Today I attended my first SharePoint Saturday
event here in Portland. For those who don't know, SharePoint Saturday
is a concept started a few years back where a group of committed people
in the SharePoint community decided to hold a one-day user group meeting
on a Saturday, complete with multiple sessions and various vendors, all
at no cost to the attendees. This idea has spread world-wide, all
community-led and vendor-sponsored, targeted to share information among
professionals and/or end-users focusing on various angles and aspects of
SharePoint.
As someone who has been involved at
various levels with Lotus user group meetings in various locations, I couldn't
help but compare the two types of meetings and compare/contrast what I
observed. What I found is that if you filter out the technology,
they were pretty similar. The people organizing the events are doing
so for the good of the community, and they do an incredibly hard job to
make everything look effortless to the attendees. Vendors sponsor
the meetings so that the attendees don't have to spend anything. The
speakers all have various backgrounds and expertise areas, and they're
spending their own time and money to share what they know with others.
They're passionate about their technology, much like the Lotus professionals
are passionate about theirs. There were even vendor giveaways at
the end that made hanging around worth it.
It's tempting to say that the
Lotus community is special and different, and that other technologies don't
have the same sense of "family" that we see and experience. Yes,
we *do* have a strong sense of community, and I have a hard time imagining
what my life would be like without the people I interact with on a daily
basis. But moving into the SharePoint world doesn't mean that you
have to give up being part of a community of like-minded technology professionals.
Yes, you *do* need to start building your network again, and it will
feel different for a while. But if you put forth the effort, I'll
contend that you can and will have that same experience with the SharePoint
community (or whatever technology you've moved to) as you had with the
Lotus community.
I'll admit that I struggle to "leave
behind" a reputation and expertise level earned over 15 years. The
new learning curve is steep, and I wonder if I'll ever be as good at SharePoint
(or at least have the same level of involvement and success) as I've been
with Notes and Domino. But sitting in sessions today, I found myself
starting to drift into thoughts of "I wonder if I could put together
a session of..." I know I can speak to groups... I know I can
do what I've done with my Lotus speaking and writing... "just share
what you've learned and figured out". I don't have to know more
than all the experts. I just need to be willing to share what I do
know, and someone else will always be at the same point I'm at... getting
started, trying to figure out what's going on, and looking for someone
to explain things in an understandable format.
And once that happens, it's like nothing
ever changed...
If nothing else today, I came away with
a renewed appreciation for all of you who take on the challenge of organizing
a user group meeting on the scale that we see them occur today. I'll
forever be appreciative to Paul
Mooney, Warren
Elsmore, and the dedicated group
of ILUG and UKLUG organizers that changed the definition of what a user
group meeting could be, and for letting me be a part of it all.
Book Review - What I've Learned... So Far Part III: Banjos, Boats And Butt Dialing by Mike Ball
Mon, May 20th 2013 6:52a Thomas Duff I was recently offered the book What
I've Learned... So Far Part III: Banjos, Boats & Butt Dialing
by Mike Ball for reading and reviewing. I know I end up turning down most
of the offers I get for review copies because I'm so far behind in reading
and reviewing, but it's hard to turn down a book that can somehow link
banjos, boats, and butt dialing in a title. It also helped in that he delivered
on it.
I've never heard of Mike Ball, but it's
probably easiest to think of him [read] Keywords:
72
Book Review - Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection by A. J. Jacobs
Sun, May 19th 2013 10:13a Thomas Duff I've always been amused by people who
are health fanatics following some particular trend or fad that promises
to fix every issue known to medical science. A. J. Jacobs decided to follow
all the health advice he could find for a year, and the result is his book
Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection.
With the type of humor displayed in his prior books, Jacobs shows just
how impossible it is to follow all the health advice out there (or even
a small part of it). [read] Keywords:
123
Sun, May 19th 2013 9:10a Thomas Duff Nate Silver is the current rock star
of statistics and predictions based on the overwhelming accuracy of his
forecasts in the 2012 election results. His book The
Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't
does a good job in explaining the fundamentals of statistics, probability,
and predictions. If society understood these concepts, we'd spend far less
time arguing from polarized positions "supported by facts"...
