Introducing the Bamboo Nation Forums and that Dooley guy too

Hi, I'm Chris Dooley, and I'm a SharePoint virgin. Oh, wait. John Anderson covered that topic in his blog. So, anyway... I recently joined Bamboo Solutions as the Community Manager in charge of Forums, Groups, and basically all things community other than blogging. I am more than happy to leave most of the blogging to John and the rest of the Bamboo team.

I'll be honest, I had never heard of SharePoint before I started interviewing for this position. To prep for the first interview I did some research and found a lot of info that didn't help me get any closer to understanding SharePoint. This was really not the best way to start my next possible career. At first, my soon-to-be manager, Steve Gaitten, wasn't sure about bringing me in. After two interviews and about a thousand calls, e-mails and text messages to annoy him, he changed his mind and here I am. I hope to make sure that he regrets this decision every day, or at least Monday through Friday...

While I may not be a SharePoint guru, I do have experience working with community-driven sites. My previous job was with AOL where I worked for the better part of the last 13 years. For the last four years, I was part of the Social Media team where I worked on varied communities including pets, photography, gay & lesbian, and my personal favorite, comic books. At first I was the publishing and technical guy who liked to hide in the background and let others do the talking. Being a bit shy, I was quite happy with this arrangement. After many months of wearing down my resolve, my manager convinced me to co-host a blog by tossing up a subject I loved, comic books. That was probably the beginning of the end as they say. As I worked on these sites I put my name out there. People wrote to me. I wrote back. People commented on blog posts I had written.  I wasn't sure quite what to make of this but I was starting to see what I had missed out on. This was fun.

Now, here I am again. This time not only will I be doing the occasional blog post for John, but also hosting forums, going to trade shows and talking to people on software I am still learning. And guess what, I love every minute of it. While I have worked on community focused sites before, at least with those I had some level of subject matter knowledge. While the basics are still the same, this is also turning into a learning experience for me. While I may not have been a model student in school, I've always considered learning something new to be fun. (Why do I have this urge to say "And knowing is half the battle"?)

So, in my first official act as Community Manager I give you (drum roll, please) the Bamboo Nation Forums. The initial release includes various SharePoint Topics, Bamboo Solutions Products & Services and the very popular Running WSS on Vista. While there are a many great topics, I know that there are others that I overlooked due to my being new to the subject matter. Speak up. Tell me what I left out. Don't be shy. I promise to be in the Forums every day working to help you get what you need, but I can't do that without your input.

While I have had a great couple weeks getting the Forums ready, there is much more on the way. I'll be sure to post again and annoy you keep you up to date.