Snail Mail < Email < Web 2.0

When I was a kid, I loved getting mail. I got holiday and birthday cards, packages, letters from friends and family. As I got older, the quality of my mail shifted lower and lower until I receive only bills and junk mail, with the occasional Netflix disc thrown in. The same thing happened with email, but instead of bills, I get "tasks" (and no Netflix). Postal mail and email have another similarity: they are both passive media. They get sent to you whether you like it or not, and your participation is minimal until you want to send a return message. For the past few years, I have been engaged in "Web 2.0," which is a much more active, engaging medium. Through FaceBook and LinkedIn, I can reconnect with friends and colleagues at many different levels, from reading status updates to email, chat, and even a phone call or two. In daily work, SharePoint fills the same need, but it can take some getting used to.

One of the first things I had to learn about SharePoint was balancing quality and quantity. It is so easy to be inundated with alerts for announcements, file updates, status changes, etc. If I'm actively managing a project, I might want immediate or daily alerts from the system. If not, weekly alerts or none at all are just fine. Another new idea was "pulling" information I wanted. I was so used to being "told" by email, phone calls, meetings, etc, I had to learn what was actually important for me to know and then find it. When I figured it out, I saved all kinds of time. The next big thing was collaboration. Once I started to upload draft documents and work on them with a group, I started to feel the power of Web 2.0. No more emailing endless drafts around in a circle and having to consolidate all the changes. In addition, I began using discussion groups for different aspects of a project. No endless emails and conference calls, no emails. Once I got my clients used to it, they wanted a discussion group for everything.

There are some down sides to the Web 2.0 experience, but most of them can be fixed by training. For example, security: someone needs to be the gatekeeper for the site, library, or list. That person should have the authority to grant read or edit access at will. People do rotate among projects, there are new hires, and upper management may want to look at the team's progress. Another down side is access: SharePoint, LinkedIn, and FaceBook are all designed for access outside the firewall. Users should be able to get to SharePoint from anywhere. Often, unfortunately, organizations prevent outside access, even though they allow outside email access. Strange but true.

For those of you who are dealing with SharePoint, keep in mind that you have a deeper individual responsibility for SharePoint compared to a network share, but that's a good thing. You also have more control and much greater flexibility. I invite anyone with specific questions to put them in the comments. I promise I won't answer like a typical IT guy, because I'm not one. I reserve belittling people for my private life.