Contents:
A Catastrophic Failure of [read] Keywords: notes
network
107
Book Review - Learning to Play With a Lion's Testicles: Unexpected Gifts From the Animals of Africa by Melissa Haynes
Wed, May 15th 2013 8:45p Thomas Duff This book had me in tears, both by laughter
and emotional impact... Learning
to Play With a Lion's Testicles: Unexpected Gifts From the Animals of Africa
by Melissa Haynes. The title was enough to intrigue me into considering
it for reading and reviewing. It didn't take long before I knew it was
a great decision.
Haynes went to South Africa to volunteer
on a wild game reserve, seeking to find some perspective and purpose in
her life. What sounded like an adventure quickly turned in [read] Keywords:
108
Book Review - Judaism For Dummies by Rabbi Ted Falcon PhD and David Blatner
Sun, May 12th 2013 7:40p Thomas Duff This was a book that I had put on my
library "to be read" list, but decided that getting it via Amazon
Vine was faster and better... Judaism
For Dummies by Rabbi Ted Falcon
PhD and David Blatner. I felt this was a *perfect* example of what Dummies
titles are good for... context on a complex topic, enough so that you know
where to go for more information. Toss in a fair amount of humor along
the way, and I had a great time reading this (while learning lots).
Contents:
Introduction [read] Keywords:
115
Book Review - Tell No Lies by Julie Compton
Mon, May 6th 2013 8:40p Thomas Duff Tell
No Lies by Julie Compton is the
first of a series (two so far) of novels centered around District Attorney
Jack Hilliard and his fellow lawyer and one-time lover Jenny Dodson. That's
"one-time" as in "slept with her once", but it happened
at a time and under conditions that made the two of them front-page news.
Dodson was put on trial for murder, facing the death penalty. Hilliard
was her alibi, as the night of the murder was the night he visited her
house. He's convinced that [read] Keywords:
162
Book Review - How Data Science Is Transforming Health Care by Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides, Julie Steele, and Colin Hill
Sun, Apr 28th 2013 2:24p Thomas Duff How
Data Science Is Transforming Health Care
by Tim O'Reilly, Mike Loukides, Julie Steele, and Colin Hill is not a large
book... in fact, it's only 26 pages. But it's a solid 26 pages that makes
the case for how health care can (and will) be transformed by the use of
massive and detailed data on patients and outcomes. Given that you can
download it for free on Amazon, there's no reason *not* to give it a read.
It's enough to shift your view of how health care technology can be much
[read] Keywords:
131
Book Review - Storm Kings: The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers by Lee Sandlin
Sat, Apr 27th 2013 10:09p Thomas Duff Tornados... powerful, fearful, unpredictable...
and a source of controversy over the years as people tried to figure out
what they are (or if they even existed). Lee Sandlin tells the story of
those who first tried to solve the puzzle in his book Storm
Kings: The Untold History of America's First Tornado Chasers.
I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, but it could well
be due to incorrect expectations rather than the fault of the content or
quality of the writing. I'll [read] Keywords: connections
117
Book Review - Six Years by Harlan Coben
Tue, Apr 23rd 2013 6:06a Thomas Duff I picked up Harlan Coben's latest novel
Six
Years from the library a week
or so ago. I enjoy his books, and I was looking forward to a few days of
leisurely enjoyment. What I got instead was a book I had a hard time putting
down, as Coben kept me guessing right up to the end. Granted, I read a
lot and don't necessarily do a good job of being able to remember plots
and story lines of books I read even six months ago. Still, this is one
of the best non-Bolivar novels he's written.
[read] Keywords:
150
Book Review - Calculated In Death by J. D. Robb
Sat, Apr 13th 2013 8:49p Thomas Duff Yay... another J. D. Robb (aka Nora
Roberts) novel... Calculated
In Death. This time, Dallas is
tagged on a woman's death that looks to be a mugging gone bad. Her body
is found on the street at the base of a set of stairs leading up to a building
in the midst of remodeling. But Dallas and Peabody find evidence that she
was actually killed inside, and the street scene was staged as a diversion.
Further investigation reveals that in her job as an auditor, she had just
been given three new [read] Keywords:
