The SharePoint Community Needs You To Be Social: How You Can Get Involved – Part 2
Guest Author: Christian Buckley
http://buckleyplanet.net
This is the second article in my series on ways that you can get more involved and better connected to the SharePoint community, focusing on ways that you can plug into the social media aspects of the community.
SharePoint people are highly connected people. This is by far the most social of the industries I’ve worked in. We blog, we tweet, we read, we gather, we help each other solve business problems, we want to see the community grow. You may be asking yourself “Where do I start?”
Here are some ideas:
- Bookmark NothingButSharePoint.com.
This new portal (launching in the next few weeks) is an aggregation of some of the most popular blogs in the SharePoint community, with Joel Oleson, Jeremy Thake, Mark Miller and many other joining forces to provide comprehensive content for developers, IT pros, and end users. There is still tremendous value in other portals, but NBSP is a great place to start. - Bookmark your SharePoint community calendars.
There are a couple efforts to build or consolidate the global community calendars, but this is an uphill battle as SharePoint communities pop up around the world. My advice is to locate the regional calendars that make the most sense to you. Hopefully your local user group has something posted, but sites like NothingButSharePoint.com (the calendar can currently be found here) are a great resource for regional, national and international events. - Start using Twitter.
This is the fastest way to get involved in the SharePoint dialog. The community is heavily plugged in to Twitter. Search on hash tags for #SPS #SharePoint #join2010 and various other topics to quickly find and follow people within the community. On that note, <blatant_self_promotion> you can find me on Twitter @buckleyplanet </blatant_self_promotion> - Join groups on Facebook.
Where Twitter allows you to jump into the SharePoint stream quickly, Facebook allows you to add depth to the conversation (though sometimes not too much depth) and see the faces behind the Twitter tags. Facebook is a great way to connect and develop personal and professional relationships with the people you meet at the user groups and conferences. - Join groups on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is expanding rapidly with groups, events and forums, providing yet another way to connect – in a more secure and business-focused manner. LinkedIn is to business what Facebook is to personal networks. I am a big fan of LinkedIn because of the layers of trust, and the ability to identify potential connections through known connections. It’s a great way to find others in your company interested in SharePoint, and to build lasting business relationships. - Participate in the online forums.
The primary resource here is the Microsoft MSDN (TechNet) forums, which include product and service discussions, questions and comments around specific independent software vendors (ISV) and strategic integrators (SI), and just about anything else SharePoint-related. You can find forums that are sponsored by a number of vendors or community vendors, but MSDN should be your starting place. Three other sites you should consider are CodePlex (which includes free and fee-based software solutions from the community), Bamboo Nation (a great vendor-sponsored community site) and SharePointReviews.com (product overviews, reviews, and community feedback). - Plug into any available RSS feeds.
As you start finding bloggers and online content resources, be sure to sign up for their feeds. The new Outlook 2010 is particularly good at tracking RSS feeds and content. - Email the experts.
The SharePoint community is the most approachable technical communities I have worked with in my 20+ years in technology. Have a question? Reach out to the experts. Well-known industry experts like Joel Oleson, Dux Raymond Sy, and Michael Noel are always happy to hear from the community, and unless they’re sitting on a flight (without wifi) will typically get back to you right away. And if they don’t know the answer, they know someone who will. Likewise, feel free to drop me a line at [email protected] - Take an online class.
Don’t have the budget or time to take an in-person course or attend a major SharePoint conference? Online options are growing rapidly, and the costs are coming down. Many local schools and community colleges are also expanding their curriculum to include SharePoint, so make yourself familiar with the options available to you. - Get certified.
Another great way to get the recognition you deserve is to make it official – get yourself certified. While the release of SharePoint 2010 created several new certifications, the majority of SharePoint customers are still using 2007, and these certifications are just as valuable. Do what makes sense for your career and job description, but a certification may be a quick adrenalin boost to your professional profile. Click here to go to the Microsoft site and learn more about the various certifications, training classes, and resources.
Have other ideas on how to connect with the SharePoint community through social computing or other online resources? Hopefully this gives you some food for thought on how to get started. Add your comments to the dialog – we want to hear from you.
