Rix Bits

[my article originally posted at ITMartini]

As IT professionals, we spend many years developing our crafts, and investing in our careers. Along the way, we have all probably been fortunate enough to get help from many sources, including colleagues and mentors who decided to take the time to share their knowledge and experience with us. As a result, we grow in our profession, and for most of us we inevitably ask the question – what can I do to give back, and make the same investment in others that someone made in me? Fortunately, there are many ways in which we can ‘return the favor’ in the IT community, and by doing so, make a positive impact on our industry.

Talk

For some, the thought of public speaking is frightening. Ironically, the best way to get over that fear is to do more of it. And if you can overcome your hesitations about public speaking, you’ll find that it’s both a great way to share what you know with others, as well as demonstrate your own level of expertise. You can speak at local events relevant to your field, and talk about topics that you’ve dealt with on your job which might resonate with others in your line of work. In addition to sharing your expertise, you can also share your experience. There are many local organizations who would love to have someone come speak to their group about the positive and negative aspects of your career or industry. You could speak to high school groups with students who are considering going into the IT field. Or speak to members of non-profit organizations interested in facilitating knowledge-share session on IT topics. Perhaps even your own religious or social groups would be interested in having you speak on a topic.

Teach

Giving away your knowledge may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s actually a great way to gain a relevant perspective on what you’ve learned over the years, and helps foster your own credibility as an expert in your field. Not only that, but studies show that your own understanding on a subject increases when you attempt to teach it to someone else. In addition to these benefits, there are many opportunities to teach what you know to others in your local community. Many schools are looking for technical professionals to serve as an instructor for their students, whether in the classroom or online. And youth organizations like TechCorps or BDPA HSCC are always looking for volunteers to teach youth computer skills that they can use to pursue careers in technology.

Text

No, I don’t mean pull out your phone and mentor someone via SMS. But I do suggest that by sharing our expertise and experience through writing, we can find another avenue in which to give back. In today’s world, one of the easiest ways to do this is by starting a blog. This can come in many forms. You may find that you simply want to keep an online ‘journal’ of your saga as an IT professional. Or you may take the more technical route and share technology-specific information about problems you’ve solved, and how you did it. Both have value to others who may find your blog, and you may soon find your writings being followed by others who are interested in your perspectives. Writing can also come by way of social media – learn to stay involved in social forums like Twitter, LinkedIn Groups, or any other online platform where other IT professionals come together to discuss issues and challenges in your industry. Not only can you learn from these forums, but your participation and contributions can be helpful to others following a career path similar to your own.

There’s no limit to the number of creative ways you can find for giving back to the IT community. Pick any one and get started – you’ll find that it not only gives you a better perspective on your own experiences, but helps strengthen and grow our IT community as well.

-Graphic art courtesy of http://gilbertyoungart.com/

The results are in! As we close out the 33rd Annual BDPA National Conference and High School Computer Competition, I’m proud to announce that the BDPA Columbus high school team scored THIRD PLACE this year out of 19 participating teams! 

This achievement earned each team member a $500 scholarship award, as well as a plaque and special recognition at the BDPA Awards Gala. This is the first time that the Columbus team has placed among the Top 5 teams, and is an improvement from last year’s 12th place prize (out of 24 teams).  I should also point out that, in the Programming category (which specifically represents the ASP.NET website development work the team did as part of the competition), they scored the 2nd highest score of 509, missing the 1st place ranking in that category by only six points!

We’re all extremely proud of this year’s team! More details to come.

I recently had an article published at IT Martini where I discuss the upcoming release of Office 365, Microsoft’s latest cloud-based services offering, and the value that the SharePoint component of that offering has for entrepreneurs and businesses trying to make use of SharePoint for collaboration.

I just finished giving a presentation via Live Meeting for an event based out of India.  Start time: 3:30AM EST.  I’m so glad that someone invented coffee :)

I think it’s very kool, tho, to have lived long enough to see a world where people all over the planet

Today I’m in Cincinnati at the Midwest Regional Mock Competition for HSCC, supporting our high school student team, and helping to serve as one of the judges during the competition.  Regional competitions are a great way for our students to begin to get a feel for what they can expect in the actual national competition in August. 

