of information (msdn forums were focused more on the “technical” side of things then, which I really didnt need yet, so they didnt really help me all that much). So, I stumbled along, figuring out some things for myself, and whatever I could piece together from other sites on the web that I could find.
For several months, I kept checking on SharePointU to see if they were back yet, and eventually they were. As soon as I saw them come back, I re-registered and soon things were back to normal. In the months that they’d been down, I had learned alot on my own, and had decided that it was time to start giving back – enter Mark :) Mark Miller and I began seeing each other more and more on the forums, asking each other questions, assisting with answers to others and helping each other to better understand the beast that SharePoint was. Eventually, our collaboration led me to start writing some articles for EUSP where I felt right at home in doing.
In 2007, I deployed an instance of WSS 3.0 for our Instructors to use as classroom sites for their students, and I had been hired on full-time with my primary job focus set to SharePoint.
Since then, I’ve moved up the ranks at my job to where I’m now the lead developer/designer, with a small team that I work with to develop various .NET applications, but my primary focus is still on SharePoint. We’ve decommissioned our old instance of SPS2003, but still have several instances of WSS 3.0 running to provide sites for our instructos, a campus-wide global calendar, and a host of team sites for everything from IT documentation to College Accreditation.
As an author on EUSP, I’m proud to be part of such an awesome group of folks that’s sole focus is on training and information sharing. Ever since Mark first invited me to write an article for the site several years ago, my knowledge has greatly increased due to such an ever inquisitive audience…many of the things I’ve learned have come about from someone simply asking “Can this be done?”, and my being willing to play around and come up with a way to do it.
Grats to UESP on its success and the audience that has made it what it is, and grats to Mark for creating it in the first place…what would the SharePoint world be without it?…I shudder to think about it :)
- Dessie
Our SharePoint/Windows architect left for greener pastures and since I knew how to create a document library with some meta data, I was next in line. That was 2 1/2 years ago and now I’m almost 100% SharePoint. With SharePoint 2010 out and no end in site, I’m sure it is safe to say we’ll be busy for the foreseeable future.
Really interesting reading. We installed SPS 2003 sometime in 2004 in a global manufacturing company. We could see where the culture was going and wanted to get something in place prior to the evolution truly taking hold. I’m so glad we did. I was in a management role at the time but couldn’t help but get my hands dirty. In fact this really led to some exceptional personal and professional growth, especially related to Enterprise 2.0.
The upgrade to MOSS was quite painful but we made it through. The intranet at my former company is now getting over 600k hits per month and is really gaining traction. I realized I was spending a majority of my time working with SharePoint in the context of bringing people together that I decided to focus on it full time and left to pursue a career as a SharePoint consultant.
I love the technology and, as with any technology I recognize the limitations. SharePoint is a great starting point to get people talking about processes and organizational change. In fact I think that is what I love the most.
It’s been a great journey for me. SharePoint 2010 offers so many new capabilities that I am excited about. I’m far more excited about using it as an enabler of change. Sounds cliche, I know :)
In 2002 I was asked to “evaluate” SPS by management. As the IIS 5 ASP developer making “smart” web pages with data connections they figured I was qualified. Umm yeah …
I had no clue, zero, that (1) this product had so many features and (2) that it would have such a big impact on the coming years of my life. Looking back it was a fork in the road, and I’m glad I took the chance. I’ve learned so much and met so many great people. While it was happening I really couldn’t see how big it would become, things grew extremely quickly.
Having fun reading the other responses …
Hey Jeff,
Glad to see you took the SharePoint chance as I also did in 2002 with the Frontpage Server Extensions with STS. From then it was SPS Portal 2003 and bigger with SharePoint 2007 which then became the divisional standard for my company for document management and to track projects and tasks. Now SharePoint 2010 set to explode into yet another mainstream with the
Increased feature set and I’m looking forward to yet another very busy 3 more years of learning.
Steve Palmo
Four years ago I was medical transcriptionist, hating every minute of the work, but working from home part-time with insurance for the family. That was a job I fell into, as I had actually ’studied’ painting in college. A call went out for departments to find ‘Super-users’ and I raised my hand high (with no clue of what that meant.) I had been using Google forums to communicate with my co-workers and thought we might improve on that with this ‘portal’ thing. I had a one hour training with the portal architect and went off to create a few lists, a discussion board, and maxed out good-looking CEWPs with hyperlinks that revolutionized how we got our information. After just 9 months of working with Sharepoint ‘03 I learned we had a test server with Moss 07 and asked to use it. I was given permissions on the test site with the restriction by our portal architect “Just don’t ask me any questions!” So I taught myself everything from those simple training tools that come with it and created content like crazy!
