Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 Day #3 Thoughts

The conference continues along at breakneck speed toward tomorrow’s wrap up. I’ve noticed a few themes I thought were worth recording.

As with almost all SharePoint events, I still see an overabundance of sessions focused on the technology side of SharePoint and not enough sessions focused on the so-called “business” side. The technology shouldn’t even be in play unless it is driving business success, yet there’s still so much attention paid to keeping servers tuned and code written, and so little on process improvement, change management, incentives, and knowledge management. Jamming stuff into SharePoint alone does not equal business success.

So many sessions I’ve seen tell me that thinking about your organization’s SharePoint Maturity is critical to success. If you’re at the conference, find Sadie Van Buren (@Sadalit) and ask her how it can help you improve how you use SharePoint across the board to drive your organization to that mythical “next level”.

All that said, many of the technical sessions I’ve sat in (or more often stood in – all the popular sessions are filled to the hallways) have been first rate. I’ve learned a lot: at least a few great nuggets from just about every session. In a later post, I’ll list out some if my favorites and why I liked them.

Last night we got to go to Disneyland and act like kids again. Great fun, so thanks, Microsoft.

That’s Tom Resing (@resing)behind me in the “boat”, with Matt Bramer (@IOnline247), behind him, then the SharePoint Ninja himself, Michael Doyle (@SharePointNinja).