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SharePint at WPC12
One of my favorite weeks of the year is coming up – the Microsoft WorldWide Partner Conference. One of the best meet-ups of the week has always been the SharePint event. This year should be no exception.
This year, the Microsoft SharePoint Marketing Group has worked with Pingar and 3 other software companies, Axceler, Rackspace, and Idera, to host a meet-up for partners that work within the SharePoint ecosystem during the week of WPC12.
You know what they say… SharePoint by Day, SharePINT by Night!
This year SharePint will be on Tuesday, July 10, from 6-8PM at the Madison Avenue Pub, in Toronto.
WPC is a huge event, and while there are some important sessions for SharePoint partners, the real significant effort at WPC should be about meeting with other partners and working to grow your company’s network and connections. I think this is why the WPC Connect portion of WPC has grown to be (at certain times of the week) the busiest part of the conference. While it can be hard to find open time to meet with specific partners, at least SharePoint partners understand where they can meet their SharePoint peers and enjoy some good conversation.
If you haven’t already registered for WPC12, please do so at http://digitalwpc.com.
I’ll be meeting with partners at WPC Connect, attending a couple of the sessions, and hoping to meet everyone at SharePint! If I haven’t already reached out to meet you, please reach out to me and let’s meet at WPC12!
I’m certainly looking forward to an amazing week in Toronto.
SHARE 2012 Conference – SharePoint Business on Deck!
The SHARE 2012 Conference is coming up (April 23-26, Atlanta), and Pingar is a sponsor. I’m looking forward to it because of the focus on business solutions and applications that SHARE has as its primary focus.
It is well past time, in my opinion, for a SharePoint conference that is focused strictly on business-oriented solutions. The speakers and sessions have been selected by a committee of users, and have been curated by The Eventful Group, who has many years of solid conference experience.
As much as I love my SharePoint infrastructure and development friends, I think that the surface area for business solutions on SharePoint is very large and should be recognized as a significant and valuable contribution to SharePoint customer implementations.
I’ll be watching the keynotes and sessions to see how many SharePoint business “Roles” are introduced or discussed. I’m not enough of an expert to enumerate the roles that I think should exist for SharePoint business solutions, because I have a feeling that there are many more than I can describe right now. Excluding all developer, IT Pro, and infrastructure roles, I could probably describe 3 or 4 business user roles that need to exist for a “best practices” SharePoint implementation. However, I fear that there really should be 8 or more roles identified and explained. Perhaps, after SHARE 2012, I will be able to put more description behind these roles.
I notice that the folks at Bamboo have proposed a sample schedule for attending SHARE 2012. Niice!
I’m going to make an effort to be sure to see the keynotes from Dux, Michael Sampson, and Gideon Bibliowicz.
There are so many incredible speakers, however, it would be hard to list all of the sessions that I would like to attend.
I’d just like to add that the Pingar booth/kiosk in the exhibitors area will be a great place to talk about business user roles in SharePoint, as well as how business users can benefit from rich information about documents. Yes, the magic that Pingar provides to SharePoint. 
I hope to see you there!
Links
Share 2012 Conference US
Share 2012 Conference US Speakers
SharePoint Reviews
Michael Sampson Currents
Bamboo and Share 2012 Conference
Video – Martin Fifield – Nomadic Software
I was exploring a little bit with my video camera while at MSFT Wordwide Partner Conference 2011 (#WPC11), and I ran into Martin Fifield of Nomadic Software. Kind of ironic that he was in a booth with his companies name on it, as if he had planned on being there, but perhaps his family isn’t constantly nomadic, but only periodically.
Nomadic Software provides middleware to being information and data to mobile devices. The also create mobile applications, but they’re real magic is in the connections to line of business systems.
We spoke for just a few minutes, and it seems to me that he is approaching the confusion and the dynamic nature of the mobile device market from a good position.
Lars Kolberg – Team Portal at NetConnect ASA
While at WPC 2011, I had some time to sit down with Lars Kolberg (VP Sales), and Pal Storehaug (CEO), of NetConnect ASA (Norway).
NetConnect sells a product called Team Portal, which is a hosted version of SharePoint that is dedicated per customer. One element that I really liked about Team Portal is that NetConnect has integrated an application marketplace within the SharePoint instances that they provide to customers. From this application marketplace, customers can rapidly install project management apps, workflow apps, crm apps, etc. Team Portal also has an iPhone client and a desktop client to make accessing and browsing SharePoint sites even more convenient in specific scenarios.
I am not a customer yet, but I will probably need to give this a try. It’s exciting to see that they are including solutions on top of SharePoint in this way.
And, the partner list that they already have is impressive. Brightwork, NewsGator, Nintex, 21apps, Equilibrium, Office Talk, and ELearningForce. Good stuff.
I know that they are looking for additional solutions to add to their marketplace, and so if you are a software company (ISV) that is interested, please reach out to Lars.
