Like I’ve said over and over and in many of my sessions, SharePoint is like a big AA Support Group.
“Hi… My name is Mark, and I use SharePoint”…
“Hi Mark…”
We’ve all had the same pains, frustrations, and struggles. WHY am I getting this error? WHY isn’t this working the way it’s supposed to? WHY did this work yesterday and not today? WHY can’t I find the answer to my problem? This should be so simple, WHY can’t I get it to work??
This is what makes the SharePoint Community so strong IMO. We’ve been there! We don’t want others to go through that pain! We can support and help each other! Let’s face it.. there’s not .NET Saturdays all over the country. Is it because more people use SharePoint than .NET? I don’t see people giving up their Saturdays for Java conferences several times a year.
So… anyway… a little firestorm got unintentionally started on Twitter today because of a couple of my tweets. It upset a couple of people who took it out of context and I wanted to set the record straight.
One of the pains many of us have experienced is the sting of inexperienced SharePoint “experts”. These people are giving bad advice in their blogs. These people are in “expert” SharePoint firms charging us an arm and a leg and doing bad work. It’s rampant.. and I’ve experienced it as a full time employee working for a large corporation paying a HUGE amount for SharePoint “experts” who were breaking things and had NO CLUE what they were doing and now as a consultant having to go in and clean up the messes created by other “expert” firms.
Anyway, lately I’ve been trying to think of a slogan for my company (Juniper Strategy) and I thought of a couple of “tongue in cheek” slogans… and me being the sarcastic guy I am started thinking of slogans for all these “SharePoint expert firms” out there… and I had a nice chuckle and thought “hey.. I’ll tweet this”. So.. I tweeted:
"We make you hate SharePoint just a little less..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
followed by:
"Just when you thought you spent enough money..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
Well.. that started other tweets (which I’ll post below).. which started other tweets.. which started other tweets… And do you know WHY these tweets were happening? Because it’s a common pain! People “Got it” and wanted to share their pain as well.. and I’m sorry, one of the BEST ways to share pain is through humor.
Anyway, a couple of people, thought that I was bashing SharePoint and Microsoft and were also afraid that other people might take all the tweets out of context and the tweets quickly fizzled out after that. I absolutely do see their point, and if I had thought ahead more I would have used @idubbs suggestion and used the hashtag #ShadySharePointFirms, but hey.. the cat was already out of the bag.
So…I absolutely wanted to set the record straight in this blog post and make sure that everything was put into the correct context with the tweets. If you were offended, I absolutely apologize.
One question I was asked in DM land was
“if I was a company implementing SharePoint and saw community leaders talking like this... I'd be terrified. how DO you find the right company? :-)”
Which I think is a valid point and question. My response is that one of the ways you can KNOW a company is any good is if they have shared your pain... if they can understand your frustrations… if they’ve been there. If you haven’t struggled with SharePoint, fought tooth and nail with her (and lost a few rounds), and come to the brink of frustration, how can you possibly understand where your customers and clients are coming from?
Anyone who knows me knows I speak my mind. You never wonder what I’m thinking. I understand that this can be good and bad. It’s one of the reasons I have a polarizing personality. But, let it never be said that I don’t “get it”. I never claimed to be an expert, I never claimed to be smarter than anyone else… I claim to know the pains first hand, understand them, and want to help.
I have friends ALL over this country (and in many other countries) BECAUSE SharePoint is such a massive beast and can have so many pain points! I wouldn’t change it for the world!! Why else would half these people sit down and have a beer with me? Because of my charm and good looks? Well sure… some of them.. but mostly because we share a common pain and passion… Let’s not forget the things that make this community unique and strong… I do see things actually changing somewhat.. and not always for the better… Let’s keep it strong… keep it passionate… and keep it enjoyable…
As the wise @SharePointeer said… “C'mon - hug it out.”
I’ll sum this blog post up with my final tweet on the matter…
“SharePoint = awesome... okay? Got it? and you KNOW who knows it well by those who've shared your pain.”
So… without further ado.. the company slogans that caused the raucous… I hope you now have the correct context… some are serious.. some are funny… all should make you think because there are pearls of wisdom in each one… I was NOT able to find all the slogans because Twitter’s search does not go back that far. Feel free to post your own..
And finally.. If you can’t have a sense of humor about some of this stuff, you need to find a new technology…
(names have been removed to protect the guilty)…
So easy even a hillbilly can do it #SharePointCompanySlogans
#SharePointCompanySlogans SharePoint made simple
Governance, you don't need no sticking governance. #SharePointCompanySlogans
"You need SharePoint Designer to do that" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"SharePoint is like a box of chocolates ..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
"In Soviet Russia, SharePoint installs you" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"You can be our next feature receiver"#SharePointCompanySlogans
"You don't find SharePoint, SharePoint finds you!" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Lets Collaborate" #SharePointCompanySlogans ;-)
"SharePoint Foundation can do that for free! We just need to do a little customization in SharePoint Designer." #SharePointCompanySlogans
SharePoint is Mjölnir #SharePointCompanySlogans
that's a known issue #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Padding our bills with extra 0's since SharePoint 2003..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
You don't need to talk to our stakeholders, we (the IT department) know what they want... #SharePointCompanySlogans
Yeah, um, sure, we can do that. I think... #SharePointCompanySlogans
SharePoint - Yeah, I can build that. #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We know what end users want" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We put the CREEP in scope creep..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
"You start coding. I'll go find out what they want."#sharepointcompanyslogans
I haven't failed, I've found 10,000 ways that don't work. #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Why buy one farm when you can buy two at twice the cost?" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Bread & Crumbs - We navigate" #SharePointCompanySlogans
Unnecessary complexity..it's how we roll! #SharePointCompanySlogans sooooo true :)
"My cousin's dog tells me that their hairdresser says that SharePoint does that!" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"If you build it, they will #$*@ it up...."#SharePointCompanySlogans
"It Depends...." #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Stop changing your requirements, and we'll stop raising our rates... " #SharePointCompanySlogans
"SharePoint.. we don't know it, but our rates just doubled... " #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Breaking your support agreement with Microsoft since 2003" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We have more than 10 years experience with SharePoint 2010" #SharePointCompanySlogans
“Why be frustrated with SharePoint when you can be frustrated with us??" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Sorry... you can't do that out of the box" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"SharePoint... Make it idiot-proof, and they'll find a bigger idiot." #SharePointCompanySlogans
“We are MOSS 2010 experts!” #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We take the kick in the nads so you don't have to" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Sorry... that's SharePoint" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"How much money do you have?" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"An error has occurred" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Pay more... get less" #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We're not incompetent, we just don't know what we're doing." #SharePointCompanySlogans
"Finding stuff on codeplex and charging you for it..." #SharePointCompanySlogans
"We are Share-point experts" #SharePointCompanySlogans