Good afternoon world,

 

As I sit in my hotel room prior to going down to the opening reception of the SharePoint User Conference here in Vegas, I ask myself what is so uniquely special about this group of people attending the SharePoint conference.

 

And when asking myself this question, I find that the answer can be summed up by the word "community".  For those that are living it and breathing it as we are here are at Corridor, they know what I mean.  To quote my good friend Randy Kahn (smartest RM/compliance/e-Discovery) guy I know, SharePoint is imperfect.  Yet, despite its imperfections, its overwhelming ease of use and broad adoption inspire people to park their :stuff" here.  And because of this intense parking of stuff, many of us have come to see what is good and what is bad about SharePoint. 

 

For the good, we celebrate it and speak about how it can solve real problems and do so in meaningful and intuitive ways.  For the bad, we collectively help each other out as good members of a community should.  And because of this on-going collaboration, a vested interest by community members continues to self-propogate.  And this is all good.

 

However, there are also the "anti-communitists" a very real sounding, but non-existent phrase which I made up.  These are the people who simply refuse to engage with others in a communal capacity to solve problems and gain insights that are beyond their own personal or organizational experiences.  My guess is that they do so to protect egos, interests or lack of knowledge.  However, the reality is that few people in the SharePoint community can profess to know everything about SharePoint.  Instead, we pick our areas of expertise with an understanding that a base knowledge exists on most other areas.  Post a comment on a SharePoint blog and see how quickly others are willing to help.

 

SharePoint has thrived because of a number of factors, and one of those factors is this communal influence.  Join in with the pride of being a newbie or a SharePoint veteran who is always willing to learn something new.

 

Cheers,

 

RussECM