A few powerpoint rules

With a huge presentation, the Share Point on tour, coming up, I found myself sliding into PowerPoint hell. So I stopped, tossed my work so far, and laid down a few rules to be effective while using PowerPoint.

1. No, or very few, bullet points. People cannot read and listen and think at the same time. Use images that convey the story you are using to make your point.
2. Hand out the notes after the presentation and make sure your audience knows it. It's helpful to get the audience to relax and form a frame of mind to learn. Whatever you do, do NOT use copies of your slides as notes. That is a clue you did it wrong in the first place. The slides shouldn't work without you, and vice-versa.
3. Use stories. We are hard wired to understand stories, use it to get your major point across and then delve into the ugly details.
4. Avoid Hierarchy. Nothing will kill a presentation faster than drill down slides.
5. Tell the story with pictures (see #1 above) not cheesy images (except when cheesy is part of the story)
6. Use jokes. Jokes are stories that play; great at holding onto an audience's interest. But they can't hang out there by themselves, they have to be part of the point you are trying to make.

This explains a lot

Naughty versus Nice...

Organize your EMail

From Microsoft's at work site comes a few good tips on keeping your EMail nice and tidy:

7 ways to organize your email

Picking up manure from the clean end

My first couple of efforts at getting the document mgmt part of SharePoint across to my users were miserable failures.

It isn't that surprising since I didn't really have a model in mind for them to use in place of the old Hierarchical folder structure. The adaptation requires the X is like Y explaination which in turn must be made into a narritive to become understandable.

Meanwhile, my first efforts made it seem like I'm promising them a pony if only they would start picking up the manure from the clean end.

I've been using the term library and librarian, and that might just be the narritive explaination I need to start with... More thought...

Back to basics

heh.

At yesterday's Ops Team I heard that a user attempted to use another workstation but was not successful. Suddenly I realized just how dependant most of my users are on their home workstations profile. Sure, she could log in, but getting to her Email or files was beyond her without additional training.

A one page FAQ seems to be all it will take, but the larger lesson here is despite all the years I've been doing this I still make assumptions about my users that are just plain wrong. I tell all my guys all the time, "The people we support were hired because they are experts in delivering social services, not I.T., that's what you are for..."

Sound like I should be taking my own advice.

Versioning Issues

Well.... what else is new.

We have SharePoint 2003 working inside the firewall as our main SharePoint server. We have another server running the extranet that uses SP 2007. We have InfoPath, combined with MS-Office professional, licenced for 2007 but often installed (since the users prefer) as 2003. We can write InfoPath forms, including web-browser enabled forms, using Visual Studio, but they must be deployed on SP 2007. Since our forms go on SP 03 we can't use those deployed forms. Meanwhile office 2007 Word documents need to be downgraded to office 97-03 to save on the '03 SP server.

All can be solved by upgrading SP '03 to '07 and upgrading office to '07 as well, but I just finally got my users onto '03 and besides, many of them hate the office '07 interface.

So I am doomed...

SharePoint on tour

At today's operations team meeting I am proposing to go on tour.

To wit:
* Each team will adapt to or adopt SharePoint in a unique fashion
* SharePoint rewards a different way of thinking, which requires an "ah-Ha" moment
* At it's best, SharePoint will allow team members to come and go without losing institutional knowledge, like where to find a particular file

So the goals of the tour will be:
• To demonstrate what others have been doing with the sites. (Share wins)
• To create an “ah-Ha” moment.
• To gain feedback for forms, designs, workflows and gadgets.
• To show them how to access training resources.
• To make plans specific to their site.

Embracing something new

A new quote for me to chew on... again from Cleverworkarounds.com

To implement SharePoint without any appreciation for organisational culture is simply not smart. If you are dumbfounded by the fact that nobody in the organisation is embracing wiki's, blogs and discussion forums, stop and think about it. Is this organisation conducive to such technologies?

It is true that ESSC is mixed in this regard, one set of users is very good at embracing the new, another opposes change almost as a reflex, while a third group often embraces change as a panacea, with the bonus of being able to deflect their issues on the disappointing results their own attitude delivered.

The key then, to success, is to implement small wins. Rather than looking for a game changer, modify something small to be SharePointish. I will admit however, that I often feel like I'm trying to use a paddle to move a supertanker...

Folder Hell

To move forward on the post below I wrote an introductory guide titled "Free yourself from folder hell" which I posted on our training on demand SharePoint page. Of course the link will not work outside the ESSC firewall, so if you aren't an Easter Seals Southern California staff member, its not available.

But it is a nice introduction to going folderless....