Guest Author: Sebastian Gerling
Consultant’s Digest

The beginning

The origin of the SharePoint user groups is located in the USA. In 2008 the International SharePoint Professional Association was founded by Bob Fox and other SharePoint professionals in the US and Michael Greth was named as regional SharePoint Evangelist for Germany. The first user groups were started in the USA. In mid 2008 the Berlin SharePoint user group was initiated by Michael Greth and Gernot Kühn. In September 2008 the second German SharePoint user group was founded by Sebastian Gerling and Marek Czarzbon in Nuremberg. Due to the success of the early groups more than 15 other user groups were founded in all areas in Germany.

The organization

Most user groups are organized by one or two active local SharePoint professionals with a strong understanding of knowledge sharing and networking. The overall organization is done by the German SharePoint Community with over 5.000 active users. All events are promoted there. The Events are organized as community events with no fees or costs. All speakers are community members and present their own projects, problems or third party products. There is a wide range of sessions, from Enterprise 2.0 with SharePoint 2010 on real project experiences to SharePoint 2007 or Nintex Workflow.

Implementation of business networks

Nearly all German SharePoint User Groups are organized via local community groups within the German business network Xing which is similar to LinkedIn in countries like the US or Great Britain. Xing provides an easy way to initiate appointments, invite all members of the local community and network between attendees.

Interaction

Most German user groups interact with each other because of the personal relationships between the organization teams. There is a speaker exchange, providing of presentations and personal meetings on German fairs like the CeBit or TechEd Europe. Overall the interaction is based on a strong community idea and the goal of sharing SharePoint knowledge.

User Group Meetings

The User Groups are generally organized every 5-8 weeks in nearly every greater German city. The events are organized in two parts, starting with one or two community driven session about SharePoint related topics followed by a meet and greet session where all attendees can discuss SharePoint, Cloud and related topics, as well as network with other SharePoint enthusiasts.

Community

The SharePoint user group community mostly consists of SharePoint professionals and suppliers or consultants as well as end users and administrators. There are, in general, no decision makers or project sponsors involved which leads to a very open and informal atmosphere even between employees of different supplier or consulting companies.

Integration of companies

One of the central advantages of the German user group ecosystem is the involvement of professional companies which provide meeting rooms, take sponsorship for catering or are involved with the presentation of SharePoint projects. All this is accomplished without any marketing because of the knowledge that SharePoint, in the long term, will make any company into a more collaborative and successful company.

Conclusion

The German SharePoint user groups and the whole community ecosystem have led to an improved understanding of SharePoint and the arising possibilities in SharePoint usage. Additionally, the local networks improve the knowledge and resource exchange between companies.

With the recent launch of SharePoint 2010, BPOS 2010 announced for the end of 2010 and the overall cloud strategy of Microsoft, the user groups will be a great opportunity to enhance knowledge, usage and understanding of technical and social implications of SharePoint 2010, later versions as well as cloud topics.

Guest Author: Sebastian Gerling
Consultant’s Digest

Sebastian Gerling is a Senior Consultant at Logica Germany, one of Germanys leading SharePoint providers. He is founder of the Nuremberg and leader of the Munich SharePoint user groups. Sebastian is a regular author for the German SharePoint Magazin on topics like SharePoint 2010, Enterprise Team Collaboration and Workflow optimization. More information may be found on Sebatian’s blog Consultant’s Digest.