KM Forum: Fitting SharePoint to Knowledge Initiatives
This coming July 20, I’ll be on the “Panel of Experts” at this event at Bentley University. We’ll be discussing Fitting SharePoint to Knowledge Initiatives, a topic near and dear to my own heart. SharePoint is really cool technology, but as I’m frequently saying, it’s just a tool which must be a part of a much wider set of plans and initiatives (dare I say governance?) if it is to provide any real business value.
My co-panelists are Mike Gilronan (@mikegil) from KMA LLC, Michele Smith (@mingshan) from The MITRE Corporation, and Marc Solomon (@attspin) from PRTM. I’m honored to be included with these bright folks, and I look forward to the discussion.
Also on the roster is Sadie Van Buren (@sadalit), who will be presenting on Planning for SharePoint: The SharePoint Maturity Model. If you follow this blog, you know that I’m a huge fan of Sadie and her SharePoint Maturity Model work.
If you’re in the Boston area and can make it, this promises to be a “meaty” event about KM and SharePoint. I hope to see you there!
At yesterday morning’s KM Forum breakfast meeting, we focused on organizing ideas around the upcoming event, especially for the panel discussion. The categories are shaping up to be very user-, culture-, and business-focused, much more the “why” and “when” of SharePoint than the “how” or “what.” We’ll dare to say the G-word as well as others such as Adoption! and Planning! This is why I come to the Forum – to work on the human side of the technology problem.
Lynda Moulton’s most recent blog post (http://gilbane.com/search_blog/2011/06/collaboration_convergence_and_adoption.html) describes the SharePoint conversation as “one of build-it-to-do-anything-you-want-the way-you-want (BITDAYWTWYW),” and emphasizes the need for collaboration in building the solution, because often an IT department alone does not have the full set of skills this requires. I like that angle. (At the breakfast meeting, Lynda offered an alternative to her acronym: “build what you want the way you want it – BWYWTWYWI.” I love the concept, and I propose that on the 20th we all put our heads together to find the letter combination that makes it easiest to say and remember.)
Looking forward to joining you on the panel, Marc. Between Enterprise 2.0 and KM Forum, it’s been a good month for discussions about business issues first and SharePoint second. Man cannot live by SPTechCon alone…