Is This Blog For You?
So, who is this blog intended for? You will have to decide for yourself whether this blog resonates with you, but here’s a short description of who we designed it for. You are constantly looking for ways to do things more quickly and efficiently. You like to break processes down into their component steps and ask yourself if there’s a better way to do what you’ve been doing up to now. You’ve learned to “measure twice, cut once” – in other words, that planning pays big dividends. At the same time, you have a disposition to action. You don’t just want to sit and plan, you want to put your plan into action and see results, quickly.
You may work in a company that uses Sharepoint, and you’ve heard a rumor that it can do more than just store documents. Or, you may never have heard of Sharepoint, but you’re looking for a way to get the computer to do more work for you. You may even be using Sharepoint in your work right now, but your Sharepoint farm administrator calls himself a Sharepoint Architect even though he really doesn’t understand Sharepoint at all, and he won’t let you use Sharepoint Designer, so you’re looking for ways to get your tasks done in Sharepoint despite the restrictions you are under. And if you’re using Sharepoint at work, its entirely possible that your employer can’t afford to provide Sharepoint training, or doesn’t think its needed, or thinks its only for IT folks.
You’ve read “The Four Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss, or “Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It” by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, and you’d like to accomplish high quality results in your job in less time. Maybe you’re hoping to improve your Sharepoint skills so you can apply for a promotion in your own company, or land a better-paying job at another company. You’re passionate about having computers do as much of the work of your business as they can, and you can’t figure out why everybody around you doesn’t feel the same way. You have more time than money, and you’d like to have more of both.
How We Will Help You Become a Sharepoint Power User Quickly and Affordably
1. Frequent blog articles, on topics ranging from specific Sharepoint or solution-design skills to thoughts about life and work, and what it takes to move from Industrial Age thinking and culture to Knowledge Age thinking and culture.
2. Audio podcasts that you can take with you while you jog, work out, drive, or accompany your wife to her chiropractic appointment.
3. Video podcasts that show you step by step how to accomplish specific things using Sharepoint and other free or very affordable tools, as though you were looking over our shoulder. We don’t intend to make them look polished and professional – we want you to feel like you’re sitting down with a friend who is showing you the latest thing he learned about Sharepoint or some other tool, and feel his excitement. So forgive the ums, the mistakes, the backtracking and the interruptions. The less polishing we have to do, the more real content we can deliver.
4. Question Corner. Give us your Sharepoint questions, and we’ll answer them or try to find someone who can, or at least try to point you in the right direction to find an answer. We don’t claim perfection, so we may not answer every single one, but we’ll certainly give it a try.
5. Project Corner. We believe that you don’t own a skill until you use it in a real-life situation. (In fact, we believe you don’t own a skill until you can teach it to someone else, but more about that later.) So, we’ll ask you to submit real-life work situations, and we’ll model a possible Sharepoint solution to solve the problem or streamline the process. We want you to see how you can use these skills in your everyday life.
6. Dojo. Ah, the dojo. Our pride and joy. We don’t think anyone’s seen anything quite like it yet. More on the dojo later.
7. Practice sites. We will make available at a very affordable cost a place where you can practice Sharepoint and build actual Sharepoint solutions. (Sorry, we can’t do this one for free, because there is definitely a cost associated with this one, and we’re not independently wealthy.)
8. Solution examples. No promises, but one thing we would love to do is have you share with us some of the solutions you have built, so others can see how they work and get ideas from them.