For more ideas on how you can get involved in the community and start extending your SharePoint profile, download my free ebook ‘Inside the SharePoint Community: Three Strategies for Building Your Personal Brand.’
Get involved! The community needs you!
Guest Author: Christian Buckley
http://buckleyplanet.net
Christian is Director of Product Evangelism at echoTechnology, an Axceler company, where he is responsible for content, strategy, and evangelism. Prior to echo, Christian was part of the Microsoft Managed Services (MMS) SharePoint team, now known as BPOS-D (Business Productivity Online Services-Dedicated). He has also led product and deployment teams in the creation of product lifecycle management and supply chain-integration solutions for some of the world’s largest manufacturing and telecom companies, and co-authored 3 books on software configuration management and defect tracking. You can find him at http://buckleyplanet.net or on Twitter at @buckleyplanet
- SharePoint Community Events Need You: How You Can Get Involved - Part 1
- The SharePoint Community Needs You To Be Social: How You Can Get Involved - Part 2
- The SharePoint Community Needs More Content: How You Can Get Involved - Part 3
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Great list Christian. I would add two more forums to your list:
Stump the Panel
SharePoint Discussions (Yahoo group managed and moderated by Mindsharp) unfortunately don’t have a link as I cannot access it from where I work (envision working with one hand tied behind your back)
The one thing I might argue is getting certified. As a former IT Manager I do think that certifications have a place if you have the experience to back them up. For someone that has been working with SharePoint less than a year I don’t see a lot of value in getting certified.
Granted there are exceptions to that but I think they are going to be relatively rare.
And to be honest after taking and passing both the 2007 Admin tests in the same day recently I didn’t feel like either test was a good indication of my (or anyones) knowledge of SharePoint.
Thanks Jay. I agree that certification is not for everyone, but its an option as a way to get better plugged into the community. And I will definitely expand the list to include both Stump the Panel and SharePoint Discussions (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/sharepointdiscussions/)
Jay — I am going to add your 2 items to the ebook, and want to mention your name (and anyone else who makes a suggestion that gets added to the ebook). I’ll add your name and blog — let me know your twitter ID and I’ll include it, as well)
Thanks Christian!
A frustration I have with the certifications is that they are all non-end user oriented. There’s enough depth available with OOB capabilities that I think it would be beneficial for them to offer more of a Power User type of certification that doesn’t go into the server and programming side of things.
Actually it looks like there is a certification exam for end users associated with the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) 2010 path that is in development.
http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mos.aspx#certifications
The best way to also accomplish things like this is for the community to work together to determine effective ways of qualifying power users.
I was hoping to see this engaged in full swing after NothingButSharePoint had been released but it’s certainly something that many people are doing right now. Training companies that specialize in SharePoint already have their own programs for end user/super user scenarios and I know many consultant organizations, or internal organizations have their own super user achievement/certification programs as well.
There are a couple challenges. The biggest one in my opinion follows:
Since many of the certification programs that exist for SharePoint super users are created for specific companies in specific verticals (manufacturing, government/federal etc) – who also have a specific level of SharePoint Maturity – the programs, or tests, or types of certification really do vary by quite a bit and often are heavily specialized.
For one organization document management questions and a document management feature driven test might be far more relevant than one that gets into say effectively utilizing SharePoint Designer. Obviously from a vertical perspective the influences change as well. Heavily regulated industries will have questions around what is acceptable/appropriate usage in SharePoint as well as the technical driven ones.
My recommendations of what we can all do RIGHT NOW (regardless of what MS and others do):
1. Together with many other people/partners we all need to come up with a complete listing of what things we could test super users or end users on. This identification and definition phase is key for us to be able to build out effective tests in the community. Even if it never gets stamped by Microsoft if it makes sense and is valuable then anyone can leverage it internally to help optimize SharePoint usage. (Or just guide training.)
2. Build out and share (freely) tests, questions, and exercises for each identified area or topic of interest for end users/super users.
(Keep in mind that by sharing the ‘answers’ at this point you run into significant risks of ‘cheating’ for the certification. So it depends on what your real goal with the certification was. In my opinion the advantage is leveraging it internally at an enterprise, but perhaps as the industry matures it’s also important to denote end users/site administration specialists. For that you will want to look at my fourth recommendation.)