Just 6 months after that we had management restructuring and I impressed the new director enough that he created a position for me to manage all 9 departments under him at our first meeting. Our test server forcibly was upgraded to production. That was nearly 2 years ago. I am still the only person holding such a position in our 2000+ employee organization. However , a recent IT management restructuring has thrust my Sharepoint work into the spotlight and they are now vying for a way to get me into their department to help them restructure, train, and implement the solutions I learn everyday from EUSP! And the beauty of it is, I’m a mom of 4, working from home part-time, volunteering as an art teacher on my days off, all while getting to play in the Sharepoint world!
I recognize I can’t meet the credentials or ever be in a league with most of you on this forum in terms of design and implementation, but even as a simple end-user there is a world of opportunity out there in Sharepoint! And I feel at least, an opinion to share. I owe much of my recent success, including enlightenment on topics like information architecture, taxonomy, and content structure, along with the great how-tos to EUSP. I wouldn’t know half what I do without EUSP, nearly every other day some content comes out that seems as though it was directed right to the problem I have at hand! THANKS SO MUCH!!
Ironically, I also started my career with SharePoint installing version 2007 in Dec 2006 at IAVI which stands for Int’l Aids Vaccine Initiative so I wanted to comment reading this post because you could say that I learned SharePoint as well with the Bill and Melinda’s major foundation as Mark has.
There I was, wandering the hallways at the office neglecting the building mountain of tasks in my office while looking for that next elusive project that would catapult me into companywide fame and fortune. I had seen the consultants scurrying around like ferrets, secretive and close mouthed about what they were doing, casting surreptitious glances at the staff looking for their sucker. Something was obviously up; the question was just what exactly was it?
Well, maybe it wasn’t EXACTLY like that but it really wasn’t far off. In early 2003 I was in my first real IT job as a Network Administrator/Help Desk Technician/Desktop Technician/Exchange Admin/Time Collection Admin/Training Content Developer/Application Implementation Specialist, you get the idea. I was doing it all, my wall had 30 hats on it and I wore each of them at some point during the day.
One afternoon after as I was walking down the hallway, apparently with the blank look of “I don’t have anything to do” on my face, I was approached by my boss and asked if I would be interested in taking over the management of the SharePoint 2003 installation the consultants had just finished. My response (without thinking of course) was “Sure! Uh……..What’s SharePoint?” I was told that SharePoint was Microsofts Collaborative “Environment” and that we were putting it place to meet a need regarding business proposals.
Well, ok I can handle that! After all I had just finished installing, configuring and deploying our Help Desk ticket tracking system (Intiut Track-It!) I was hot and I couldn’t be stopped! I asked if we had any books or if there were any the company would be willing to buy me. Short answer; “No, there are no books…………but we do have a Microsoft Whitepaper!” I hadn’t even gotten started and already I was feeling hosed.
Hard to believe that was almost 7 years ago. Since then I have mostly taught myself everything I know. I spent hours online searching for the answers to my problems, Google and SharePoint U were my best friends (Like Dessie and Mark I too am a “graduate” of SharePoint U. I posted, answered and researched there a LOT).
I didn’t get any formal training until last spring when I took a Mindsharp class in Atlanta, then I was fortunate enough to convince my boss to let me bring in Ben Curry for three days to do what Ben calls a “teaching session” and I was able to attend both Best Practices Conferences. Recently I’ve started actually blogging rather than having a blog that never gets posted to, I’ve had a couple of articles posted here and I was lucky enough to speak at my first SharePoint Saturday event last weekend in Atlanta.
Seems like a long, long time ago when I got started with SharePoint but I couldn’t be happier with the way it’s turned out.
One last thing…….I got an email today from someone via LinkedIn asking about SharePoint and getting started etc… My response included a comment about the community that has been built around SharePoint. I can’t think of another product where you have a community like we have available to us all. People spending their free time to speak at SharePoint Saturdays, people writing articles and blog posts in the interest of sharing knowledge and ideas, People asking questions and getting either the answers they need or assistance that will help them to figure out a solution to their problem while not getting any smart remarks or comments in the process.
THAT’S the kind of thing I want to be a part of!
-Jay aka The SharePoint Mechanic
Like Xene, I was in the medical transcription field, although I was a suprevisor of our NOC/Call Center. We had a directive from Management that MOSS was going to be installed with the long term goal to clean up our vast amounts of data in network drives, communicate better information across the company, and have it as an extranet for our clients.
I was very interested in the product and decided to try to leverage it in any way possible. I developed our team site for a few months and things worked well for our area. Then we relocated and found a position where Sharepoint administration is one of my tasks.
Today I support around 500 site collections, train, develop, and manage the farm as well as other non Sharepoint related responsibilities. Been through a nightmare SPS2003 to MOSS 2007 upgrade in the process.
Looking forward for 2010 features and trying to convince people to ditch our current WCM and utilize our investment in Sharepoint for that as well.
