All posts by Richard

Events, SharePoint

Things Learned at SPTechCon

[Striking a pose with the Hillbilly. Pre clog-off.]

1. The lack of readily available caffeine was kind of a problem,

2. A lot of the attendees we met were about to take the SharePoint plunge, and we salute your courage. But also, learning your way around won’t be that difficult – it only appears that way.

3. Dux was so right when he said we need to stop thinking about SharePoint as a solution and start thinking about it as a platform. (Upon which anything is possible. Almost.)

4. People are totally willing to fill out a survey if you ply them with SD cards

5. The SharePoint Hillbilly is just as nice in person as he seems on his blog. Actually, sometimes he seems cranky on his blog—but then again, when we met him, he’d just won an iPad.

6. Planking has nothing to do with SharePoint. But a lot to do with SharePints.

7. You don’t have to watch Jersey Shore to see a staged fight. Continue reading Things Learned at SPTechCon →

Events, SharePoint, Social Media

SPTechCon’s Top Tweets, Vol. 2

So tweeps at the ‘Con have definitely gotten past the point where I can keep up. Meaning, perchance you tweeted something ah-mazing, and I missed it, and thus you missed your chance to be immortalized here. Mea culpa! Talk to me at tonight’s SharePint–perhaps I’ll let you beat me in a plank-off.

  • @mikegil Best tweet of #sptechcon from my 20 y/o nephew, just lurking: “Everyone here looks like you.” Compliment? Jab? If so, to whom?
  • @BCJonesey: back of @cmcnulty2000 session = tweep-ville, glad I wore my glasses @janishall @mikegil #SPTechCon #Nerds
  • @DougHemminger Just heard @WonderLaura refer to a “G – U – I – D” instead of “Gooid”…Is “Gooid “a developer pronounciation? #SPTechCon
  • @lefteyes: “Everyone likes rainbows and ponies” #SPtechCon
  • @TiffanyWI: All the cool #SharePoint kids are at #sptechcon Continue reading SPTechCon’s Top Tweets, Vol. 2 →

Events, SharePoint, Social Media

SPTechCon’s Top Tweets, Vol. 1

While we aren’t rolling into the ‘Con until tomorrow morning, the party has definitely already gotten started. I know, right? Sounds impossible, and yet a quick search for #sptechcon on twitter says otherwise. Tweets have ranged from the informative recap to the feed-me-seymour to the cheerleader. Below, a few of my favorites:

  • @timferro Great #InfoPath session at #SPTechCon @cwheeler76 ! I now only dislike it rather than my previous outright loathing!
  • @Chomp1313 Loving #sptechcon but lack of chocolate may be a problem
  • @buckleyplanet @gvaro + Lady Gaga meat outfit = #SPTechCon lightning talks tonight at 5pm
  • @sitwalkstand Useful tool for explaining “virtual folders” and metadata in SP is Excel filter feature to create a SP view #sptechcon
  • @lefteyes: The base metaphor for document management is a filing cabinet. Why are we still using 1950 tech to organize info in 2011? #sptechcon Continue reading SPTechCon’s Top Tweets, Vol. 1 →

Events, SharePoint

SPTechCon Boston: 10 Must-Do Extracurriculars

SPTechCon is looming, the SharePoint community is booming, and, here I’m zooming in on a few of the Hub’s not-to-be-missed activites. Because everyone needs a at least a little r&r between sessions. And because my hometown is a pretty swell city—it’s very walkable, aesthetically and gustatorially pleasing, and, yes, crammed with people who sound like extras from The Departed (you can usually identify them by their ever-present liter of Dunkin’ and their well-worn Sox sweatshirts). I’ve divided them by time of day, and kept most of them in or close to the Back Bay, but remember: for all its blessings, Boston is also a city cursed with subways that stop running at 1am, bars that close at 2am and sky-high cab fares.

Morning:

1)      The Banks of the River Charles

a.       Neighborhood(s): all over

b.      Why:  Runners (and walkers and city planners), welcome to paradise. Boston offers many fantastic runs, the most obvious, and picturesque place to run is along the Charles River, which separates Bostonians from Cantabridgians and offers a uninterrupted views of both cities’ skylines. You can hop on and off from almost anywhere, but, if you’re a breakfast sandwich afficianado, you should end at the Boston Common, and proceed to no. 2:

2)      Mike and Patty’s

a.       Neighborhood: Bay Village

b.      Why: This wee slice of a breakfast/luncheonette makes the city’s best sandwiches. This is according to more renowned palates than mine, but you can’t go wrong with the fried green tomato BLT, the bacon and egg fancy (fried egg, cheddar, avocado, caramelized onion), the grilled banana and nutella sandwich and the breakfast torta. Weekends, the line snakes up the cobblestoned street, but on a weekday, you should be fine. Continue reading SPTechCon Boston: 10 Must-Do Extracurriculars →

SharePoint, Women In Tech

Stories from the WIT Trenches: Sadie Van Buren

[This is the first in a series of posts exploring the personal stories of real women in technology. Back in April I wrote a bit about my own history, and about the problems, systemic and idiosyncratic, plaguing women who chose  a career in most sectors of the tech world. Writing it was surprisingly cathartic, and the response to it was powerful enough to make me want to push it further. Every woman in tech overcame at the very least statistical odds to be here; this blog series aims to find out why, and what they found along the way. I’m so thrilled that we get to kick off with Sadie Van Buren, whom many of you already know as a dynamic voice in the SharePoint community, and as the author of the ingenious SharePoint Maturity Model. If reading Sadie’s story inspires any of you to tell yours, please feel free to email me.]

