Meet SharePoint Content Publishers at SharePoint Conference 2011

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It’s a great week for a SharePoint Conference!

Several members of the Microsoft SharePoint and Office technical documentation teams are in Anaheim, CA this week and we are all hoping to connect with conference attendees and talk about the content we produce on TechNet, MSDN and Office.com.

If you are an attendee, we’d love to give you tours of our SharePoint content for IT Professionals, Developers, and Information Workers – just in case you weren’t aware of the vast amount of technical documentation and resources currently available. If you are not an attendee, this recent post is an excellent primer.

We would also like to get your feedback on how we can improve the information you or your customers consume about our products, partner with subject-matter experts on content projects, find customer technical case studies to publish, and discover any content gaps that we could try to fill.

Here is a breakdown of some of our onsite activities:

Design Time Sessions

We are hosting dedicated in-person solution design sessions with more than 30 IT Professional customers who are not currently engaged with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). The sessions are intended to help these customers envision and plan solutions based on the 2010 family of SharePoint products and technologies. The selected customers get to meet with product experts (Microsoft product team members, consultants, or MVPs) and SharePoint documentation team members to discuss solution goals, get advice on current challenges, and envision how to enhance their solutions using SharePoint 2010 products. We are very much looking forward to the learnings of these interactions. More details on these activities are on this post we published last month to recruit the customers.

TechNet Library Table of Contents Survey

One of the most common content needs that customers have conveyed to us is the importance of being able to find our content quickly and easily. We have heard the Table of Contents (TOC) for IT Professional SharePoint Server documentation in the TechNet Library can sometimes seem daunting because of the sheer volume of content we produce.

So, for SPC, we have created an interactive in-person survey that showcases three TOC options that we are considering for how to organize SharePoint Server content in the TechNet Library going forward. We are asking people to examine these options with “where would you find this” questions and to record their preferences.

Content publishers will be roaming throughout the conference to conduct these surveys. There are also two areas you can drop by at any time throughout the week to fill one out (self-service):

  • SharePoint Readiness booth on the Product Pavilion floor in the Exhibition Hall
  • Hilton Anaheim meeting room El Capitan A

Product Pavilion Booths

Several of us are going to represent Content Publishing at the Microsoft Product Pavilion booths in the Exhibition Hall. Please come visit any time the Exhibition Hall is open.

Booth areas we are staffing are:

  • SharePoint Readiness (Microsoft Learning,certifications, technical content) SharePoint Composites
  • SharePoint Online
  • SharePoint Business Intelligence: Dashboards and Reporting
  • SharePoint Business Intelligence: Self Service BI and Analytics
  • SharePoint Search
  • Duet Enterprise for SharePoint and SAP
  • SharePoint Express sessions in the Tips and Tricks Lounge

 Ask the Experts

Many of us will be available to answer questions at this evening event and reception in the Exhibition Hall on Wednesday evening, 6-7:30 p.m. We will most likely be in the Microsoft Product Pavilion booths.

Look for the special “Expert” t-shirts!

Birds of a Feather

Some of us are participating in these topical sessions:

  • Monday 12:45-1:45 – What is the role of Social in the Enterprise?
  • Tuesday 12:15-1:15 – Leveraging SharePoint in Education
  • Wednesday 12:15-1:15 – Going Green with SharePoint

Disneyland

Of course, a SharePoint Conference wouldn't be what it is without a little fun. Looking forward to some good times in the Magic Kingdom tonight with more than 7,500 SharePoint folks!

If anyone would like to request to meet up with any one of us, please feel free to contact me directly on Twitter. My profile is @MSNinaR.