SharePoint Community Development Initiative
One of the best parts about my job (actually, it’s all good!) is my responsibility for (both online and offline) community development. Much of what I’ve been doing related to communities over the past few months has been transitioning (from Arpan), nurturing (keeping the momentum going), assessing (what works; what needs improvement), and learning (from other community leaders such as those on MSDN’s Channel9). Hence, after completing all of my major deliverables for this quarter last week, I was very anxious to get started on the SharePoint Community Development Initiative, which is my “hero” project for H1 2006. Then it dawned on me that as the Community Lead for SharePoint, I needed to get holiday gifts for the core group of internal “Insiders” and external “MVPs” whom I’ve come to rely on for reliable feedback and high value assistance. So, for several days, I had a blast (like a kid in a big toy store) chatting up ideas with my colleagues and picking out just the right items. The orders have just been submitted, but due to the additional time required for “logo’ing,” some of the items may not arrive until after the New Year. I’ll definitely start shopping much earlier next year!
As for the SharePoint Community Development Initiative, I kicked off the project a couple of days ago by 1) creating a Vision/Scope document, 2) setting up an e-mail distribution list for my advisory council, and creating a team site. Since this project is about the advancement of the community, I plan to regularly share key pieces of the work publicly for validation and feedback. For starters, here’s the Vision: A dynamic, self-sustainable, and adaptive gathering of people with common interests in SharePoint products and technologies, who aspire to belong, to share, to grow, and to succeed as sales professionals, end-users, developers, administrators, and implementers.