As a FrontPage user, I noticed in v2002, I believe, an option to create a Sharepoint Team Services site or page. Although I could not create a site or page because we did not have the server set up for it, the option piqued my curiosity and the love affair began. We installed WSS 2.0 and off we went. Although we didn’t use WSS 2 for much othe than R&D and POC, we have been using WSS 3 in our production environment. Thanks to EndUserSharepoint, and the WSS community, we’re able to provide robust solutions without incurring the expense of MOSS. The taxpayers would appreciate it if they knew.
Like many others, my job switched over to MOSS and handed me the project to become the “Sharepoint guy” since I was good in Powerpoint . As I found out, the two really had nothing to do with each other.
Volunteered to run with the project the day I first heard the word SharePoint for the first time, that was 17 November 2006. Learnt on the job in a company of 43 000 users. Spent 2 and half years on that project – organising 18 people across 4 departments all trying to “own” SharePoint. Paid for all my own training, got certified, started attending Information Worker (our local SharePoint User Group), which changed my life forever. Started my own consulting and training business 8 months ago as a result. Have learnt something new every single day since discovering SharePoint.
It was introduced to me as it the do it all CMS tool and more from Microsoft. Rightfully so since it replaced 90% of all the custom security, ugly looking, and inconsistent asp.net applications written by poorly managed developers. It has not been a walk in the park, but it has its pros and cons like anything else.
My CIO at the time literally walked in one day, asked me to bring up a page in my browser which showed a wss 2.0 team site and then said “Have fun” and walked away. Not only had I never heard of SharePoint, my users were not used to using technology in this way. It was a real learning curve for all of us.
I started out by googling wss and sharepoint, reading the help pages, that sort of thing. I later picked up a used copy of the SharePoint 2007 for dummies book which did get me started. Finally I found a few good resources you may recognize, Path to SharePoint, Callahan’s frugal admin stuff is fantastic for anyone using WSS, and then I found EUSP which seems to bring all of the best information, and people, in the sharepoint community to one place.
I eventually got my hands on a Mastering Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 book which has become my well worn, well thumbed bible. I so wish I had gotten it in the beginning instead of a Dummies book. :)
Eventually I learned enough that my CIO started to come back to me and ask “How did you do that?” SharePoint has become one of the parts of my job that I love most. An opportunity to find creative solutions to make life easier for our users.
In the summer of 2004 I was the faculty and staff helpdesk manager at the University of Puget Sound. My counterpart on the student support side, Ted Meriam, was also the Student Body (ASUPS) Director of Technology. Ted set up SharePoint 2003 (WSS) so that ASUPS clubs could easily collaborate. We would geek out together on any new technology and were soon recruiting student geunea pigs to run projects using SharePoint. At one point I had to project manage a “consulting” project with an entire class and SharePoint was a god sent.
When I graduated in 2005 I started at Hitachi Consulting as a marketing consultant and was immediately staffed on the Microsoft account. (Ted is a technical account manager for Microsoft in the bay area) On my first project the need for a well-organized SharePoint site came up and I mentioned my experience. Word quickly spread throughout the Seattle office that I was a “SharePoint expert” (along with Michael Clara – shout out!) and pretty soon I had tons of smart people asking me great questions about how they could use SharePoint, since most of us were out at Microsoft and had to use SP for our projects. I’d usually say “I don’t know, but I will get back to you”. This was on top of my consulting projects.
In spring of 2007, when SharePoint 2007 was released I was hired by the product team to write the ECM marketing materials and advise (as someone with a “real world” SharePoint perspective) on what ECM features should be included in 2010. This was when I completely and utterly fell in love with SharePoint and became uber passionate with learning everything I could about the product. This was not only because I liked the product and what it offered vs. competitors, but because I LOVED the people and community around it. I was only staffed on SharePoint projects after that :)
After a while I wanted to be exposed to a more technical, rather than business consulting, environment so I tried working with a few technically focused SharePoint consultancies but ultimately decided to start my own consulting firm, InfoShare. I still work on the Microsoft account building SharePoint solutions for business teams and help the product team with 2010 ECM marketing. I also build business solutions for a Japanese video game / entertainment company which is conveniently next door to Microsoft :)
I CANNOT WAIT until SharePoint 2010 is more utilized by “real” people / end users. It was the first release cycle I’ve been able to observe from beginning to end and it will be fun to see how predictions from the spring of 2007 play out. Also, I am super happy that the traits that made me love the SharePoint community have been preserved, even though the size has exploded – hats off to everyone. It makes me very proud to be able to say I am a member of the SharePoint community.
These stories are really interesting. I don’t have a fantastic tale to share, mine is a pretty typical one, but I will try and summarize in the spirit of sharing.
How did I learn about SharePoint?
My first outrageously large project (working for a MS Gold Partner) was to build a massive project management system for a large company in the utility industry. It was a very intimidating project with quite a few resources working VERY hard (in a small company – 30 hour days, 90 hour work weeks often) to make something that had complete intelligence, used AJAX everywhere and had drag and drop (on everything from folders, to documents, to entire projects structures).
