Hi all. I’ve just posted my Best Practices Conference slide deck for the Wicked Problems session, along with the maps that I used during the demonstration. Expect a typically long post really soon now, to delve into much more detail about all of this 🙂

For what it’s worth the conversion to slideshare was a bit wonky, so just contact me if you want a pptx version.

Iframe below too small? Then go here for the demo issue maps

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To quote the brilliant singer Kate Bush, "wow wow wow unbelievable!"

Well, it is all over, and boy what an experience! For those of you who were not aware, I had the honour of attending as well as presenting at the San Diego SharePoint Best Practices conference. I had two topics, but I’ll post a report about those in another post. This post is going to sound like one of those long acceptance speeches at the academy awards as I have to give out kudos’ to all the people who I hung out with.

I sat in on as many sessions as I could, particularly the ones around requirements gathering, information architecture and strategy. It was fascinating that each person who spoke on or around this topic, such as Paul Galvin, Ruven Gotz, myself and Peter, all had varying approaches and I learned something from all of them. Some amazing talent – truly brilliant minds, wonderful speakers and great topics.

Some of the speakers – guys like Robert Bogue and Evan Burfield (above) just leave me in awe. There is not a damn thing that they say that I disagree with. Pretty much any good idea that I have had, Rob has thought of it first and developed it far, far further than I ever have. Just wait until you see his upcoming governance DVD – I’ve seen the mind map and holy freakin’ crap!, the length and breadth of what he has put together will make it an absolute *must have*. I had been working on similar material, but after seeing how far he has taken it, trust me and just buy his DVD – I’m hoping to be a reseller :-). Forget "Sharepoint Shepherd", I humbly bow to the "Governance Godfather – Robert Bogue" (you can license that title from me Rob 🙂 )

Also Rob, if you are reading this I went looking for you at SharePint to jump on your lap and do a fanboy photo (and I was going to risk messing with your hair). Lucky for you I guess, you had left by then and my evil plan was foiled – but Joel wasn’t so lucky 🙂

Mr Oleson – what can I say? I owe him a heck of a lot, as if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have been a presenter at this conference. Joel mate, you were on the phone when I came to say my heartfelt thanks for vouching for me and making this happen. I never crossed your path after that and I feel bad that I never got to. I’m going to get the SharePint photos from Ruven, although Joel, I am sure that your legal people will send me a cease and desist letter for that fanboy photo that I took with you. Mind you, I think there are other photos that you should be more worried about! But hey, what happens on tour, stays on tour right? 🙂

Ben Curry from Mindsharp – you I owe the biggest thanks of all. Conceiver of it all and the heart and soul behind this event. Visionary guy, worked his arse off, willing to risk bringing in several untried and untested relative unknowns like myself. He nailed *exactly* how a best-practice conference needs to be. Although sessions and topics were technical or development centric at times, make no mistake. This was all about headspace and critical thinking, so I was like a kid lost in a candy store.

Gary Lapointe is another person who left a big impression on me. I am well aware of his awesome capabilities and I found him a really down to earth, genuine and humble guy and I really, really wanted to have a beer with and chat to some more. I am totally buying you beers next time.

Paul Galvin. Spent the whole conference saying hello but never really crossing paths properly until the last hour or so. Loved your presentation and enjoyed your insights, regret not having more time to download your brain.

I also enjoyed hanging out with the poms, who seem to deal with satirical aussie humour a little better than the Americans. Andrew Woodward, Phill Duffy, Brett Lonsdale all were great company and good fun. Brett – I look forward to doing good things with Lightningtools and Combined Knowledge.

Then there were the metalheads. Todd Klindt was a riot and its obvious that he was put on this earth to loiter around SharePoint conferences. He had everyone near him in complete stitches. I was not aware of his metal leanings which raised his stock big-time in my book. Therefore, I have made it my personal mission to convert him to Opeth. Todd is actually a bit of a wuss when it comes to the the death vocals, so it’s a little like a Microsoft guy saying they like Linux but have never used anything but Ubuntu. But rest assured, I think I can bring him around 🙂

Also Mike Watson and attendees Anders Rask and Paul Kolasky demonstrated their exquisite taste in music. When pontificating various aspects of SharePoint became tiresome, the conversation seemed to turn to metal music. It’s amazing how much creativity can come out of a conversation like that too. After a few beers, Anders, Mike and I had a great idea for a new educational SharePoint site, and I still kinda liked it in the cold light of day when I was sober again. But I haven’t asked the other two whether they still think its a good idea or whether it was just the beer talking.

But fun and frivolity aside, what was the most satisfying (and exciting) was those moments where you discover your kindred spirits – both speakers and attendees. People who think alike, who’s philosophies and outlook are absolutely aligned in the same "zone" as your own. They may address problems in different ways, and may even be in different SharePoint sub-disciplines. But you just *know* that there is something special there – it is like you all collectively "see" though the same eyes, and the whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts.

