Seattle - The community is roaring

The community is roaring

You could have expected a storm of reactions in blogs, wiki's, forums etc. And of course there are people who are enthusiastic and there are some rumors. The critics posted are not only about organisation (Mark Miller for instance), but also about what the Microsoft Marketing Machine is trying to tell the world (Michael Sampson).

The MS Sharepoint Conference in Seattle at the state convention & trade center is just one day old and there are a lot of people here. Some are very critical about the number of people registered. Personally I did not experience this problem of overcrowded sessions. I hope it will stay that way for me.

More interesting critics are those who trying to question that what is said by Microsoft about Sharepoint. As stated by Michael Sampson for instance, what was Bill Gates talking about in his keynote.

"Breaking the milestone of 100 million licenses sold and surpassing sales of $1 billion this year, SharePoint is helping customers solve their most pressing information management needs."

Is it true that already 100 million licenses are sold? I do like to think that this is true. Are 100 million people using it already. No I do not think so. But by putting these two tings in one sentence leaves you the opportunity to think so. Even to think that this is the holy grail.

Michael has a point when he is writing in his blog that Sharepoint is slipped in the platform rather than sold to solve the business pains. So it is hard to believe this is THE business driver, or the only business driver.

On the other hand I do not think this Trojan horse is a bad platform, not capable to solve a lot of problems. It has been smart to slip it in and yes marketing of Microsoft is successful in selling the dream of the holy grail. But still there are opportunities. We can leave them there if we do not believe in them, but still. We are here in Seattle with about 4000 professionals from all over the world.

This holy grail thing is also used on the engineers who are exposed to all this 'good stuff'. It is all easy, very fast, out of the box or even better OOB. It is hard to stay on the ground, not to take the story for granted.

So that's our job at this Sharepoint conference. Think about what Microsoft and partners are telling you. Keep your own experience in mind and ask yourself is this a holy grail or a Trojan horse? Is this a opportunity or a hoax? Can I be creative with it, fill some of the needs?

And do not forget, have some fun to!