SouthEast Productivity

In this Michael on the Go episode I discuss 4 of the basic elements of SharePoint Governance (Assemble the team, document, training, and iteration). In my many onsite discussions with clients I find that oftentimes those implementing SharePoint are overwhelmed by all the governance advice and collateral available, In this segment I focus on the four basic elements that if implemented can provide the basis for a dynamic, growing governance of SharePoint and will help to ensure ongoing success.

In this video Productivity Pundit Michael Gannotti tackles the problem of all day, unplugged, digital note taking. Using a Fujitsu Q550 Windows 7 Slate along with Microsoft OneNote 2010 Michael shows how mobile digital workers can easily create content that is compatible with existing systems and shareable with fellow colleagues.

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Brent and Michael show the seamless transition from personal recreation (Angry Birds) on a Windows 7 Slate/Tablet to business productivity via Microsoft Lync 2010 and back again.

In this episode of Ask The Samurai I answer three separate questions around social computing/collaboration. The focus of this weeks questions: Rolling Out Social Computing Best Practices, Automated TOC/Table of Contents in Enterprise Wiki, and Portals vs Collaboration Sites.

In this Michael on the Go I discuss a client onsite experience and the customer revelations around "Best of Breed" application vs an integrated productivity suite like the Microsoft Office system. Areas discussion include: Operational Support, Development, Integration, Ease of Use, and End User Adoption.

SharePoint is a great development platform as long you follow some golden rules right from the start. Being so huge as product, is hard for someone starting up on the SharePoint developing world, to achieve success without stumbling on "black-holes" issues with no turning back. With this session learn some best practices in developing in SharePoint: Team Building, Environments, ALM, Frameworks and Do/Don'ts.

The Bing Bar on the Windows 7 Slate rocks! With aggregate views of personal email, Facebook, local weather, maps, stocks, local movies, and site language translation, the Bing Bar for IE9 makes your web viewing a more pleasurable experience.

In this video Productivity Pundit Michael Gannotti shows how using a Fujitsu Q550 Windows 7 Tablet running Word 2010 enables seamless productivity when publishing blog posts to a SharePoint 2010 site. All on the go.

Does your organization struggle with users creating Access databases on file shares that are un-monitored yet become mission critical? If so you are not alone. With the release of SharePoint 2010 and Access Services Microsoft has released a powerful new tool set for organizations that provides the flexibility and power of Access for business users while meeting the operational concerns of today’s Enterprise. Join this webcast to learn about Access Services, upgrading/migrating older databases, and resources for your organization. Speaker: Michael Gannotti

In this session, Mark Miller discusses the techniques and resources he used for making EndUserSharePoint.com one of the largest SharePoint Community sites in the world in less than two years. He’ll share why he built the site, how the community developed, how he attracted world class authors, and what you can do to develop your own community of internal SharePoint users.

In this presentation attendees will learn how to leverage out of the box SharePoint Server 2010 capabilities to capture organizational tacit knowledge and organize it in a manner that makes it accessible and usable.

In this intro video I cover the challenges giving rise to Knowledge Center requirements in the Enterprise space and provide an overview of the elements of the solution. In videos 2-6 I will demonstrate the building of each of the elements discussed.

In the second of a six part series on building an Enterprise Knowledge Center I cover creating the top level aggregate entry point using a blank site as a starting point as well as setting up the knowledge creation engine in the form of topical discussion.

In this Coffee Talk Gadget of the Week I demonstrate the use of the Capturx Digital Pen for taking notes with ink to paper and then publishing those note to varied shared OneNote books on the Intranet, Extranet, and cloud.

12-15-2010 In this episode: Productivity News, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Project Pro 2010 integration, Special Guest Dux Raymond Sy on Project Management and SharePoint, Capturx digital pen publishing to shared OneNote 2010, and more

01-12-2011 In this episode: Productivity News, Tips & Tricks 1 (Creating digital memories with Windows Live tools), Customer Onsite Experience (Customer extranets for contract managament, collaboration, and operational reporting), Tips & Tricks 2 (Easy eNewsletter publishing with Publisher 2010).

This weeks Coffee Talk marked the return of our live interactive broadcasting. In this episode:Productivity News, Tips & Tricks (creating rich media recordings of real time meetings/presentations for re-use), Special Guest (Marc Pierre from Capturx walks through scenarios for data capture using a pen to digital rendering in Microsoft Excel 2010. He then demonstrates the environment and the process. *must see!), Customer Onsite Experience (We will answer customer question “In SharePoint, can I e-mail enable a particular site without e-mail enabling all of SharePoint? If so, is this a difficult proposition?”),Windows Phone 7 App spotlight… and more.

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, SharePoint Online with Mark Kashman, Windows Phone 7 photo editing goodness, and more!

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Business Productivity News, Special Guest Austin Winters (On building rich media portal in SharePoint 2010 - Microsoft Academy), and more...

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Brett's Birthday,Productivity News, Taming the Project Management Beast (integrating Microsoft Project, SharePoint, and Outlook... al via a tablet/slate), Customer Onsite Experiences (Intranet topology and localizing rich media delivery), Windows Phone 7 app (Congress), and more...