Aside from a slightly abbreviated time schedule and fewer teams to compete against, the regional mock competition offers a pretty accurate representation of the real thing.  The Cincinnati chapter of BDPA put a

In addition to being a big geek, I’m also a SharePoint dude. I blog on all things SharePoint in my other blog site, but every now and then some of my blog posts go viral. :)  It turns out that one of my articles has been published in a well-known SharePoint website for end-users, admins, and developers called NothingButSharePoint.com.  The article is based on a challenge I had at one my client sites, where definitions about key corporate artifacts like ‘documents’ and ‘forms’ had to be agreed on in order to make the project successful.  Since then, I’ve learned that with any client, whether you’re implementing a SharePoint solution or not, agreeing on key terms as early as possible is always helpful for project success.

Take a look a the article and let me know what you think.  And if you’re on Twitter, feel free to retweet me.  Thanx!

Recently, Wired Magazine (UK) posted an article regarding a malware attack on the Mac OS X platform.  I couldn’t resist commenting on this article, since as many know I've been known to bad mouth Apple products from time to time. :)  But this one was particularly interesting because it reminded of a post I wrote about three years ago.

My favorite part of the article says:

I was recently interviewed by the Black Data Processors Association Education and Technology Foundation regarding my volunteer work teaching web development to youth in the BDPA High School Computer Competition (HSCC).  It’s part of their Take Five interview series where they interview notable members of the organization.  As you can see from the interview, I find a lot of fulfillment in my work with HSCC. Check out the full interview here.

I recently decided to start shifting my SharePoint-related posts over to a new blog, instead of here at RixBits.com.  My main concern was that I had [at least] two very different types of content that I was producing at RixBits, and I felt it was time to stop mixing them.  SharePoint, while a very popular topic, certainly has a smaller and more specific audience than many of the other general techie topics I blog about.  I wanted to make sure that anyone coming to RixBits to read about tablet PCs, or about how Apple is overrated, would not be confused when they see a post related to SharePoint team development using InfoPath.  :)

But as I thought about it a little more, I realized how important the idea of multiple personalities is to social media……

I’ve often said that anyone who doesn’t understand what’s so cool about a tablet PC and a pen is probably someone who’s never used a tablet & pen with Microsoft OneNote.  OneNote lets me store all my handwritten notes in one searchable location, including screenshots, documents, and even audio & video recordings (imagine recording the meeting you’re sitting in, and having OneNote keep track of the point in the audio at which you write each of your notes).  Another way to think about – think Franklin Covey notebook without all the physical paper to keep track of. ; )

In today’s video, I’ll be showing how I use OneNote on both my desktop and tablet PC in order to sync changes between the two.

I’ve decided to start posting all SharePoint-specific posts to my new brand over at SharePointCowbell.com.  Among other things, it’ll let me post some highly technical SharePoint posts w/o feeling like I’m boring any readers who came here looking for info about the HP Slate 500. :)  Lemme know what you think of the new format!

Ever since ICC presented the Microsoft Heartland Region SharePoint Conference 2011 in February, and even after a mini encore presentation via online webinar in March, I’ve had a few people ask me where they can get all the presentation slide decks from ICC’s SharePoint team in one convenient location.  Poof! Your wish is granted!:

		Make Your Developers Love You! (aka SharePoint 2010 ALM for Dev Managers) -Ricardo Wilkins
		Success with SharePoint 2010 – Over and over and over again! -Mario Fulan
		Getting SharePoint 2010 Deployments Right -Veenus Maximiuk
		Social Networking Features and Governance in SharePoint 2010 -Chris Rygielski

I read an article about digital ink recently over at Simple Mobile Review.  I think they did a great job of comparing the handwriting features of Windows compared to some of those other ‘tablets’. ; )  In fact, they included two images that I think do a pretty good job summing up the comparison (click them to visit the original post and see them larger):

(images courtesy of Simple Mobile Review)

I recently used my Slate 500 to draw a workflow diagram for a co-worker, which layed out how we would design our InfoPath and Nintex Workflow solution for a SharePoint project I’m working on.  I thought it might be useful to point some of the many features that Windows gives us when it comes to handwriting and true digital ink.  So I fired up the screen capture tool, and produced the video below.  What you can’t see, unfortunately, is how my fingers played a role in creating this diagram. The Slate did a great job of managing my pen writing, finger touching, palm rejection, and flick gestures.  Pay close attention to the video annotations for more details on that.

