It's been a while since I last blogged, but rather than worry about it I'll just have to live with it! As always, too much to do and never enough time.
I have spent some time trying to get users engaged in using SharePoint recently. This is never easy as the change in culture required is pretty big. I often wonder whether we should just decide to switch off shared drive write access and force users to use SharePoint instead. Will they then eventually see the benefits or will we alienate them?
I ran two SharePoint Technology Overview sessions, both well attended and I hope well received. I aimed at the "what is SharePoint?" audience to try and engage those who had never used it before. It seemed to work. I wanted them to start thinking about how they might use SharePoint, even for trivial things.
It was a challenge for me, as a developer, to pitch at user level, but I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. Never one to stand in front of a crowd, it surprised me that I was able to talk for 90 minutes without a break! This was kind of outside my comfort zone but I would certainly do it again.
Working for a large company and being one of the key exponents of SharePoint is an interesting place to be. There are a lot of things I want to do with it but it's a struggle to make it happen. We need to take a few risks and get that snowball building momentum. I have a vision for how we should use SharePoint but there are many obstacles in the way, some can be overcome. Others will require persuasion and investment, although in the current climate this will not be easy.
I will be starting on a small scale. My team will hopefully be growing and I can include SharePoint development in my service offering now. Want my team to be skilled in all areas, from consultancy to project management, from development to system testing. They need to be able to build a SharePoint virtual environment and understand how it hangs together. They need to understand it all from a user's point of view. Ideally I want them to be solution architects too.
Is that too much to ask? I don't think so, not if you really want to succeed in SharePoint.
I still spend far too much time trying to play with SharePoint just to see what I can do. Probably too much time :-)
I feel the need to set myself a stretching challenge, something that will allow me to use all of the things I need for the WSS and MOSS MCTS certification.
But for now, I need to clear the backlog of SharePoint projects I have at work. If only one of them was challenging...
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