Erica Toelle – New Evangelist at Fpweb.net
While at Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 (WPC 2011) this past week, I ran into Erica Toelle (@ericatoelle) and she shared that she had just that day changed roles at Fpweb.net, and has become a SharePoint evangelist for Fpweb.net’s great hosting services and offerings. We recorded a brief video about her role and about what she was expecting from WPC 2011, and here it is. Congratulations, Erica, on your new role, and Good Luck!
SharePint at WPC 2011
It’s the best time of the year again. (If it seems to you that each year has about 5 or 6 ‘best’ times of the year, then, congratulations! – you must be a regular to the blog.)
This time, is the MSFT Wordwide Partner Conference 2011 (WPC). (www.digitalwpc.com | #WPC11)
It’s the time of the year when Microsoft partners of every stripe get together to celebrate the end of twelve months since the previous WPC, and to start anew. They meet together to make all sorts of business deals, to recruit the best people from each other’s organization, and to get an eye and an ear on what their competition is doing to make the big bucks.
Microsoft sets the direction by sharing the marketing direction that they will take for the next twelve months, and this helps the partners understand where Microsoft will be laying down the marketing air cover for the partners.
I expcet that in the SharePoint world, we’ll hear a lot about Office 365, and then some strength around enterprise success stories in large on-premise SharePoint installations.
I hope that there is some new discussion about the strength of the solutions that are being built around SharePoint and that are carrying SharePoint into new green fields around and within and in-between enterprise customers. I’m a firm believer that SharePoint still has a lot of growth remaining in it.
Back to the topic of the blog post, though. One of the best off-the-floor activities of the week is the partner SharePint! A SharePint is a meetup that is arranged at a recreational establishment, and a date and time are published. There usually isn’t a main title sponsor, but from time to time different partners will stand up and supply a prixe or a t-shirt and buy a round of drinks.
Together with the SharePoint product marketing team, I’ve helped arrange the last two WPC SharePint events, and we got our heads together to make it three.
I tweeted an early location last week, but we’ve had to change the location. The SharePint will NOT be held at the YardHouse, but instead will beheld at the Weiland Brewery Underground.
Here are the details:
Weiland Brewery Underground
At the corner of S Flower and 5th Street
underground of the City National Bank Building
Tuesday, July 12 — 5:00-8:00PM
Please stop by and join us. Some partners will have prizes to raffle off, and this is the best place to meet your SharePoint peeps and friends and other contacts in a casual way.
I look forward to seeing you there!
SharePoint Firestarter Event – Tomorrow
I know that I’ve been terrible about updating the blog, so it is probably only my family that is still listening, but I still want to tell the world about the SharePoint Firestarter event that is online Tomorrow. This is really short notice, but …
…Every software company that is thinking of SharePoint as a target platform should have developers and architects attend this online event (or in person if you are based in the Seattle area).
This is a great way to get a new developer or development team up to speed.
Even if you are only THINKING about targeting SharePoint, this collection of classes will give you an idea as to how to orient yourself in your thinking about SharePoint.
SharePoint FireStarter
https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032473308&Culture=en-US
See you online!
What is Your SharePoint Direction?
A Month of (SharePoint) Saturdays
The SharePoint Saturday phenomenon continues to amaze me. Tomorrow morning (today, actually, a SharePoint Saturday will be held in the Oakland/East Bay region, all because two community members decided that they wanted to bring a SharePoint Saturday to this location. They found the space to hold the sessions, they secured speakers and invited companies to sponsor the event, and they are offering the event free to the local community. Anyone can attend. It’s like a mini-SharePoint Conference.
These have been going on for over 12-18 months now, and have been received with more and more success. There certainly is a need within the local communities to provide more SharePoint instruction and stories – SharePoint Saturdays are addressing part of that thirst. You can see the schedule of past SharePoint Saturdays and upcoming events on the website at SharePointSaturday.org.
In an effort to try to follow my own advice and be active in the SharePoint community as a business development exercise, I’m participating in three SharePoint Saturdays this month. — All on the West Coast.
- September 11 — SharePoint Saturday East Bay
- September 18 — SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles
- September 25 — SharePoint Saturday Vancouver
I can’t wait. This is going to be an opportunity to tell the story about SharePoint that I’ve been anxious to tell. I’m an evangelist (but that doesn’t pay the bills for me yet), and I’ve been selling products as a vendor representative for the past 14 years. I’m actually curious to see how different, if at all, my speeches end up being from the company line that I’ve been delivering for the past decade+. Maybe they won’t be at all – but maybe they will.
Come join me on Saturday! See you there.
about.me
Owen Allen
I'm a technologist, an evangelist, and a consultant.
My focus is on the Collaboration and Enterprise Content Management technologies, orbiting around the Microsoft technology stack.
I'm presently at Pingar, and have worked for SharePoint Directions, Microsoft, BroadVision, and a couple of other places.
I'm a founder of the Puget Sound SharePoint Users Group.
I live in Seattle, have 4 kids, and enjoy working and playing.
I'm trying to be a hiker and a good Dad. It's a blast.