Some of the key features I try to point out in the video are:

• Digital ink in Windows is not just line drawings – they are vector graphic ‘objects’.  That means every individual line can be transformed, manipulated, changed, copied, etc.
• The ability to move ink around means you can revise your handwriting – so if you’re writing notes, and would rather have the next point inserted between notes you’ve already taken, or if you want to draw in-between some drawings you’ve already done, just move your ink
• You can convert ink-to-text, but you can also leave your handwriting as-is, and it’s still SEARCHABLE
• With a device like the Slate, which is both multi-touch and pen-enabled, you’re writing experience becomes a combination of writing and touching – just like your real-world paper experience

Another homerun for the HP Slate 500?  Let me know what you think!

[UPDATE: Companion Blog Post >>Surface Pro and OneNote-Inking: Compared to HP Slate 500]

We’re back again with another year of the BDPA High School Computer Competition.  We’ve got some new students as well as our returning students, and we’re already well on our way to getting up to speed on web application development! Thanx to Devry University for donating space in their facilities for our class. 

In our classes, we learn web app development using Microsoft’s Visual Studio Web Developer Express tool – basically, a light version of the same industry-standard integrated development environment (IDE) that many .NET

• I expected my slate to give the same kind of sluggish performance that a Netbook is known for.  But in fact, it’s been very responsive, especially considering the hardware that it’s built on.
• Finger-scrolling is enabled in more places than I had anticipated.  This includes Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and the Start Menu.
• Many apps that I wouldn’t have expected are allowing for pinch zooming, including the internet browsers and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• Speaking of PDF readers, I read a lot of ebooks on the Slate, and most of the PDF readers I use do a good job with full-screen reading modes, including good finger scrolling and flicks for page up/down. 

No, not a Pug – a SPUG. :)  That’s right, on Thursday March 17th I’ll be the guest speaker at the Buckeye SharePoint User Group (formerly the Central Ohio SPUG), discussing SharePoint 2010 development and ALM.

For those that have heard me speak on this topic before, never fear!  You won’t be bored, because this time I should have a little more time to do some nice demos featuring the ease with which you can deploy solutions to SharePoint from Visual Studio 2010, as well as showing some of the koolness you get when you incorporate TFS into your SharePoint dev festivities.

Hope I see you there!:

Buckeye SharePoint User Group
Microsoft Polaris Office
March 17th, 2011
5:30pm-7:30pm

This past week I attended the Best Practices Conference (BPC) for SharePoint in La Jolla, California. This is a 3-day conference that discusses not only “how'” to do things in SharePoint, but also asks the question “should you”.

Well, it looks like March is turning out to be a very big month for SharePoint in terms of conferences.  Seems like other geeks like myself just can’t get enough of that SharePoint goodness. :)  Here are the March conferences I’m aware of:

Well, it’s been a whole week with my HP Slate 500 table pc, and I feel like I’m starting to get my tablet swag back. :)  Initially the pen writing felt awkward because it’s been a while since I’ve used a tablet on a daily basis, but I feel my rhythm returning.

So, as any respectable geek would do, I started looking at ways to customize and personalize my Slate – in other words, what can I do to trick out my tablet pc?  In addition to picking a nice subtle wallpaper for my desktop, I decided to customize the native Flick Gestures that come with Windows 7.  These gestures allow me to ‘flick’ my finger quickly in 1 of 8 different directions, and perform a task as a result.

In my case, I’m often performing the following tasks, so they made good candidates to be added to the list of Flicks:

Well, after quite a long wait, my HP Slate 500 has finally arrived.  As I’m sure you already know, I’ve been a tablet PC user & evangelist for years.  But this latest incarnation for me represents a form factor and price point that I’ve been waiting for a long time.

Expect to see many posts in the near future regarding my Slate 500 experiences.  For now, you can start to do your research on just what the Slate 500 is by checking out HP’s promotional video.  I’ll say for now, tho, that this device is targeted at business users, and not the consumer market.  Thus, it shouldn’t be compared to the iPad or any of the other tablet ‘appliances’ coming out these days.  Nevertheless, I’ll be sure to point out some of the advantages of a Windows 7 tablet ‘PC’ over devices like the iPad, simply because I love to expose the smoke-n-mirrors marketing that has everyone convinced that Apple products are the best. :)

More to come.

(Hanging out at B&N with my tablet and a Mocha)

I was reflecting on the presentations I’ve given over the last 12 months, and thought it might be helpful to list them all in one place, including links to the slidedecks.  I think I’ll also keep this particular post updated with future presentations as well.

