When I see myself 12 years back, I was simply a .NET developer/ Web developer and nobody knows me in the world only few people I was working with and my family. I started working on SharePoint in 2001 and never know that one day more than 10000 people around the world know me respect me and care about me. It does not make sense but truly this because of SharePoint.
SharePoint and I have been flirting with each other for many years. I started out my professional career immediately after college as a Lotus Notes consultant and spent the next several years working primarily on Notes-related apps and sites. Here and there I would have an opportunity to branch out, and I got my toes wet in lots of other technologies including ASP and ASP.NET, some Java, PHP, etc. I almost got staffed on a SharePoint 1.0 project in 2003 and started learning a little bit about it, but nothing materialized… At any rate, just when I would start to get a little bit of experience in a new technology, I’d get laid off and have to go find another Notes job to pay the bills. (“Every time I try to get out, they keep dragging me back in!”)
In fact, I was hired into my current job as a short-term contractor to support the company’s Notes applications until they could be migrated to other platforms (SharePoint among them). When it became clear that the migration might take a little longer than they thought, and they realized they wanted to keep me on board permanently, my company offered me the chance to transition to SharePoint development whenever my Notes duties started winding down. Three years later, it’s finally happening – I now have 2 or 3 small SP development projects under my belt and several more in the works. (Which – uh oh – surely means I’m about to get laid off again? 😉
VERY first tech job was selling / modifying PC-based accounting software, coded in “Business BASIC”, but that didn’t last. While going to school (second college stint – I was a muscian prior), I took a job as Computer Operator at a small (50 employee) health insurance company, running DEC PDP mini computers. That was 1986. Before I was done with school I was their lone developer. After getting done with school they sent me to training and I became the System Manager of what was now a VAX/VMS installation. I’d read *all* of the VAX manuals on the 4-foot wide, 6-foot high bookshelf in my office. Then we were bought up by a shop running IBM mainframes and my VAX/VMS knowledge went out the window 🙂
Over the years I’ve worked with minis, mainframes, PCs, have coded in a bunch of “known” languages (FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, VB, Java, JavaScript, etc) …and a number of proprietary languages, environments.
I’ve been heavily involved with Lotus Notes since mid 90’s. My employer, like most, uses the MS Office suite, so it makes sense to get into SharePoint. I’m trying to learn all I can about SP2010, and also diving into SP2013, Azure, Office 365, Access 2013 / Access Services, etc., etc. SO much to learn… LOVING IT!
YES! That is exactly what my experience has been in tech …For me it was Notes that led to a global network of friends. And now on this site I am meeting so many others in the SharePoint arena. It is wonderful! …We can help each other with tech issues, share tips, etc …but it is also much more enjoyable when there is a social aspect to it. It’s a very nice benefit of this line of work!
I started working at a Microsoft Gold Company part time as help desk at the age of 16, and they were also doing SharePoint. Then, I did some QA (a lot easier to do it after school , more hours = more $ 🙂 ). The company where I was then, was really big on SharePoint, so I asked to switch departments.
So I have been in SharePoint ever since. It’s just last summer that I realized how great the community was when I Started my blog and started meeting great people.
So, What keeps in SharePoint? It’s pretty challenging and there’s tons of projects. And the Community is GREAT! This site is a living proof on how awesome the SharePoint Community is!
