Microsoft’s SharePoint Journeys Contest

I got a nice email the other day from someone working for Microsoft about the SharePoint Journeys contest they have running. She asked if I would do a blog post on it because "[My] blog shares such valuable insights about how [I] use SharePoint." Maybe she got the wrong guy, but I was happy to do this post anyway.

The SharePoint Journeys contest is "a way for the community to come together and share their work and ideas."  One point that I made in emailing back and forth is that I’ve heard a few grumbles that it’s not really something that consultants (like me, but I’d be unlikely to enter) can participate in. We can’t tell our client’s stories because they are proprietary in most cases, and we can’t tell our own stories because the cobbler’s kids rarely have shoes. Regardless, you should encourage your clients to think about submitting an entry.

Here are some details on the contest:

You may be aware that Microsoft SharePoint has launched a unique contest platform called SharePoint journeys. We hear inspiring stories all of the time about where SharePoint professionals are on their “journeys” and what they plan to do next. This contest is a chance for developers, admins, customers, partners and others to showcase how they’ve used SharePoint to enhance their organizations. As an incentive, three winning submissions receive a pass to SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim, CA, and a chance to speak to their video.

The contest is underway and we’re asking SharePoint users to create a two-minute video illustrating their use of SharePoint in one of three categories.

• Ramping Up: Early use of SharePoint using a few of the workloads for part of an organization to improve how people share information and work together. Examples include building team sites or My Sites, deploying Intranet sites or portals, or implementation of an extranet to collaborate with partners.
• Building Momentum: Consolidation of content management and collaboration infrastructure on SharePoint to drive broad adoption across an organization and beyond. Examples include using multiple workloads, implementing dotcom sites, and end user adoption success.
• Driving Business Value: Building applications on SharePoint that integrate back end data in documents, business processes and web experiences. Examples include building custom applications, business intelligence solutions and FAST search for Internet sites.

Through these videos, we’re inviting SharePoint professionals to share and review their work, inspire each other to think about SharePoint in new ways, and take the next step on their journey. Right now the site only allows for submissions, but as videos come in we will turn on several interactive pieces of the site that will allow for social media sharing, commenting and rating of videos, and the ability to embed videos into personal blogs.

Contest submissions and voting close on February 16, 2011 and the winners will be announced the week of February 21, 2011. Full contest rules and judging details can be found on the site.

Note – entries must be submitted in English