3. Implement across many organizations these tests, questions, and exercises and share the results over time. Not just the initial poll but follow ups in 3 or 6 months to see if the tests and ‘certification’ should still be valid or requires a change/update.
4. Engage Microsoft and other key training partners to make it a true certified exam.
At this point we have the data, and experience (not to mention exposure) to directly influence certification providers in this space. The reality is that this knowledge (how end users should/do use SharePoint) is only available through current partners, and community members. At this point it’s my recommendation that the questions get revamped and you have a very small group (who knows the answers etc) create the ‘final’ series of exams or single exam for this. Now the chances of ‘cheating’ are much lower and it can be seen as a reliable certification mechanism in the industry.
Just a couple quick thoughts but perhaps this will help spin off a greater discussion. Anyone willing to take up the torch and lead facilitating this? I know I am more than willing to contribute and last time I posted a tweet around this got quite a bit of feedback from other people interested.
Hi all,
I’m so glad to see there is more interest in this type of certification (official or not). I have talked about this at length within my organization, and I mentioned it to Mark Miller at SPBPC in DC in August (he indicated that he knew of interest from users and from Microsoft, but that someone really needed to just “own” the project and get it going). Richard, you heard me chatting w/ “Calgary Jay” about it at the conference and offered some of those concerns you mentioned here. I certainly understand the challenges and the fact that Microsoft may not see such a certification as a money maker for them, but I feel strongly that SOME type of certification for “the rest of us” would be highly beneficial. End users are the key to success when it comes to SharePoint. Since it’s the Intranet Managers or super power users at companies that need to actually BUILD the sites out in order to get traction from users, it would be wonderful to have a way to test and certify what we’ve learned and that we possess the knowledge and skills required for advanced management of SharePoint.
Think about it- we don’t graduate from college without passing some exams and writing some papers. We can’t easily get a job that requires a college degree if we can only say, “yeah, I sat through four years of college classes.” We need to show the diploma that you can only get when you have the grades that were generated from our attendance plus papers plus exams. We needed to PROVE our knowledge, not just show up to class. I strongly feel that permissions for Design/Full Control/ Site Collection Ownership should not be handed out in good faith. We ideally would test and prove that people KNOW how to carefully use those powerful permissions.
I am desperately seeking a certification for my site admins/power users so I can have a way to determine if they’ve truly learned what they’ve been taught. While I personally would love an “official” certification “proving” my own expertise w/ OOB SharePoint, I care far more right now about having a solid way to test my site admins. I started writing up questions for my own test, but I haven’t had the time/resources to build a nice, interactive, answer-checking exam.
Mindsharp is the only group I know of that has put a lot of money into developing a training and testing combo in their UserVersity. While I am very intrigued by what they’ve done (and we may very well use them for our site admin certifications), I would love something free built by the community OR an exam we would pay for that would be recognized by Microsoft.
FYI: Since I truly have a growing need for certifications at work, I am currently planning for the following:
- a group of “intranet specialists” who are our true power users, willing and able to spend 5-10% of their time learning, practicing, and growing their site owner knowledge and sharing their expertise out to teams who need support. These folks will form a small group, and they will be required to complete the “power user” and “site owner” certifications from Mindsharp’s UserVersity (for lack of a better option).
- a group of “site admin exceptions.” They have the skills (or should) but don’t have the time to participate in an ongoing group of intranet specialists and loan out their services to other teams. These people will need to pass a basic certification test- a homemade list of “tasks” they need to complete on a blank test site (demonstrating their ability to create lists/views/design pages, and manage permissions and create alerts). Once I check their work and verify they seem competent to manage their own team sites, they can have “full control” permissions for their designated sites.
Until now, it’s been all about training and no way to “certify,” which has sadly left me with a bunch of well-intentioned folks who *want* to learn…but the majority don’t practice, and wind up coming back to me again and again with the same questions and requiring ongoing hand-holding for the same site admin tasks. I know who I think is having trouble and probably shouldn’t be ceritified, but it’s much easier to have a standard system and be able to tell management, “John Smith doesn’t have full control on your site because he hasn’t passed our certification exam. If he needs to be your site admin, please make sure he has the necessary time to learn and take the test, and then we will be happy to grant him the permissions he needs.” I dream of being able to say that… :)
ANYWAY- I would be *gulp* happy to lead this effort and work with you fine folks in the community to build out a certification (set) of tests that could be used by anyone out there.
