SharePoint -- Suiting Up for the Sophomore Season

I'm presenting next week on a webcast hosted by Waltham-based KMA ("Knowledge Management Associates"). The venue is called SharePoint the Sophomore Year: Maximizing your investment in SharePoint after initial implementation.

I didn’t know SharePoint when I came on board in my current role and I came on-board to implement SharePoint. The freshman year was about implementing SharePoint 2003 for a business region. SharePoint 2007 was launched in early 2008. You don’t know me so I’ll focus on the ugly and the unscripted. Stay off script, come clean with your failures and people believe you -- even when they know more about SharePoint than they do about me.

Here are some the of the takeaways I'll be sharing:

Centrality: The sophomore year story is around making SharePoint the cat herder’s container of choice. How do we unify and rally around our mutual interconnectedness? It begins with shared experiences all employees cycle through. I count three: bi-weekly pay dates, bi-monthly staff meetings, and logging into SharePoint. You could set your watch to this. That's a big arrow in the quiver of the enterprise cat-herder.

Utilization: No ability counts more in consulting than billability. For cost centers like KM grunts and SharePoint administrators this means designing systems with a user focus. A user focus for us is about architecting SharePoint by actions – not destinations or cataloguing, or laundry lists. The results mean fewer arguments about what to call things and no need to memorize where documents are stored. This is a skill reserved for savants and reference librarians -- not management consultants.

Motivation: Motivation centers on the draw of SharePoint in skill-building for our consultants – not because we have it but because our clients do.

Participation: Participation bridges directly to our community of practice discussions. The end game is that there’s content supply (corpus) and demand (search logs). That’s how we remind our users that they’re knowledge producers too. When they ask for advice they have a responsibility to re-invest those assets back into SharePoint.

Payback: Payback is not about proving how many more deals go through because now we’re all on the same SharePoint page or even reducing the number of search results our users have to slog through before their requirements are met. Payback is about fitting form to function. That means addressing knowledge demands through best bets, search collections, inbound email, and expertise finders to name a few.

The metadata schema is a huge reporting payoff because it helps us understand the long tail – those queries that are specific to a set of requirements – not the common search terms that can be found in the short tail of most search logs. In the build above you can see how our metadata structure is helping the user to combine specific teams, practices, date ranges, and even caliber of results. Best of all they can subscribe to the results as an RSS feed in Outlook so they needn’t ever run the search again.

So those are a few ways of leveraging your sophomore year investment – hopefully without having to pay for your junior year in advance!

SharePoint -- Suiting Up for the Sophomore Season

I'm presenting next week on a webcast hosted by Waltham-based KMA ("Knowledge Management Associates"). The venue is called SharePoint the Sophomore Year: Maximizing your investment in SharePoint after initial implementation.

I didn’t know SharePoint when I came on board in my current role and I came on-board to implement SharePoint. The freshman year was about implementing SharePoint 2003 for a business region. SharePoint 2007 was launched in early 2008. You don’t know me so I’ll focus on the ugly and the unscripted. Stay off script, come clean with your failures and people believe you -- even when they know more about SharePoint than they do about me.

Here are some the of the takeaways I'll be sharing:

Centrality: The sophomore year story is around making SharePoint the cat herder’s container of choice. How do we unify and rally around our mutual interconnectedness? It begins with shared experiences all employees cycle through. I count three: bi-weekly pay dates, bi-monthly staff meetings, and logging into SharePoint. You could set your watch to this. That's a big arrow in the quiver of the enterprise cat-herder.

Utilization: No ability counts more in consulting than billability. For cost centers like KM grunts and SharePoint administrators this means designing systems with a user focus. A user focus for us is about architecting SharePoint by actions – not destinations or cataloguing, or laundry lists. The results mean fewer arguments about what to call things and no need to memorize where documents are stored. This is a skill reserved for savants and reference librarians -- not management consultants.

Motivation: Motivation centers on the draw of SharePoint in skill-building for our consultants – not because we have it but because our clients do.

Participation: Participation bridges directly to our community of practice discussions. The end game is that there’s content supply (corpus) and demand (search logs). That’s how we remind our users that they’re knowledge producers too. When they ask for advice they have a responsibility to re-invest those assets back into SharePoint.

Payback: Payback is not about proving how many more deals go through because now we’re all on the same SharePoint page or even reducing the number of search results our users have to slog through before their requirements are met. Payback is about fitting form to function. That means addressing knowledge demands through best bets, search collections, inbound email, and expertise finders to name a few.

The metadata schema is a huge reporting payoff because it helps us understand the long tail – those queries that are specific to a set of requirements – not the common search terms that can be found in the short tail of most search logs. In the build above you can see how our metadata structure is helping the user to combine specific teams, practices, date ranges, and even caliber of results. Best of all they can subscribe to the results as an RSS feed in Outlook so they needn’t ever run the search again.

So those are a few ways of leveraging your sophomore year investment – hopefully without having to pay for your junior year in advance!

