Another Best Practices Conference (BPC) has come and gone, and we're left with happy memories of seeing old friends, meeting new friends and, of course, a wealth of newly acquired knowledge from sessions attended over the course of the past three days.
This was my second BPC, and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the creativity demonstrated by a number of the session speakers in their presentations this week. Could this be a new trend in SharePoint conferences? Speaking for myself, I certainly hope so, but I understand that some speakers were marked down on the attendee-completed session evaluations with comments indicating a distaste for creative approaches to conveying technological concepts and practices. I find this baffling. Maybe it's because I'm an end user, or maybe it's because I'm a writer (and a person) who celebrates creativity, but I fail to see how approaching a complex topic from a creative angle is going to make for anything other than a positive experience for an audience.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for nonsensical or just plain silly approaches (Best Practices for Workflows as Demonstrated through Interpretive Dance, anyone?) here - what I'm talking about is a thoughtful presentation of serious subject matter conveyed creatively through well-chosen avenues. How so, you ask? How about Paul Culmsee and Peter Serzo channeling of Zoolander to effectively demonstrate SQL Reporting Services? Or Dave Pileggi using Choose Your Own Adventure to demonstrate planning for a SharePoint deployment. Or even Dux Raymond Sy, who delivered his 7 Ways to Leverage SharePoint for PM Success "straight," but then brought the house down at the end of his session by spitting his original rhyme, "SharePoint is Nice, Nice, Baby" to the tune of the similarly titled Vanilla Ice hit. (As an aside, later that afternoon during his own session on the Top 10 Administrative Bad Practices, Ben Curry reacted to the interruption of a cell phone's distinctive ringtone by busting some dance moves. In response to someone in the audience asking if we was trying to compete with Dux, Ben replied, "I can't compete with Dux...I'm not even going to try!")
All of these sessions were loaded with relevant information, and featured gifted speakers who are experts on their chosen topics. Am I alone in thinking it would take a particularly humorless individual to fault a speaker for having the temerity to liven up what might otherwise be a (let's face it) rather dry presentation by injecting some creativity, humor, and entertainment value into their presentation?
In a semi-related note, I would be remiss were I to not mention what a creatively fulfilling experience it was to partner with Mark Miller and his EndUserSharePoint volunteers to set up and staff the Media Booth at the BPC. Based on the feedback we received both online and offline, the streaming video, live blogs, and Twitter streams were a hit, and we're already in talks about how we might continue to team up in the future. Dooley and I would like to send out a special shout-out to fellow booth staffers Laura Rogers and Mike Ferrara, and cheers to Mark and the EUSP volunteer army of live bloggers. Archived content from all three days of the BPC, lovingly prepared by your friendly neighborhood BPC Media Booth staffers and volunteers is now available at EUSP.
Posted
Aug 27 2009, 04:38 PM
by
John Anderson
Filed under: Ben Curry, Dux Raymond Sy, Mike Ferrara, Laura Rogers, Mark Miller, Best Practices Conference, Paul Culmsee, Dave Pileggi, EndUserSharePoint.com, BPC09, Peter Serzo
John Anderson joined Bamboo Solutions as Manager of Content & Syndication in May 2008 after a 12-year career at AOL. New to SharePoint at the time of his hiring, John was tasked with creating a new blog for the just-launched Bamboo Nation community in which he would document his daily SharePoint learning process. Thus was born the end user-centric SharePoint Blank, for which John authored 200 posts within a year, and which he continues to write today. John writes SharePoint Blank in addition to his responsibilities as Bamboo Nation's de facto managing editor and, while he has learned much about SharePoint in his first year, he gleefully awaits the release of SharePoint 2010, and the reset button that release will represent for SharePoint Blank.