My name is Sadie Van Buren and I’m a Senior Software Engineer at Blue Metal Architects in Watertown, MA.  I’m a Microsoft SharePoint consultant and have been working with that product since late 2002.  Over the past nine years I’ve participated in about 50 implementations of the product and have acted as project manager, business analyst, developer, and solution architect.

1)      Can you take us back to your “eureka!” moment—a particular instance or event that got you interested in technology?

I’m not sure there was a specific moment.  One of my brothers gave me a new Commodore Vic-20 when I was a kid, and it may have been a disappointment to him that I mainly used it to play Q-bert.  Continue reading Stories from the WIT Trenches: Sadie Van Buren →

Events, SharePoint

Around the World in 139 Days: Further SharePoint Vacations

[Oh yes, this view can be yours]

In honor of our own city’s upcoming, much anticipated Dux Raymond Sy/Jared Spataro-keynoted SPTechCon, and because the crop of international SharePoint fests just keeps mushrooming, I’ve put together another globetrot. Whether you’re hankering for swan boats and Sox games (.500? I’ll take it), hefeweizen and street art, waffles and, er, other Belgian things, or straight-up networking with the grand poo-bahs, this list will scratch that itch. The end of it puts us squarely into fall, which I can’t. Gahh. No. I refuse to think about it. Warm weather, where art thou?

Office Life, Programming

Scrum Debates: Research as a Task

The concept of scrum can seem very simple in theory. As stories come in, the team analyzes them, and then story points them based on the complexity of the story. It couldn’t be simpler. But in practice, it is rarely this simple. The problem is that sometimes you won’t know just how complex a story is until after you’ve played around with it a bit. At my company, this is a problem we face almost every time we meet to story point backlog items.

Usually, a bit of uncertainty is fine. That’s the entire reason teams usually story point with a non-linear scale (one the popular scales being: 1,2,3,5,8,13,20,40,100). If a story could be anywhere from a 30 to a 40, then just give it a 40 (assuming we’re using the popular scale). Even if the story ends up closer the 30, there’s probably some other story that was more complex than its story point implied and it all generally averages out. But every now and then, there’s just too much uncertainty. A story might be anywhere from a 5 to a 50 depending on factors you won’t know until you’ve looked into it a bit and done some research. Continue reading Scrum Debates: Research as a Task →

Social Media

Facebook Pages for Businesses: Why You Need One, and What Not to Do

The other night, my dad called me to ask for my opinion on a crucial social media question: to Facebook Page or not to Facebook Page. You see, a year ago, my aunt started a raw dairy creamery on our farm in Vermont, and now that things are really picking up, my dad was wondering if establishing a web presence might be a smart idea (right now, new customers come only via word of mouth and CSAs).

“Of course!,” I told him. “Of course GammelGarten should have a web presence. In fact, it should have at least two—a website for evergreen information, and a Facebook page for daily updates and fan interaction.”

The way I see it, a Facebook page is  where a business can loosen its tie, kick off its loafers and host an informal shindig with no guest list. It’s a place for conversations, not broadcasts, and for questions and opinions, not press releases. And it is, or should be, the amusement park to Twitter’s slide—a place where visitors can enjoy multiple activities over a longer stretch of time and leave with a teddy bear and a fried-dough high.

This is hardly a revolutionary thought—and yet, a tour through the Facebook Pages of 5 of the biggest tech organizations reveals it’s also not yet a ubiquitous one. While some organizations consistently engage and give back to their communities, others let spam proliferate and tabs go unused. Below, 5 snapshots.

1)     WordPress Continue reading Facebook Pages for Businesses: Why You Need One, and What Not to Do →

Social Media

The 9 Things a B2B Should Be Doing on Twitter

Twitter is closing in on its 5thanniversary, which is kinda old in contempo-startup world.  Even though I jumped on the blogging bandwagon fairly early, and the Tumblr bandwagon almost immediately, I spent about the first four years of Twitter’s existence scoffing at it. I was one of the myriad “twitter-is-for-c-list-celebutards-oggling-eachothers’-french-toast-stix” kvetchers. And then, I graduated, got a job and realized that, as far as the B2B world is concerned, Twitter is maybe the best thing since trade shows.

Why? Because it humanizes a sector that is inherently barricaded. Those French toast stix pix? Humanizing. Because B2B employees eat breakfast too, yo.

But seriously, what Twitter provides is a direct path to both the direct customer and the indirect end-user.  It provides a steady and constantly updated stream of industry news, gossip and watercooler fodder. It provides guppies with a way to swim with sharks. It’s like a virtual bar crawl where cred isn’t a credential. Continue reading The 9 Things a B2B Should Be Doing on Twitter →