Now you can’t say I never did anything nice for you… : )

I had a great time hanging with the members of the Dayton SharePoint User Group this past Tuesday.  We discussed “Business Process Automation with SharePoint and Workflow – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”.  I talked about how the tools and development experience of automating process using SharePoint have improved in SharePoint 2010 (the Good) versus SharePoint 2007 (the Bad, the Ugly).  [I gave them the disclaimer that the “Bad” and “Ugly” bit was just for effect – MOSS 2007 is still awesome] :)

I was asked by Microsoft to speak this morning to a group of customers interested in some of the ISV products built on top of SharePoint, like K2 and BA Insight.  I gave a 1-hour introduction to SharePoint 2010, to help the audience get a good foundation in preparation for product demonstrations they would later see during the day.

On Tuesday, I’ll be the guest speaker at the Dayton SharePoint User Group (www.dayspug.org).  I’ll be speaking on Business Process Management/Automation using SharePoint and Workflow.

As I consider this topic, I thought I might share some guidance on the process of automating your organization’s business processes, regardless of whether you use SharePoint or any other automation technology.  Anyone who has endured the fun of auditing, documenting, and ultimately automating the way in which their company does things will tell you that the planning side of it is just as significant, if not more so, than the technical implementation.

Here are some tips that could help you and your team have a smoother and less frustrating experience:

Conference Theme: Transforming Your Business with SharePoint 2010

Disclaimer: The pictures that reference SharePoint 2007 are for effect only – SharePoint is still awesome no matter what the version!  (well… maybe not version 2003) : )

Although the dreaded snow storm is approaching, I’m told the Microsoft Heartland Conference here in Columbus, Ohio is still scheduled to continue tomorrow.  So, you still have a chance to hear from the likes of SharePoint Evangelist Joel Oleson, SharePoint Master-Certified Mario Fulan… and even me! :)  It’ll take more than a few snowflakes and some ominous-looking clouds to keep us from geeking out on SharePoint.

Speaking of clouds, I wrote in a previous post about the impact that I think Microsoft’s cloud-based offering, Office365, will have on SharePoint developers.  I’ll be talking more about this topic during my presentation, and mentioning how certain aspects of developing for SharePoint Online present both advantages as well as challenges.

Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow – be sure to tell ‘em that Rix Bits sent ya! :)

In my talk next week, one of my topics will be related to the question:

…do I build my solution from scratch, or do I buy something off-the-shelf?

Hopefully I will help people to see that one of the main reasons why we invested in SharePoint to begin with is because of its “out-of-the-box” value.  There are so many solutions that can be created using features already included with SharePoint, that many times we can avoid custom development altogether. (which sometimes makes poor Visual Studio 2010 feel very lonely and neglected) 

Also, even if out-of-the-box features don’t quite cut the mustard, we must also remember that there are some great 3rd party tools out there as well, especially for things like workflow and web part development.

There will be several well-known vendors at next week’s Microsoft Heartland SharePoint conference, including Nintex (workflow) and Quest (web parts).  Don’t miss it – register today!

Many moons ago I did a webinar about application lifecycle management using Team Foundation Server.  Since that time, TFS has been upgraded to version 2010, and with it comes some exciting new enhancements.  This is also good news for SharePoint developers, as the 2010 suite of Microsoft products helps push SharePoint development into 1st-class citizenship.  In fact, it’s even easier now to use TFS as part of your tool set thanks to your MSDN subscription.

I’ll be talking about this topic a little more during my presentation at the Heartland Conference next week.  I think it’ll be somewhere around slide #15.  :)  See you there!

Next week, I’ll be speaking at the Microsoft Heartland SharePoint Conference 2011 in Lewis Center, Ohio. My topic will be:

Make Your Developers Love You! (aka SharePoint ALM for Dev Managers)

As we countdown to conference day, I thought I’d give you a sneak peek at some of the subjects I’ll be covering during my talk.  One point of interest in SharePoint 2010 that I’ll be speaking on is the concept of sandboxed solutions – custom code solutions that operate within a subset of the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace, and that can be easily deployed and monitored with minimal impact to the stability of your farm.

Register today to check out my presentation and see why sandboxed solutions are one of the enhancements in SharePoint 2010 that will help make SharePoint Devs and Admins a happy family once again. :)

Well, we’ve closed the books on 2010. :)  As I reflected back, I thought it would be nice to look at all the kool geek stuff I’ve been able to be a part of this year.  2010 marks the beginning of my journey into full-time SharePoint consulting, but there were also some other memorable techie moments as well.  Let’s see….