Monday, July 23 • 8:45 am – 9:45 am • Steve Fox: Microsoft
SharePoint in the World of Microsoft’s Cloud OS
Steve Fox has worked in IT for fifteen years in a variety of areas ranging from Natural Language, Search, .NET, Office and SharePoint development, and more recently Cloud development. He’s a director in Microsoft Services, managing a global team of architects and developers. He holds a doctorate from the University of Washington and lives in Seattle with his wife. When not working Steve enjoys sports, writing and movies.
Tuesday, July 24 • 10:00 am – 11:00 am • Robert Bogue: Microsoft MVP
Robert has contributed to more than 100 book projects and numerous publishing projects, and has also authored his own book, “The SharePoint Sheperd’s Guide for End Users.” Writing about topics from networking and certification, to Microsoft applications and business needs, Robert blogs at www.thorprojects.com/blog.
SharePoint Psychology
Are you trying to figure your users out? Are you curious why the carrots and sticks that you’re trying to use to motivate them just don’t seem to be getting the job done? Perhaps you’re trying to figure out how to change habits such as getting users to stop emailing spreadsheets. Maybe your problem is the organization’s trust is simply broken. You’ve tried too many failed intranets. The organization or IT has reneged on promises. How do you put the pieces of trust back together?
In this keynote, you’ll learn how to motivate users, and why carrots and sticks just don’t work anymore. You’ll learn the allure of habits and what you can do to break bad ones. You’ll gain new insight on what trust is, and how to build it when it’s broken. Once we’ve covered individual concerns, we’ll shift our focus to corporate psychology – “groupthink” – and talk about how you can create organizational change, as well as the one key problem that derails almost every SharePoint project.
Strap your seat belts on, we’re going to go inside your head, and the head of your organization.
Wednesday, July 25 • 10:00 am – 11:00 am
Jeremy Thake, Microsoft MVP
and Mary Leigh Mackie
Presenting SharePoint as a Service Back to Your Organization
This session will discuss how to strike a successful balance between top-down control and trusting users to "do the right thing", resulting in a desired distributed management method that complies to policies agreed upon by the organization’s governance committees. Topics such as accountability, restrictions, site lifecycle management, adoption, and return on investment of the service will be highlighted, as well as a review of available solutions to support delivery of SharePoint as a service.
You’ll leave with a fresh understanding of:
· How organizations are presenting SharePoint as a service
· Several of the key services presented to business users
· Best practices for measuring adoption and return on investment
· Incorporating guidance for optimized information architecture"
Jeremy, Chief Architect at Avepoint, utilizes more than 10 years of software development industry experience and expertise in Microsoft technologies to assist global enterprises in building solutions that will set the standard for the next generation of collaboration platforms. As a SharePoint MVP, Jeremy’s proven expertise has earned him multiple speaking engagements at technical conferences, symposiums, and user groups worldwide. Jeremy is a co-founder of NothingButSharePoint.com, a SharePoint community portal, focusing on the Developer Channel and built the platform on top of SharePoint 2010.
Mary Leigh is AvePoint's Director of Product Marketing, and works directly with AvePoint's research & development team in the design and implementation of new SharePoint infrastructure management products and solutions. She has been actively engaged in the SharePoint space for several years, working with many Fortune 500 companies and government organizations to develop successful SharePoint management and protection strategies. Born and raised in Oxford, Mississippi, Mary Leigh received her engineering degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, in New York City.
Steve Fox has worked in IT for fifteen years in a variety of areas ranging from Natural Language, Search, .NET, Office and SharePoint development, and more recently Cloud development. He’s a director in Microsoft Services, managing a global team of architects and developers. He holds a doctorate from the University of Washington and lives in Seattle with his wife. When not working Steve enjoys sports, writing and movies. 