I wonder if a community wiki would be a good way to get the ball rolling and start brainstorming what the questions should be, what tracks would be logical, what answers would be acceptable, etc. Thoughts? Richard- is there a way to do this w/in nothingbutsharepoint.com?
Kat :)
> I would be *gulp* happy to lead this effort
Kat – We have a winner, folks! Step right up and claim your prize… one year of purgatory, trying to lead a herd of cats and get consensus.
I’ll help in anyway you need: create a management area, setup a wiki, act as provider of resources. Think of it as your project, with me as your rolodex and sponsor, with Christian and Richard as your conscience..
How would you like to start? — Mark
Uh-oh. A winner…or a sucker? :)
Thanks so much, Mark! Since this will be my first community endeavor, I’ll take all the help I can get! If you can get me started w/ a SP site, I can create the shell, and we can start inviting in the volunteers that have replied to Richard’s tweet.
I’m excited!! :)
We’re closing in on getting NothingButSharePoint.com opened. I’ll take this on under the EUSP section as a wiki and you’ll be leading the charge. Ping me in email with your live id and unique identifier for live id and we’ll go from there.
If you will write an article on what you are trying to accomplish, what your goals are and how other people in the community can help you, we’ll jumpstart your exposure.
This should be fun. — Mark
Christian, excellent list that I will be recommending to my clients.
One suggestion I have is: Start your own community! Perhaps you live in an area where there’s no SharePoint Saturday or user group within a reasonable distance; or perhaps you’re a member of a special-interest group that needs some representation (I’m thinking of the IT folks from the not-for-profit orgs I’ve worked with over the years who have unique needs and ask similar questions, and would really benefit from being able to connect with each other).
Thanks for posting this!
I do refer to this in the ebook — join (or start) a user group at work, join (or start) a user group in your community. But I think your idea of starting a group with a specific focus is an excellent suggestion — it could be something industry-specific, such as health care, or role-specific, such as project management. You might get others onboard more quickly if they know it is context of their business area. Thanks for the suggestion!
Great list, Christian. I’ve taken action on two of your steps:
1. I created a LinkedIn Group for SharePoint Speakers (thanks for your contributions). Anyone who has spoken or is scheduled to speak publicly on SharePoint (at a SharePoint Users Group, SharePoint Saturday, or any of the larger conferences; or as a trainer, instructor, teacher of SharePoint) is welcome to join the conversation. http://linkd.in/azuHHO
2. I’ve begun the preliminary step of starting a users group within my company. I’m “The SharePoint Guy” here, so leading such a group will (a) let me know how the company IS using it; (b) show me how they WANT to use it; and (c) generate some projects to move its adoption forward. I’m looking forward to it. I created a couple of flyers, created a subsite on our portal, and will be posting an announcement in the near future. Thanks for the great idea!
Excellent! I was just over on LinkedIn during downtime here at TechEd in Berlin, reading through the latest comments. And I’m going to add that site to my list in the ebook, as well (mentioning you, of course)
The ebook has been updated with additions thanks to Sadie, Jim Bob, and Jay. You can find it at http://www.axceler.com/Portals/0/ebooks/BuildingYourPersonalBrand.pdf
Had a major brainstorm this weekend, and am adding a dozen more items to the ebook this week, including a 4th strategy. I won’t be renaming the ebook, though — it’ll be a super-secret inclusion for the same low, low price (of free).
I’m so glad I stumbled onto this article! I come from the open-source dev world, specifically the LAMP stack and am used to thriving communities found for Ubuntu, Drupal, etc. I am new to Sharepoint and have been having a hard time finding the go-to resources for SharePoint – probably because it’s so ubiquitous there are just a mind-boggling load of sites jockying for good search position on the topic and frankly I haven’t found Microsoft’s official channels very user friendly…or perhaps they’re just not very beginner friendly.
So far I’ve found the ‘Stump the Panel’ forum most helpful. I’ve also found a site you didn’t mention very useful: http://www.sharepointoverflow.com/
Thank you for putting this article together!