Spotlight on Robert Bogue, SharePoint Rock Star

In conjunction with the publication of his new book, The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users, I was recently offered the opportunity to interview Rob Bogue, the SharePoint Shepherd himself.  Needless to say, the chance to pick the brain of a certified SharePoint MVP who wrote a book for end users was an opportunity that I wasn't about to pass up.  Given the end user focus, this particular interview was originally serialized over on my own end user-centric blog, SharePoint Blank, hence this uncommonly informal introduction for a SharePoint Rock Stars piece.

It's always struck me as a little surprising that there aren't more SharePoint gurus who choose to focus on end users, so having an MVP like Rob dedicate his efforts to "us" in book form is especially refreshing.  As Rob notes in the interview, Mark Miller is out there on the front lines every day, tirelessly dedicating himself to end users with EndUserSharePoint (hey, Microsoft, make Mark an MVP already!), but how many other big guns can you name that are operating at Mark and Rob's level on behalf of end users?

And now, without further ado, onward to the interview...

As a 5-time Microsoft MVP (most recently awarded that designation for MOSS), you bring a particularly well-rounded body of experience to your writing on SharePoint.  Would you describe the professional path you took which led to your becoming a SharePoint specialist? 

Actually, in January I received my 6th MVP award.  I started in Windows Server Networking, worked with Commerce Server for a while, and landed with SharePoint.  There's no single answer to how I ended up as a SharePoint specialist.  There are all of these threads that sort of connect at SharePoint.  I have always been writing books so one of the projects that I was considering was a SharePoint book.  That got me hooked on the idea to start watching it evolve.  I took a few consulting jobs working with it.  Ultimately I ended up doing a few implementations.  I liked the work so I kept looking for more of it.

Over your years as an IT pro, you've contributed to more than 100 book projects, but The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users represents your solo debut on SharePoint.  It's refreshing that someone at the MVP level is focusing their attentions on end users and, indeed, you seem to be one of very few who do so.  What led to your decision to carve out your SharePoint niche in the end user space?

For clarity, I've written a few solo books in the past for other publishers.  The solo book before The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users was Mobilize Yourself!: The Microsoft Guide to Mobile Technology.  The end user focus of the book was born out of necessity.  I was building all of these solutions for clients and they all needed end user training that just didn't exist.  Even today there really aren't a ton of end user offerings.  So I decided I needed to put something together that I could license to clients so that their users would have something.  That became what you see as the book.  It's self published because the whole point was so that I could provide an inexpensive way for organizations to buy the end user training and reference content they needed.

As President of Thor Projects LLC, you provide a full range of SharePoint consulting services nationwide.  Given your particular focus on end users, I'm curious if a "typical" engagement for you extends to end user training and/or adoption campaigns?

The stuff I do these days are really strategy, governance, and engagement projects.  I'm helping organizations put together a plan for how they'll use SharePoint.  I'm helping them define the limits of what users will be allowed to do.  I'm helping them figure out models for engaging their users to use the platform so the organization gets the highest value from its investments.  Necessarily there is an aspect of that which revolves around how the organization is going to mobilize its workers to leverage the platform.

Given that you blog as the SharePoint Shepherd, with the publication of the Guide, have you considered using the blog as an extension of the book? 

No.  The blog has relatively little end user content on it.  I mostly post about weird workflow things, or specific issues that I've been asked to help with by my clients.  One of the odd things about my background is that I am very technical.  I like doing strategy work but I'm just as comfortable decoding a packet "snif" (capture) or working my way through a memory dump.  Because my brain is full, I tend to write down the important points from those exercises on the blog so that I can come back to them myself -- I'm happy that this helps others but my blog is just as much to help my memory as it is to help others.

Have you ever considered adding an "Ask the SharePoint Shepherd" component to your blog?  Even as an end user (albeit a very public one), I've found myself regularly fielding questions from users seeking help with their SharePoint challenges.  Obviously, any such an offering would need to be limited due to the sheer demands on your time, but it'd really be something for end users to be able to pose a question directly to the SharePoint Shepherd... 

Mark Miller over at EndUserSharePoint does some of this.  He seems to be doing a good job at it.  I'll leave it to him until he asks for help.

You recently announced a partnership with Captaré to deliver a live, online instructor-led version of The SharePoint Shepherd's Guide for End Users.  This strikes me as an ingenious idea, in essence offering end users an interactive version of the book.  How did the online course grow out of the book, and what has your involvement been in its development?

I've known the guys that put the training together for a long time (in SharePoint terms).  We basically looked at the same core problem the book was designed to solve, end user training, and re-envisioned it as a live class.  I've been involved in every part of that project from the outline and content planning to reviewing the actual materials.  It's a great complement to the book.  The book is a reference book, it's not a "Learn SharePoint" book.  In other words, it's more like a dictionary than a "Learn English" book.  However, training is all about "Learn" something.  The team at Captaré did a great job of translating the instructional design principles to a class.

