Digital Landfill

I just found out that I was named to the Harmon.ie Top 25 SharePoint influencers list.  Thanks so much.  I feel honored to be in such company -- Here's the full list, and here are the Twitter names for the top 10.

Here's how the process worked...

They looked at over 700 potential candidates and eventually whittled the list down to 25 people. When Harmon.ie was trying to determine who would make their list, there were certain factors that played a key role in who was chosen. These factors which were weighed and then determined the rank of the candidate include:

• How frequently their tweets were re-tweeted
• How much visitors they had to their their blog and how far it reached within the SharePoint Industry.
• How many citations they were given by other bloggers and colleagues.

"Two things are coming into play here — SharePoint has become a more strategic platform for businesses, while users are looking for better social solutions, adoption strategies and innovative approaches to business problems,” said Mark Fidelman, CEO of Evolve!, a social business consultancy, and leading social strategist of the Top 25 Influencer Award. “These 25 individuals are passionate advocates, who are re-defining the value of social community and collaboration.”

The individual scores of the top 25 range from 5455 to 3025. While the list is available on the Harmon.ie website, the following are those who ranked in the top five.

Joel Oleson: Joel, who has 5455 points in the ranking system, is a SharePoint content and collaboration solutions manger for LDS Church, a former Microsoft senior technical product manager and was part of a team who designed Microsoft’s global search, intranet and teams sites. In 2011, he was in second place on Top 25 SharePoint Influencers List.

Mark Miller: Mark, with a score of 5450, is the founder and editor of EndUserSharePoint.com. He also helps organizations with their social media development and building their online community.

Andrew Connell: With a score of 4975, Andrew is ranked third. He is a SharePoint developer and instructor who has a also co-founded Critical Path Training, which educates and trains individuals in SharePoint. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Office SharePoint Server.

Laura Rogers: Laura has a score of 4520. With eight years experience in the industry, she is now a senior SharePoint specialist at Rackspace Hosting and is a Microsoft MVP. She’s also written a variety of books in the subject including: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step and Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint.

John Mancini: With a score of 4490, John is ranked in fifth place. He is the president of the Association for Information and Image management (AIIM), which is a document and content management non-profit association.

Thanks again.

----

Some AIIM SharePoint resources that might be useful...

Our SharePoint Governance/ECM course

Our SharePoint for Collaboration course

Our most recent Industry Watch on SharePoint

A white paper on Automating ERM with SharePoint

A white paper on How to Use SharePoint as a Self-Help Knowledge Center

I like this word cloud from our most recent Industry Watch, The SharePoint Puzzle:  Adding the Missing Pieces. The question? What additional features would you like to see in #SharePoint?

Check out the full report (free) for the full story.

Governance, as it relates to enterprise content and records management, is controlling how information is created and managed in the enterprise.  A governance program will include policies, goals, authorities, decisions, and a program definition.

A SharePoint governance plan should address:

• Classification, content type, and metadata management to ensure appropriate organization of information
• Site provisioning and content type deployment to ensure decisions are consistent across the organization
• Records retention assignment and disposition to ensure that enterprise records management objectives are met
• Specific SharePoint 2010 environmental considerations
• Configuration of security to ensure overall adherence to policy and goals

[Note:  A free briefing paper is available from AIIM -- Automating ERM with SharePoint.]

A lack of governance can manifest itself in a variety of ways.  A good way to identify if and where your organization may need help with governance is to look for some of the following indicators:

• Sites are created at-will and without guidance or an approval process.
• Every site looks different and there is a desire to create a stronger internal brand for the organization.
• Corporate policies, specifically retention policies, are either inconsistently applied or lacking altogether.
• Tools like SharePoint Designer are used without guidance or oversight.
• The litigation or preservation hold process is inconsistent or cumbersome.
• Record managers are unable to consistently apply retention to electronic records.

Keep in mind two points as you think about this list.  First, these are simply things to look for and there is no magic formula to determine if you are in need of additional governance.  However, the more of the items on this list that make you think, “That applies to my organization," the greater the likelihood that you will need additional governance.  Second, governance alone may not be sufficient by itself to address the particular shortcoming.

Every organization will have a different culture and style for the way information is created.  On one end of the scale are very young, rapidly growing, relatively unregulated organizations in which speed and flexibility are preferred over control and risk avoidance.  Here, a decentralized style is the appropriate option. 

On the opposite end of the scale are mature, generally larger, and more highly regulated organizations in which regulatory compliance, structure, and control are preferred.  Oftentimes, this is because the results of carelessness or complacency could be extremely costly.  For these organizations, a more centralized style is appropriate.

Keep these two opposite ends of the scale in mind, as you think through the question of SharePoint governance.  Which end of the scale your organization falls on will influence the amount of distributed administration that you may want to implement.

[The above is drawn from AIIM's SharePoint for ECM course, created by the Gimmal Group.]

More SharePoint expert blog posts here...

SharePoint Surveys - Design for Analysis by Daniel Antion Vice President Information Services for American Nuclear Insurers

Last week, I spent a good deal of time wiring up Data View Web Parts to display survey results. If you want some background on that, see SharePoint vs. Excel, Round 2, but the background isn’t i... read more

A Steaming Pile of SharePoint by Michael Doyle SharePoint Architect for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide

SharePoint 2010 has greatly increased its scalability. We can now add millions of documents and create content databases in the terabyte range. Storage is cheap with everyone seeming to have vir... read more

It's about business productivity, not server maintenance by Christian Buckley Director, Product Evangelism for Axceler

When I moved my family from Northern California (born and raised in the east bay), the first comment my older kids made was "Dad, there aren't any baseball fields!" Both passionate about basebal... read more

Two by Two by Daniel Antion Vice President Information Services for American Nuclear Insurers

This is the first part of a 2-part post on how we are making SharePoint work on iOS devices. The second part will be a cross-posted between this and my SharePointStories blog, since I will be on... read more

When should you bring in end users? by Christian Buckley Director, Product Evangelism for Axceler

There are many topics that can act as a lightning rod in a conversation. Religion. Politics. Tastes great, less filling. People dig in, want to be heard, and can talk on and on for hours. The sa... read more

I am Dedicated to SharePoint, so why am I only getting Standard love? by Dave Martin Director | Microsoft Solutions Group for Open Text Inc.

Sadly, and I sincerely apologize to the three people who follow my AIIM Blog, my last post was about six months ago and discussed a now old (comparatively and when measured in Web time) technolo...read more

More SharePoint expert blog posts here...