So to Ruven Gotz and Peter Serzo, it was an honour to be able to meet with you, watch your presentations and I valued the dialogue very much. Ruven for the record had the best impromptu one-liner of the entire conference. When an audience member suggested an alternative software package to what he used, he replied by saying he’d been married to his wife for 27 years and he was pretty happy with her as well – had the audience in stitches. Peter Serzo dragged a freakin’ piano from the lobby to his session room at 2am and spent another hour practicing. Then the next day he presented half of his conference seated at the piano playing various ditties. Brilliant stuff.

Both of your presentations set off all sorts of light globes in my head, and set the creative juices flowing. I really believe there is the nucleus of something special there and I feel some future collaboration in the very near future.  Andrew Woodward will definitely be a part of it (although he doesn’t know it yet – hehe).

So, who knows? If the feedback from my sessions is good, I might manage to wrangle an appearance at the UK one?

Hi all

I have been extremely quiet on the blogging front lately, because I have been extremely busy, splitting my time between working on my two presentations for the up-coming Best Practices SharePoint Conference, as well as wearing my undies on the outside (ala superman), deep in the bowels of some unhealthy SharePoint farms, nailing various technical and governance issues and helping organisations regain some lost assurance. On top of that, I’ve also been doing a lot of non IT related work in a group facilitation discipline.

I thought it’s about time I emerged from this big mushroom I find myself under to let you know more about what I will be speaking about, as well as some of the other speakers and topics that I really looking forward to. Seriously, we are in the company of giants with this conference. The caliber and quality of the speakers has me wondering what the hell I am doing there!

I mean we have all the "A list" big kids of the SharePoint world there. Gary Lapointe is a freakin’ bona fide superstar! – via his STSADM extensions, he has saved the asses of more SharePoint admins and developers than even Joel has. Robert Bogue is an even better all-rounder than Andrew Symonds (sorry non cricketing countries you won’t get that analogy) and touches on a wider variety of topics than anyone else I have ever come across. Then there the likes of Andrew Woodward, Ben Curry, Bob Mixon, Eric Shupps, fellow metalhead Mike Watson, Ruven Gotz and Todd Bleeker just to name a few!

Somehow I have to squeeze in a beer with all of them yet stay sober enough to present. That’s a tough ask!

Anyway, both of my sessions are in the CIO stream and I think are rather topical given the current financial crisis crap that is happening around the world.

My first session is called "How to avoid SharePoint becoming a wicked problem". This is a pet topic of mine – something that I have spent a lot of time on, and developing new skills in (hence the aforementioned facilitation work). For the record, I didn’t make up the term "wicked problem" – its been a subject of academic research since the term was first coined in the early 1970’s. This session is going to cover a lot of what I have learned on this topic including how to spot SharePoint wickedness early, recognise it for what it is, and apply the *right* sort of tools and techniques to mitigate it.

I do worry that people will find some of my stuff a little too left field, but I do have the results to attest to the value and power of these techniques and I am really looking forward to sharing my methods and comparing with what has worked for other presenters and attendees.

The second topic is on the topic of good old SharePoint Return on Investment (ROI). I’m one of these people that believe most things can be measured or quantified. I’ve always wanted to return to my series on "How to Speak to your CFO" and continue down that road. Given we have entered once in a lifetime era of falling profit, plummeting asset prices, reduced budgets, costlier finance and great uncertainty, my quest for bringing a lasting peace to the cold war between managers and geeks moves to San Diego 🙂

My aim for this session is to allow non SharePoint people to understand where some of the hidden costs are SharePoint, as well as show SharePoint people the basic financial tools for ROI modelling and secondly, I will explain how to build an ROI decision model and provide a scenario that we will try out some different assumptions with.

As for the rest of the veritable *buffet* of topics – where do you start? First up, I am torn between Bill’s "Aligning your Information and Findability Architectures using SharePoint Server 2007 Technologies" and Yoda Bogue’s "Selling Governance in your Organization". If I go to Bill’s session, then I’ll definitely be attending Robert’s Governing Development in SharePoint session.

In the afternoon, it gets even harder! You have "Transform the My Site into an Information Hub" by Mark Eichenberger, Bob Mixon’s "Learn why Taxonomies are the Most Important Part of any Document or Information Asset Management System, How to Facilitate the Government out of Governance by Virgin Carrol and Nuts and Bolts Governance- Practical Application of the Concepts

.. and that’s just day one!

Seriously people, no matter that sort of SharePoint sub disciplines push your buttons, you are going to get extreme value for money here. You will come away with an amazing amount of material that will result in real and tangible cost savings across various areas of the SharePoint realm.

If you live in California or anywhere in the US – there is no excuse 🙂 If *I* have to spend 25+ hours cooped up in  plane just to get there and survive the jet-lag to present, then you should come on down and join the fun.

Hope to see you there!

Paul Culmsee

Just a quick note to say that I’ll be seeing many of you (I hope) in San Diego from Feb 2-4 at the Best Practices SharePoint Conference http://www.sharepointbestpractices.com/. I’ll be talking on a couple of key interest topics for me in the CIO stream – one topic in particular I have worked really hard on over the last few months and I really hope that others find value in it as well – only time will tell eh?

On a much more important note, can anybody recommend some good US beers to try because Bud is freakin’ awful 🙂

cheers

Paul