I was in La Jolla, California last March, speaking at the 2011 Best Practices Conference. Conference day 1 dawned and I woke up at 4 am with a horrible sore throat. I went back to bed in denial and woke up 2 hours later feeling even worse. Sore throat, head spinning, you know the drill. Eventually I managed to get it together and head down to breakfast. After a bit, Ruven Gotz stopped by to introduce me to Steve Morris. We chatted for a few minutes, got acquainted and discussed some common interestes around information architecture, taxonomies, business process automation, ROI, etc.. We parted ways and had a great conference (despite my cold).

After I’d been back home for a few weeks, I received a call from Steve Morris about speaking at the SHARE conference in Sydney, Australia. I started working with Steve’s colleagues at The Eventful Group and learned what a great job they do organizing these conferences. The team spends months talking to business users to find out what their unanswered SharePoint questions are. They distill all these conversations into a series of target themes for the event and work tirelessly to find the right mix of speakers and topics to address these key themes. The results are amazing, with The Eventful Group winning the prestigious “Best Asia Pacific Conference 2010” award for its inaugural SHARE 2010 conference in Sydney.

The Eventful Group has done it again, building an amazing conference schedule for this November. The upcoming SHARE conference will feature notable experts Veronique Palmer, Ruven Gotz and Richard Harbridge. These folks inspire me to think and do better every day, and I am both honored and humbled to be presenting alongside them. Here are the abstracts for the 2 sessions I’ll be delivering:

Keynote presentation: “Turning the Tide: From Chaos to Clarity”

Has your SharePoint implementation gone rogue? Do you suffer from uncontrollable site sprawl and a lack of business user/site owner knowledge? Do you want to implement a stronger Governance model, but aren’t sure how to get started?

This presentation examines how a large electronics retailer is changing the course of its SharePoint implementation. Gone are the days of unchecked site growth and using SharePoint as just an online file repository. The new focus is on best practices, granular data management, workfl ow automation, using SharePoint as a business process re-engineering tool and documenting ROI (Return On Investment). We are building an array of knowledgeable site owners and site collection administrators that understand the depth and breadth of SharePoint’s feature set so they can guide business users through decisions on when and how to build their sites/site collections.

• Where we came from and how we evolved our vision of SharePoint success
• The opportunities and challenges that come from working in an innovation-focused environment
• How a few individuals with some “different” ideas can change the landscape
• How we built our plan for change and achieved management and business user buy-in

You will leave this presentation with a clear understanding of where we started and how we’re changing our trajectory. You’ll also walk away with tips and tricks for completing this type of metamorphosis in your own organisation.

Breakout session: “De-Mystifying ROI Calculation for SharePoint”

ROI is a “fancy” acronym for Return On Investment.

While ROI implies success, it usually involves mysterious mathematical formulas that many people can’t see or understand. So how does an everyday SharePoint business owner tackle the ROI puzzle? Do you just “flip the switch” on your implementation and move on? Or are you so busy with post-launch support that you don’t have time to circle back and quantify your results?

This presentation will help you demonstrate the business value for your SharePoint implementation. We’ll examine common ROI calculation methodologies while providing strategies for identifying your ROI niche and quantifying the business value of your SharePoint implementation.

• A definition of ROI – along with details on how it can change your life!
• Common methods for valuing your SharePoint implementation
• Real-life SharePoint implementation examples (along with their resulting ROI)
• A detailed roadmap for designing, constructing and validating your own ROI methodology
• Ideas for engaging business users and management 

Want to learn more about the upcoming SHARE conference in Sydney? Visit the web site at http://www.shareconference.com/au/