Tag: Collaboration

Long overdue update

Time to knock the dust off the blog. I only have 1 post on the year. But I have good reasons. LOTS of change at work and home. Let’s replay everything month-by-month.

March

In March I was given the opportunity to manage the Trek Helpdesk. My plan was to combine the Enterprise Collaboration team (team of 1: me) with the Helpdesk (team of 5). There were a lot of synergies (see what I did there?) between the types of work the two teams were doing. I was trying to get people to use collaboration tools, but was limited in my reach. Now with the Helpdesk I can educate far more people about collaboration tools while marrying that with even better technology experiences (read: hardware). We started testing all kinds of new platforms: tablets, touchscreen laptops, ultrabooks, high-end desktops. Very cool, slick stuff.

April

Dawn and I welcomed our third son to the family; Shane. Check out photos here: http://1drv.ms/1zTEv5V. We couldn’t be happier. That said, 3 kids is a LOT of work.

May

May was a particular busy month for me. Filmed a pretty cool case study for Microsoft. Check it out:

In May I also got to migrate Trek’s sister company Trek Travel to SharePoint Online. We moved about 180GB of content using Sharegate‘s Migration tool from their on-premises fileshare to SharePoint online. Worked like a charm!

What I’m especially proud of is how fast SharePoint has permeated their day-to-day work. The other day one of their Mac users called in and their laptop had to be rebuilt. One of the helpdesk guys asked “how much content do you have stored on the laptop?” Know what the user said? “None, it’s all on SharePoint.” Score one for SharePoint!

June

Even busier month! Traveled to Vista, CA and New York all in the span of 9 days. Needless to say my sleep schedule was busted.

Electra bikes is based in Vista. I took Ben with me so we could take inventory and get a handle on the place. The office is really chill and all about having fun. The weather was awesome too.

I visited NYC for the first time. I was invited to speak at Microsoft’s “Future of Work” event. The panel of invitees included Jamba Juice, Delphi, Herman Miller, Trek, and a couple of industry analysts. We all gave our take on what the future of work will look like and how we’ll get there.

I got to stay in Times Square for a few nights. Here’s the view from my hotel room:

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July

A good chunk of family time in July. I actually started drafting this blog post in July…

I started ordering Surface Pro 3’s in July and the feedback has been outstanding. The best part about the Pro 3 is the keyboard cover. We experimented with the Dell Venue 11 but the biggest complaint was the keyboard cover. Users said it just wasn’t going to work tactile-wise no matter how much they liked the tablet itself.

August

My wife and I took the family to Florida.  For the last 3 years we’ve gone down to Siesta Key. There’s nothing to do but sit on the beach and watch the day go by.

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Technology-wise I’ve been focusing on two things at home: decreasing my Cable bill and scanning all our paperwork. Both will be the subject of upcoming blog posts.

September

So far this month the biggest focus has been on Records Management (RM). It’s been awhile since I’ve had to do any work around RM. SharePoint 2013 has come a long way with RM. I’ve also noticed that the SharePoint community doesn’t have a lot in terms of resources so I’ll be posting about that soon too.

Finally, I had the opportunity to visit Herman Miller’s Design Yard last week. They take things to a whole different level. They’re all about making the most of a space’s purpose and driving every ounce of value from that space. I know I’ll never look at a conference room the same way again.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

I hope to get back in the swing of posting regularly again. See you soon.

Week of January 21 update (late)

Due to a publishing glitch this post didn’t make it out last week. So pretend it’s last week and we won’t have any problems. Winking smile

On Wednesday (January 23rd) I presented my SharePoint/Yammer Case Study presentation to the UW E-Business Consortium. I got some really interesting questions and folks seemed genuinely interested in what I was talking about.

One thing that struck me from the start was that many of the decision makers in the room – the folks that are responsible for setting the collaboration and social strategies at their organizations – don’t have Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. This is akin to your dentist not having gone to dental school. I can’t stress this enough: If you’re responsible for setting policy or direction on something at your organization you need to know something about the tool. The best way to learn these tools is to actually use them. There is no Easy button here.

That Dilbert comic pretty much sums it up…

Some other points that struck me:

  • Governance and Compliance is a big point for most – everyone is paralyzed by making a decision because they’re concerned things will get out of hand, or worse, no one will use the tools. Understandable but I’d say the concerns are generally overthought.
  • Cisco vs. Lync runs RAMPANT! A lot of organizations – mine included – are using Lync for IM but Cisco for all the other communication tools (tele-presence, phone, etc.). I think most people overlook Lync as a true Unified Comm tool.
  • Collaboration tools are being used by almost everyone, every where – at least it’s good to know we’re not stuck in the 1990’s anymore with Outlook and File Shares.
  • Confidential vs. Secure vs. “I-don’t want-you-to-know-what-I-know” is a pretty common theme – I even heard one organization utter the comment “We don’t want our internal competitors choosing a tool before we choose it.” Aren’t you all on the same team?!

At the end of the day, we’re all in the same boat dealing with the same problems so you can at least take solace in the fact you’re not alone. Don’t be afraid to take some calculated chances on these tools. Start small and work your way out. Never underestimate the power of the Proof-of-Concept.