Logically, you employ a task-oriented approach to the information you present in the Guide.  Was that task-oriented approach obvious from the outset of the project, or did you consider other methods of approaching the content?

Because of where the book came from, it was always designed to be "how to do" something vs. what's the importance of something.  I was very clear that I wanted people to be able to do things.  I teach understanding of concepts to folks but that's more around solution creation.  We work with their problems and create a solution.  The book is all about not having to remember the details.

At several points in the book, you choose to describe the necessary steps to accomplish a given task in either WSS or MOSS.  Can you talk about your decision-making process in choosing to spotlight one over the other in a particular instance?

There are some places where I believe the user experience team at Microsoft made some mistakes.  They changed the entries in the menus between the collaborative environment (WSS) and the communicative environment (MOSS).  Things like Site Actions - Site Settings moved.  We decided that in these cases we didn't want people to get lost so we decided to include the same process with both a WSS and MOSS set of steps.

On a personal note, as a rock 'n' roll fiend, I've got to compliment you on your clever use of "user" names in screenshots throughout the book.  From the very first chapter, with your use Gordon Sumner, Andy Summers, and Steward Copeland, I found that to be a delightfully playful touch.  I'm guessing you, too, are a bit of a fiend for the rock?

Yeah.  That particular aspect of the book will probably have to disappear as it gets more popular.  A few folks have raised the concern that the use of the names of these public figures might be accidentally misinterpreted as endorsement - which it isn't.  I personally feel like it's ludicrous to believe that Gordon Sumner or the other folks referenced care about SharePoint -- much less the book -- but I've received some feedback.  As for rock 'n' roll, I'm almost never without music playing in the background.  I think better with music.

Other than your own book, what do you consider to be the best available end user resources?

As I mentioned above, Mark Miller is doing a good job with EndUserSharePoint.  The Microsoft end user team is maintaining the Get The Point! blog.  Asif Rehmani is doing SharePoint-eLearning.  Overall it's still a pretty small market for folks trying to help end users.

In addition to the task-oriented approach you took with the Guide proper, organizing your information in thoughtful and user-friendly sections, you also provide a wealth of valuable information in the appendices, including dedicated sections on Site Definitions, List Definitions, Web Parts, Views, and Permissions in SharePoint.  I don't really have a question here, I just wanted to acknowledge the value of the appendices.

Thank you.  The goal was to move some of this information out of the tasks and be able to give people listings they could look to if they're trying to figure out which Web Part, site definition, etc., fit their needs.

Have you given any thought to a sequel to the Guide?  It seems to me that a natural next step would be to dedicate a follow-up book to documenting some of the more complicated tasks and/or gotchas that end users typically encounter.

I've got a second edition of the guide on the plan for the next few months.  We're gathering feedback on the tasks that folks said were missing from the first version.  I'm also temporarily busy trying my hand at some video guides.  I've got the SharePoint Shepherd's Video Academy for Planning and Governance that I'm working on.  I've also got one more video project that I've not announced.

While reading the Guide, I realized that there were a handful of basic end user tasks that I've never covered in SharePoint Blank, and I'd like to thank you for prompting that realization.  I'll have to circle back and fill in those gaps in my own documentation, but coming upon such tasks described in your book only served to underscore the importance of making easy-to-follow instructions available to end users.  Cheers for that.

Thanks.

If I may, I'd like to wrap up with a set of questions that don't pertain directly to the Guide, but that we like to ask every SharePoint expert we speak with:

What would you say is your single favorite feature/functionality of SharePoint?

It's got to be its flexibility.  Yeah, I know that's not a feature in the traditional sense, however, it's really good at allowing end users to solve their problems on their own.  I appreciate that.

Conversely, what do you feel is SharePoint's biggest weakness/drawback?

It doesn't kill werewolves.  Seriously, it's not a silver bullet and people expect it to be that.  I think that the more understanding we get of what it can and cannot do -- and perhaps more importantly should and should not do -- we'll be better off for it.

What is your vision of collaborative computing five years from now?

I have no idea.  I'm really hoping that social networking doesn't suck us into Dante's Inferno, but the jury is still out on that one.

When you're not busy communing with SharePoint, how do you enjoy your downtime?  We touched on rock 'n' roll earlier ... any other hobbies or interests you'd care to share with our readers?

I don't have any downtime.  I really enjoy what I do.  I love helping people.  But I do have a family that I love, two dogs that come to work with me, and a cat (that I tolerate.)  I have my pilot's license but don't get to fly that much.  Lately I've been reengaging in playing with video -- but I've managed to turn that into work too.  As long as I keep enjoying it, I think it's OK to bring in the things you like to what you do every day.