Simple question, when someone who has no idea what SharePoint is, how do you explain it to them? It is so simple, but so complicated.
Do you use the 6 pillars?
I am always a bit stumped whenever I am approached by someone asking me to explain what SharePoint is. I believe it really depends on who you’re explaining it to. Explaining it to someone who has very little computer knowledge (such as my grandma) I usually just resort to showing her and explaining it to her with examples. When I explained it to someone with more knowledge of computers (such as a fellow tech geek :P) I have explained it as a sort of “Excel meets GoogleDocs/Drive with an available dashboard.” That’s about the best I have been able to explain it in less than a few sentences.
That video is cool and all, but no-one is going to stand there and listen to you explain this for 8 minutes, nobody cares that much. If you’re lucky they’ll listen for 30 seconds. If a random person at a function asks me this, I always say something along the lines of “It’s software that all the big companies use to store documents, do some social networking and get reports”. End of sentence. I take this route because the vast majority of companies primarily use it for document management. There’s no point in over-complicating the answer and trying to explain to them everything it does. Unless they’re in the market to buy, they won’t care. You have to speak in terms the man on the street will understand. That silly wheel means absolutely nothing to the layman. If they are interested they will ask you questions, then you can elaborate.
This is how I’d explain SharePoint to a corporate grandma. Watch this.
Here’s another video: http://youtu.be/Fvn3qNAdF2Y. This one’s more of a marketing pitch from Microsoft but interesting nonetheless.
