Baltimore SharePoint Group Reflections/Year 3 Goals
From an Idea to a FoundationÂ
by:
Shadeed Eleazer - BSPUG Co-Founder
As co-founder of the Baltimore SharePoint User Group, I must say that we’ve come a long way during this journey of two years. We’ve opened the doors with the goal of building a SharePoint community within the greater Baltimore area.
The exciting thing is that we’ve achieved a level of consistency that very few groups attain, but there’s still a lot more that we can do and we’re just scratching the surface.Â
Year 3 will launch us forward to new heights as we will leverage new methods to introduce ourselves to the greater Baltimore community and surrounding areas. More importantly, several members of our group have grown into community leaders as individuals, which helps the public profile of the group in attracting new members.Â
As training dollars dwindle for companies, there has to be a new approach to keeping our information workers trained and prepared for the looming release of Office SharePoint 2010 beta. BSPUG will continue to rise to the challenge and address those needs and pain points.Â
To provide some transparency, I’ll list what we (somehow) managed to do well in our first 2 years:Â
Consistency - BSPUG operates on time, everytime. We’ve never canceled any of our 23 meetings and 1 Code Camp. Having a predictable model ensures familiarity and smooth introduction to unique visitors.
Location - We’ve managed to lock in long term agreements with our location sponsors. This area is the aspect that cripples the majority of start-up User Groups. Many begin at the library, coffee shops, etc which is fine to some degree but very unpredictable in most cases. We stayed with our first location sponsor for 1 year and moved to the UMBC Tech Center, which offered us a scalable model attendance wise and access to labs for hands-on sessions such as Code Camps etc.Â
Web Presence - My personal opinion is the one aspect that makes us unique in comparison to other user groups is that we use the web/social networking more effectively than any other group. Our website is very slick in design and functionality, and that was something we pushed for since the first month or so in operation. We didn’t start out on a SharePoint site, but our design communicated the idea that we should be taken seriously. We also have a keen understanding that a User Group consists of two types of memberships which I’ll outline below.
Types of Memberships:Â
- In-person Attendee - Regular attends meetings and special events. Â
- Enthusiastic but Unavailable Attendee - Loves SharePoint but the a.) commute b.) family commitments c.) timing just doesn’t allow them to join us every month. This group will attend special sessions such as our Joel Oleson or Bill English sessions and participate in our Knowledge Base.Â
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