Hi all, over the coming weeks we are going to be posting a series of interview style blog posts all about you!
They are going to be posted and promoted on SharePoint-community.net plus Collab365 Global ConferenceĀ in a “meet the community” series.
The goal is to find out about the wonderful community, plus help educate others by sharing experiences.
*** answer these 3 questions in the comments ***
Question 1 : What does a typical day working with SharePoint look like?
(I.e. Do you develop, administer, sell it, write about it, demo it? Let’s us know which version) … Try to share at least a couple of sentences š
Question 2 : How do you keep your skills up to date?
(I.e. Where do/did you get the knowledge and skills needed to do your job? Is it courses, conferences, books, videos, peers, “influencers”? Give examples).
Question 3 : What is the one (non Microsoft) App / tool / script you couldn’t do without when working with SharePoint (or Office365)?
(E.g. In my developer days I would say things like .net reflector, SPServices, Resharper, Balsamiq mockups, CKS Dev). (If you can’t think of one let us know your favourite SharePoint feature).
Optional Question : How do you get involved in the SharePoint community?
(I.e. Do you attend user groups, blog, speak, write, SPS, conferences?)
****
That’s it. If you can post the answers in the comments we will get them copied over and published. Can you also let us know of a good profile photo to use? We can take it from your FB profile if you give us permission..
Who’s the bravest one to go first?
Btw – You can also do it in video format if you like. I am sure Jeff ShueyĀ will give it a go from his paddle board! Doesn’t need to be polished just turn your phone camera on and start talking.
What does a typical day working with SharePoint look like?
As SP2007/2010/2013 consultant in Canada, I do SharePoint builds iteratively – gather requirements from business, do the mockup/build, train Site Owners, and repeat… Do special assignments like OpenText AGA, research solutions, audit sites, etc.
How do you keep your skills up to date?
Check out blogs (this one, Technet, MSDN, etc.), attend Collab events, learned from companies I’ve previously worked with, SP Twitter feeds from people/companies I follow, took SP Admin courses, soon to set up my SP 2016 envt on Azure
What is the one (non Microsoft) App / tool / script you couldn’t do without when working with SharePoint (or Office365)?
Notepad, SnagIt, MS Word/Visio for occasional mockups (otherwise I do the mockup on a UAT/PRD SP site)
Nagios is for monitoring hardware, networks and virtual environments. I set warning thresholds on dozens of items (like disk space,Ā cpu, memory on the SharePoint farm servers and drive space on the SAN which holds our SharePoint databases, logs and backups). Anything that looks out of wack, I hear about it before it gets really bad! AlsoĀ I use it for trending usage and performance. Most recently I saw regular CPU spikes on our App Server #3. Using Nagios I narrowed it down to the a search crawler, which was easily tweaked and smoothed out, beforeĀ users took a serious hit on performance.
Sharegate is one I my fave apps too. I love the support and Benjamin there is a hoot! Never seen anyone with so much enthusiasm for SharePoint!
Nagios… Not heard of that .. what does it do?
I love the Rally skills, very impressive in deed!
Question 1 : What does a typical day working with SharePoint look like?
I’m a one-man SharePoint dude looking after a Sharepoint 2013 on-prem farm with 4000 users in bonny Scotland!. I look after all the infrastructure, backups, content databases, replication, performance etc.
I also support and mentor end users and super-users. This is the rewarding bit as they get to use SharePoint more than a dumping ground for docs. I show them metadata!! š …search, blogs, wiki’s, managed navigation, InfoPath and other wonderful stuff like that!
The office is busy, but I get out to other locations and we also have a training college, where I’ve run SharePoint migrationĀ workshops.
Question 2 : How do you keep your skills up to date?
Communities like this YouTube and Google! I’ve an old SharePoint 2010 MCITP, but couldn’t justify the cost for 2013 MCSE. Oh and just doing it all the time…very much a hands-on operation here!
Question 3 : What is the one (non Microsoft) App / tool / script you couldn’t do without when working with SharePoint (or Office365)?
Nagios! HowĀ else could I keep an eye on all that hardware while I’m running about supporting and training user!
Outside of work, I’m a competition rally driver and mentor a 15 y/o junior driverĀ just starting out his career.Ā My big project is currently developing an all-electric rally car for the JuniorĀ Rally Championships (14 to 17 y/o) in the UK.Ā
