It’s almost time for SharePoint Fest Chicago 2018! I’m excited to head back to Chicago next week for this year’s conference, where I’ll be presenting a half-day user adoption workshop along with sessions on designing next-gen user adoption events, reeling in overgrown SharePoint implementations, and governing usage of SharePoint hub sites.

SharePoint Fest Chicago is always a great event. There’s a mix of technical how-to sessions on SharePoint and Office 365 along with conceptual sessions on user adoption, governance, business valuation, search, content management, etc. For more information on the great content being offered, check out the conference agenda. Still want to register? Use discount code Haase100 and save $100 on your registration.

Abstracts for my conference workshop and sessions are included below. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at the event!

SharePoint/Office 365 User Adoption Master Class

A smooth deployment isn’t enough. Driving effective utilization of SharePoint and Office 365 is more than building effective migration strategies, training users on key features or sending out marketing emails. This master class provides a deep-dive on the components of user adoption. You’ll learn why user adoption programs succeed and fail, gain practical experience designing adoption strategies and learn how to leverage innovation games to build consensus.

During this workshop, you will:

• Learn the basic foundations of user adoption, including key intrinsic and extrinsic motivators
• Understand how different types of users in your organization can make (or break) your chances of user adoption success
• Understand how innovation games can help drive shared understanding, uncover user requirements and drive engagement/enthusiasm
• Examine real-world user adoption programs and determine how and why they were successful

The Peter Pan complex: Determining when a SharePoint site should grow into a hub site

We’ve been waiting for it….and now SharePoint hub sites are here! Hubs enable us to create a shared experience for a group of related SharePoint sites, including: common navigation, unified branding, aggregated news displays, and multi-site search. But how do you determine which sites should be hubs? And how do you manage the fulfillment of hub site requests?

As SharePoint site owners are educated about the capabilities of hub sites, demand for new hubs will increase. This session outlines key business criteria you’ll want to consider as you start leveraging hub sites. You’ll learn:

• What hub sites are and how hubs can be leveraged
• How to determine when a hub site is needed (e.g. should every department have a hub site? What are the criteria for leveraging a hub site?)
• How to build an organizational strategy for usage and governance of hub sites
• Practical ideas for managing the provisioning of hub sites

Next-gen user adoption: Leveraging hack-a-thons to drive creative Office 365 engagement

We want our users to leverage Office 365 to drive productivity and collaboration. But how do we engage our users, spark their creativity, and inspire them to build Office 365 solutions that re-imagine work? Hack-a-thons are an immersive and inexpensive way to build enthusiasm and foster learning. Hack-a-thon participants take part in the entire design and build process, from envisioning new business solutions to learning how to build capabilities in Office 365.

This session explores the use of hack-a-thons to drive user interest, enthusiasm, and innovation. You’ll leave with practical tips on how to design and facilitate a hack-a-thon event for your organization or user group.

Reclaiming SharePoint: How to reel in an overgrown implementation

SharePoint is organic. File-based SharePoint sites grow exponentially, consuming more and more storage space and making it difficult for users to find what they need. Governance plans designed to steer SharePoint’s utilization tarnish over time, discouraging users from adopting the platform.

This session outlines the reasons why SharePoint environments become overgrown and under-utilized and provides practical guidance on how you can assess your implementation and create a revitalization plan. We’ll also review several real-world SharePoint turnaround stories, highlighting the challenges faced and the methods taken to revive user adoption. Whether you have a “green-field” implementation with no formal governance in place or have a faded governance model that is no longer working, you’ll leave this session with proven techniques for engaging your key constituents and driving change.