I recently had the opportunity to attend and speak at SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim, California along with roughly 8,000 other attendees. This was the first SharePoint conference since the Fall of 2009. It was also the first conference since the launch of SharePoint 2010 – the latest public version available to customers. My overarching impression post conference is that attendees, speakers and Microsoft are now (some would say finally) on the ‘social train’. In 2009 there were relatively few sessions focused on social, and even those were sparsely populated in terms of attendance. In 2011, not only were there more social-based sessions, any non-focused social session seemed to have social being discussed at some point in the chat too. The social focused sessions were
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The Fab Four; Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were a band like no other. As someone born in 1971, they are my generation’s Fab Four. Steve, the raw but brilliant and creative ring leader was Lennon. Bill, the melodic but safe visionary was McCartney. George matched his namesake with ingenuity & worldly thinking. Steven, like Ringo, kept the pulse on new discoveries bolstered by impeccable timing. The death of Steve Jobs, like that of John Lennon, came too early. Too blindingly. Undoubtedly, there were many more songs for both of them to write. But like John, Steve was my Fab Four favourite. His unwavering quest for excellence was legendary. His creativity and innovation was uncanny. His passion to reach new heights,
Last year, I wrote a piece entitled “The Standalone LMS is Dead”. Last week, Dave Wilkins of Learn.com wrote a piece entitled “A Defense of the LMS (and a case for the future of social learning)”. Let the fireworks begin. But before striking my match, I must first state that Dave is a professional; both classy and clever. My in-person and virtual interactions with him have been nothing less than stimulating, social and cerebral. What I like most about Dave, however, is that he’s a devoted family man. My mantra is life-work balance, not the other way around, and I get the sense that Dave is fully immersed in this intonation as well. Tangential to Dave’s arguments though, after reading, digesting and thinking through his
I find myself in the center of an intellectual tempest. The traditional ‘learning’ folks are trying to sort out how to revolutionize the industry by augmenting their formal learning strategies to incorporate social media, social learning, social networking and the like. It’s a good thing to witness, but slow as molasses in some circles. The Human Resources and Organizational Development folks are mulling over their competencies, values, leadership development programs, amongst other elements trying to embed flatter, more connected ways of working. Also good to see, but at times I see these folks in other companies plodding along without involvement of the Learning side of the house, or the technology outfits. The technology groups (be it IT, Systems Analysts, ERP groups, etc.) are busy trying