We knew if we had to build it all on our own it would take years, but by leveraging SharePoint 2003 something that seemed impossible would be much more feasible and we could achieve the results we wanted.
In those 2003 days if there was a limit in SharePoint, a catch, an annoying issue we experienced it and worked around it. I went in the space of that project and a few others from a developer, to a lead developer, to performing quality assurance, to working with customers as a consultant and as a business analyst. As I grew, matured, and improved so did my knowledge of SharePoint, how to leverage it and how to apply it to business problems effectively.
SharePoint 2007 hit and it was a beautiful thing. Now so many things I had imagined were no longer out of reach. The same thing that would have taken a year to build on SharePoint 2003 could take as little as 3 months. Part of it was that I had learned so much since I had first started, but another part was that the community, and the product had matured so much since then.
Now we are on the cusp of SharePoint 2010 and I am excited to see if I (or any of you) can’t accomplish the same sort of projects in under a month. Alone if need be. It’s hard to imagine that in something around 5 or 6 years the industry, the technology, and the people have become so much faster, smarter, and more connected.
I’m STILL learning about SharePoint and all the things it touches. Professionally and personally.
For me SharePoint is no longer just a technology I work with. (Which it was when I first started.)
SharePoint has now become the name associated with a community I care about, a community that teaches me new things every single day, a community that I feel closer to each day, a community I share laughs with, a community I share drinks with (go #SharePint’s!), and a community that helps me all the time become better professionally and personally.
I sure am happy I did learn about SharePoint all those years ago. I’m even happier that I am still learning more about it and will continue to do so in the future.
Just another SharePointer,
Richard Harbridge
If you haven’t subscribed to recieve updates on this post, I suggest you do! It is a joy to read these as they come in through the day. How fun to read about how everyone got here – and do you recognize the common thread of happiness, career success, and job satisfaction that rings from each comment here? Great way to end the week!
It’s very interesting to read and get inspired. Mark, this is one of the best from EUSP.
Myself is a very simple story, i manage the website and then, i am being asked to take care of SharePoint, still trying and will keep on …
I started exploring Sharepint for a client. I was initially overwhelmed with it. But over time, I’ve really become impressed with it. I’m looking forward to delving further into it.
Since the mid-90’s, I had helped design and roll out various portal solutions, project portfolio management systems, and ECM solutions. After selling my own software startup to Rational Software in 2001, I went to work for a company called E2open where I was brought on to help design, build and deploy a SharePoint-like hosted platform we called Collaboration Manager. It was based off of MatrixOne’s PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) technology, incorporated WebEx, our own large file transfer solution and an edge device (early days of WAN optimization), and was in many ways a far superior product to SPS2003. As we were deploying to companies like Hitachi, Matsushita, Nortel and Seagate, I became aware of some of Microsoft’s activities in the collaboration space and kept an eye on things in Redmond.
In parallel, I also used Groove since its infancy, and used it exclusively with another part-time startup I tried to get off the ground.
My first full experience with SharePoint was in 2005 when I rolled out WSS to a company I was consulting with, and also tried my hand at Project Server. The WSS rollout was a success, Project Server….not so much, even after involving an SI that was supposedly an “expert” in it. A year later, I joined Microsoft Managed Services (MMS) which is now known as BPOS-Dedicated. After 3.5 years at Microsoft, I joined my current company, echoTechnology, one of the earliest SharePoint ISVs.
I came in contact with SharePoint when i was working for a goverment organisation and had the chance to follow some courses.
Wouter van de vught was my teacher. I was immediatly hooked. especially since a recruiter told me i should specialize me in SharePoint or Biztalk well. I went for 300 % for SharePoint.
And still do not regret it for a minute. I still learn everyday it is the best product of the universe ;-)
kind regards
Paul Keijzers
I got started with SharePoint in November of 2008 when my manager at the time said, “Here. Learn this.” No training, no guidance, (still!!!) no governance plan: Just a server with SharePoint WSS 3.0 installed.
I am now supporting a major project at work which is tripling the size of the company, and SharePoint is being used by the entire organization to manage all the data for this project. Our implementation is still rudimentary, and I am the only adminstrator for 6000+ folks, but we’re slowly getting the job done.
If not for sites like EUSP, I’d have lost my sanity long ago. Very thankful for the hard work and contributions of all folks here!
I started with SharePoint last year. I was working as a Lotus Domino developer, when the company I work for decided to ditch Domino, and Go 100% with Microsoft.
That included Exchange for mail, and Sharepoint as an application platform.
To be fair, I hated it at start, the differences between Domino and Sharepoint are huge, but after a couple of months of swearing due to a quite steep learning curve, I now really start to like it!