Giving Voice to Learning

I just completed a first cycle of online instruction for a section of the Professional Investigations Program at Boston University. I've been teaching the classroom version for a few years now but it's always been a forced fit to teach an online class offline. The paradox was a real boon for my online PIoneers who were sandwiching their curriculum inbetween forced feedings of social networking, day jobs, working double shifts, financial acrobatics, and putting kids to bed.

But as much as the freedom from time and distance is a liberation I seriously needed to connect -- not passwords to logins or even names to faces but from experiences to voices. There is a reason there is no "text of experience" to replace that expressive voice for communicating the aspirations and endeavoring spirit. It's the voice of experience that each participant conveys in the faith that their investment in virtual learning will pay off in tangible, transformative ways.

I pushed the program administrators to consider adapting at least the option for an opt-in phone conference to clear the air about the voices -- even at the risk of having the stronger personalities dominate the discussion. There was also the concern that enthusiasm for the subject might push against the pressures carried by online adult learners. But given the tight deadlines everyone is under, I'm not sure that's a lasting concern of our students. They want to be heard -- especially in a forum of their peers.

Either way the voice is more than a phone call. It's also the willingness to parlay one's life experience into the program curriculum. That's not a theory of learning. That's an application of doing. The learning and the doing are one in the same. In my class that's called the PI blog. The basic blocking and tackling generates a container of news and commentary about the passions of our aspiring PIs. More importantly it's a chance for them to insert themselves into a conversation between those interests and the role they would play for shaping them.

• Looking for a primer on getting into the PI field? Look no further than Robyn Kervick's Aspiring Sleuthhound.


• Working the PI job leads? Brian Dodge factors in the exacting qualifications with PI or not to PI. Deb Burress addresses similar job-hunting turf with a more diary-like approach.


• Reporting on the latest scandals in corruption-prone institutions? Nick Jamieson keeps the stakeholders honest in his Government Investigations.


• Interested in the need for improved transparency and better forensics standards? Emmy Balon writes with eloquence and authority on Becoming Nancy Drew.


• Fishing your way out of foreclosure and the rights and responsibilities of homeowners when their debt loads are clamoring for higher ground? Tune into Ligia Tanney's Real Estate Solutions Radio.


• Looking to source anonymous and potentially malicious phishers and schemers? Check out Mark Williams Skip Tracing News.


• Finally Allan Bowlin crosses state lines to put his GPS expertise to work in Digital Forensics.

All these niches blossomed in the last compressed week of the course. I look forward to seeing how each one of these seedlings take root in the Internet Research soil tilled by these insatiable investigators (or "truth tellers" as Program Director Tom Shamshak likes to call our students). Long may they testify.

Giving Voice to Learning

I just completed a first cycle of online instruction for a section of the Professional Investigations Program at Boston University. I've been teaching the classroom version for a few years now but it's always been a forced fit to teach an online class offline. The paradox was a real boon for my online PIoneers who were sandwiching their curriculum inbetween forced feedings of social networking, day jobs, working double shifts, financial acrobatics, and putting kids to bed.

But as much as the freedom from time and distance is a liberation I seriously needed to connect -- not passwords to logins or even names to faces but from experiences to voices. There is a reason there is no "text of experience" to replace that expressive voice for communicating the aspirations and endeavoring spirit. It's the voice of experience that each participant conveys in the faith that their investment in virtual learning will pay off in tangible, transformative ways.

I pushed the program administrators to consider adapting at least the option for an opt-in phone conference to clear the air about the voices -- even at the risk of having the stronger personalities dominate the discussion. There was also the concern that enthusiasm for the subject might push against the pressures carried by online adult learners. But given the tight deadlines everyone is under, I'm not sure that's a lasting concern of our students. They want to be heard -- especially in a forum of their peers.

Either way the voice is more than a phone call. It's also the willingness to parlay one's life experience into the program curriculum. That's not a theory of learning. That's an application of doing. The learning and the doing are one in the same. In my class that's called the PI blog. The basic blocking and tackling generates a container of news and commentary about the passions of our aspiring PIs. More importantly it's a chance for them to insert themselves into a conversation between those interests and the role they would play for shaping them.

• Looking for a primer on getting into the PI field? Look no further than Robyn Kervick's Aspiring Sleuthhound.


• Working the PI job leads? Brian Dodge factors in the exacting qualifications with PI or not to PI. Deb Burress addresses similar job-hunting turf with a more diary-like approach.


• Reporting on the latest scandals in corruption-prone institutions? Nick Jamieson keeps the stakeholders honest in his Government Investigations.


• Interested in the need for improved transparency and better forensics standards? Emmy Balon writes with eloquence and authority on Becoming Nancy Drew.


• Fishing your way out of foreclosure and the rights and responsibilities of homeowners when their debt loads are clamoring for higher ground? Tune into Ligia Tanney's Real Estate Solutions Radio.


• Looking to source anonymous and potentially malicious phishers and schemers? Check out Mark Williams Skip Tracing News.


• Finally Allan Bowlin crosses state lines to put his GPS expertise to work in Digital Forensics.

