Content Wrap-up for September

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I’m beginning to like this idea of summarizing my article writing each month. It provides a great opportunity to look back and trace my thought patterns. What would be interesting would be to map out the content I write against the articles and books I am reading at the time, and see how much is influenced by my content consumption. Of course, I just re-read Lev Grossman’s Magician King, and I’m not seeing any relevance here. Hmmm. Maybe I should apply for a government grant to study the issue further. If I can somehow link the grant to green energy, I’m sure to get the funding. The US government adores flushing taxpayer money down green energy sinkholes…

At the top of the list this past month was the topic of security and the cloud. I suppose I was still thinking about the webinar I did with Joel Oleson (@joeloleson) at the end of August, with reference to the NSA breach. You can watch a recording of our webinar here. In addition to more articles exploring ideas around security and cloud platforms, I also hosted my first official tweetjam at Metalogix that is summarized below in a blog post, with some of the more interesting tweets captured using Storify.

Beyond the security concerns around moving your data onto cloud environments, I argued through other articls that data integrity was the least of your troubles – that the real issues with the cloud have more to do with parity of functionality between online and offline systems, and how – I believe – organizations will struggle with mobile and pure-cloud solutions for a few more years until the ability to do all (and more) on these alternate platforms achieves and exceeds what we can accomplish today via server-based platforms. In short, moving toward the cloud will be a complex undertaking, and organizations that do not carefully consider the limitations – along with the anticipated cost benefits – will have a rude awakening.

Always a hot topic on my plate is enterprise social. I keynoted events in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa where I talked at length about the inevitable move toward social (and cloud) platforms, and the need to start now internally with questions about what social means to your culture, and how you will align these tools and processes to your business activities. Much like the well-documented SharePoint deployment failures, rolling out social tools without a plan is a sure path to failure.

A topic I’ve also been thinking about this past month is how consumers are driving the shift in spending around corporate IT. I wrote one article on the increasing focus on mobile, and the rise of the consumer – but you can bet I’ll be writing more on this topic soon, as Microsoft and other OEMs and ISVs view the consumer as the road to IT spend going forward.

And finally, I can’t go weeks on the road without writing something about my adventures, which this time included great white sharks off the coast of Cape Town, and swinging from the rafters of a 90,000 person stadium in high winds (Scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life – but I did it). I love my interactions with the global SharePoint community – but even these articles discuss some content, with links to the presentations I gave at SharePoint Saturday Cape Town, SharePoint Saturday Durban, and SharePoint Saturday Redmond. Three weeks of SPS in a row. Whew!

I’m already plotting out my editorial calendar for the month. coming up are new articles for CMSWire, TechRepublic, Business2Community, Wired, and of course AIIM, the Metalogix blog, and my personal blog. I also have partially-completed articles written for Microsoft’s DigitalWPC.com, the Scribble blog, and some original content for the European SharePoint Community site. Lots coming.

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is the Director of North American Partner Management for leading ISV Rencore (https://rencore.com/), leads content strategy for TekkiGurus, and is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits. He hosts the monthly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.

3 Responses

  1. Christian Buckley says:
    October 2, 2013 at 11:23 am

    Melanie, you can find the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtKD1QRVKsY

  2. Melanie Nelson says:
    October 1, 2013 at 11:40 pm

    I like the summary / wrap-up. Where’s the pictures of you swinging from the rafters? 😉 Good notes and I appreciate your views both from the industry side and the business side.

  3. Brad says:
    October 1, 2013 at 10:59 pm

    Love this wrap up thanks bud.