All these niches blossomed in the last compressed week of the course. I look forward to seeing how each one of these seedlings take root in the Internet Research soil tilled by these insatiable investigators (or "truth tellers" as Program Director Tom Shamshak likes to call our students). Long may they testify.

An American Tradition -- Wasting Time on the Web

In 22 years of being online I can tell you the number one time waste is guessing that the person you're searching on is really the individual who keeps coming up in your search results.

Even if you know where they went to high school or their middle initial, the incomplete details of a partially formed profile can open up more doors than it closes.

I created a confidence ratio for my PI students to gauge the accuracy that my pre-class Googling of them was really then. I told them that I put together this puzzle to show them:

1. Some examples of semantics and operators -- two of the components comprise the work we do in query formation


2. A fact-based way to gauge the likelihood that they'd nailed the right guy

But beyond the math and science there's also a lot of frustration spent on the nailing -- the obsessing over whether we have the right guy or not. In an investigation where our fact base is limited to the actions of one suspect then there is little choice.

I've seen, all too often though, that investigators tie themselves in knots because they don't allow for a range of outcomes that includes several possibilities -- be it witnesses, experts, interpretations, or even competing explanations for why the crime occurred.

I tell them that as we get deeper into the Internet realm of criminal research a range of productive outcomes is a lot more realistic (and healthier on your heart) than fixating on one suspect and nailing them to whatever ... they deserve.

Oh yeah, there's one other reason I dragged them through this. Second biggest time waste on the web? It's not Britany Spears or Michael Jackson. That's right -- it's vanity searches. And until we either make introductions or Google one another, that's all we have to go on.

An American Tradition -- Wasting Time on the Web

In 22 years of being online I can tell you the number one time waste is guessing that the person you're searching on is really the individual who keeps coming up in your search results.

Even if you know where they went to high school or their middle initial, the incomplete details of a partially formed profile can open up more doors than it closes.

I created a confidence ratio for my PI students to gauge the accuracy that my pre-class Googling of them was really then. I told them that I put together this puzzle to show them:

1. Some examples of semantics and operators -- two of the components comprise the work we do in query formation


2. A fact-based way to gauge the likelihood that they'd nailed the right guy

But beyond the math and science there's also a lot of frustration spent on the nailing -- the obsessing over whether we have the right guy or not. In an investigation where our fact base is limited to the actions of one suspect then there is little choice.

I've seen, all too often though, that investigators tie themselves in knots because they don't allow for a range of outcomes that includes several possibilities -- be it witnesses, experts, interpretations, or even competing explanations for why the crime occurred.

I tell them that as we get deeper into the Internet realm of criminal research a range of productive outcomes is a lot more realistic (and healthier on your heart) than fixating on one suspect and nailing them to whatever ... they deserve.

Oh yeah, there's one other reason I dragged them through this. Second biggest time waste on the web? It's not Britany Spears or Michael Jackson. That's right -- it's vanity searches. And until we either make introductions or Google one another, that's all we have to go on.

A September to Dismember

Dear Garo,

My b-day alarm failed last week. I leave you with this empathetic call to Met adversities:

Bearing any hurricanes to be named later the Mets have to play 34 more games this season. That's almost 300 more innings of possible season-ending incurrences to the likes of:

Anderson Hernandez (.265 lifetime in minors)

Alex Cora ($2 million this year for being 'scrappy')

Ken Takahashi (40 year-old virgin ... rookie)

Pat Misch (recalled by the big club three times since clearing waivers in June)

Lance 'Bowtie' Broadway (escaped last week's pounding by the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs by coming to big citi)

Jose 'Cameo' Reyes (significant scar tissue won't keep him from sharing pinch-hitting duties)!

Here are some of the leading season finishing options still in contention...

* Introduce pay-to-play pricing for fans who can pass the team physical and sign away their liability claims. This would bring the needed revenues to seed the depleted farm system and the necessary bodies. After all, the last 15 spots in the expanded Sep-member roster are currently filled by the remnants we have.

* Contract out Moises Alou as a fitness instructor.

* Sign 70 year-old Phil Niekro and his knucksie. He can pitch every inning, lead the league in innings (going away) and give the bullpen a well-deserved month off. Says Minaya, "We need a warm body to eat innings. It's OK if he falls apart."

* Invite Vince Coleman back to orchestrate the fireworks show for fan appreciation day.

* Introduce lotto-flavored value pricing where ticket buyers are refunded a fraction of their tickets if the occasion qualifies as a "no save situation."

* Jump start health care reform by paying players to stay healthy, not to sign in 2010 on their inflated 2009 terms.

Says our blogosphere:

"My God, I have never seen such a downright fragile baseball team in my life."

"I shudder to think about this season's cratering becoming a much larger canyon."

"There's no truth to the rumor that I injured myself blogging about the Mets."

So there you have it, G-man. These are the wounds that give life. Because (or in spite) of your suffering I am expected to fully recover and be ready for Spring Training. Happy Birthday to you and for all the healing you bring us.

Pelf-conscious Sol