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, Customer Oniste (Media transition when upgrading to SharePoint 2010), Windows Phone 7 App (Realtor.com), Windows 7 Tablet (Taming the Realtime Collaboration Beast With Microsoft Lync and the Tablet), Virtual Conference Q&A, Kodak Playsport Videocam, and more...

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity news, making InfoPath web forms finger friendly for tablets, creating rich PowerPivot business intelligence mashups step by step, Windows Phone 7 app of the week, and more.

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, SharePoint Book Review, Special Guest Flavio Almeida on SQL 2011, Windows Phone 7 App of the Week, and much more.

In this episode: Productivity News, Customer Onsite Experience – Off line collaboration with SharePoint Workspace, So You Have A Zune HD – The new email and eReader applications for Zune from Microsoft,Mobility Madness – Overview/demonstration of the speech recognition capability baked in to all Windows 7 Slates, Extending The SharePoint Search Experience With Windows 7 – See how you can leverage native capability within Windows 7 combined with SharePoint Server to provide a rich search experience that will increase employee productivity and save valuable time, and more

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, Special Guest Laura Rogers on InfoPath and SharePoint, Windows Phone 7 and more.

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, Neural Networks-Social Computing-Enterprise, Windows Phone 7 and more

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, SharePoint Product Manager Laura Brown, Customer Onsite Experience, Windows 7 Slate, Mailbag, and more

In this episode of Coffee Talk: Productivity News, Broadcasting Using Windows 7 Slate, SharePoint List Relationship Creation Made Easy, Windows Phone 7 app of week and much more.

In this Coffee Talk guest segment Microsoft Solutions Specialist, Kelly Mataya, talk with host Michael Gannotti about Microsoft Lync. Lync provides powerful new collaborative capability for customers.

A Coffee Talk shout out from Iowa

A Coffee Talk shout out from Carlos in Lisbon Portugal

This session will demonstrate how to use SharePoint, Office, Lync, and other components of the Microsoft Collaboration Platform to engage globally distributed employees, support local languages, and tackle compliance and regulatory issues.

In this episode of Michael on the Go I discuss the range of multimedia options available for use within a collaboration environment. Highlighted are the types, benefits, and potential gotcha's.

One of the beautiful things about a Windows 7 based Tablet/Slate is the fact that it can run all of the software your PC runs today. No need to create new specialized apps, a costly proposition in the Enterprise space. In this Productivity Adventure Michael shows you how to quickly configure your tablet to turn all those existing applications in to finger friendly ready applications in a few clicks.

With Windows 7 Slate users can consume the full breadth of content from applications and the web. They can connect with other users in realtime on with rich voice and video. They can also create content with the full power of a PC and its productivity apps. Join Michael and Brent as they show how the Windows 7 slate is truly the only slate device that brings full Enterprise Productivity and Personal Entertainment in one device.

Creating innovative business solutions using Microsoft Access 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010

In this session we will look at some basic out of the box ways to create powerful dashboards for managing teams and projects. Our dashboards will be created using multiple connected web parts all configured from the browser. This session will give you a good overview of lists, views, web part pages and web part connections. This is a great session for those just getting started with SharePoint who want to push the limits of out of the box configuration.

In this presentation, you'll learn key techniques in: Gaining executive buy-in for SharePoint projects Identifying and prioritizing business benefits SharePoint provides Proper planning and appropriately managing expectations Engaging the business for better adoption Defining organizational SharePoint readiness.

Watch Capturx Marc Pierre in a session that should be of interest to any mobile worker. Marc will show how using the natural user interface of ink and paper mobile workers can create content and capture data in a disconnected which is then auto-synchronized to multiple digital environments. Environments which will be demonstrated include: Microsoft OneNote, Excel, and SharePoint. Targeted scenarios include energy line inspection, manufacturing, medical workers, and more. This is a must see presentation!

In this guest segment of Coffee Talk we sit down with Microsoft's own Austin Winters. Austin takes us through the digital media delivery goodness that is Microsoft Academy. Microsoft Academy is the successor to Academy Mobile (also known as Podcasting Kit for SharePoint). The segment features an in-depth walkthrough of capabilities as well as a dive in to the architecture that powers Academy.

In this guest segment for the 1-19-2011 Coffee Talk show, special guest Marc Pierre from Capturx walks through scenarios for data capture using a pen to digital rendering in Microsoft Excel 2010. He then demonstrates the environment and the process.

Last evening as I was preparing for a presentation I received a Direct Message via Facebook concerning Windows 7 Slate and the ability to sign both Word documents and PDF forms. In this Productivity Pundit segment I demonstrate how to accomplish both ink signage as well as digital certificate signage and even toss in a sprinklink of document cleansing as well.. all from my Asus Windows 7 Slate.

In this guest segment from Coffee Talk, episode 14, our guest Dux Raymond Sy discusses managing Enterprise projects using SharePoint and Project. He also offers up a template for organizations to work with (to obtain the template see Coffee Talk episode 14 in the Coffee Talk archives)

Dynamic data driven diagrams using Visio 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010

In this Customer Onsite Experience edition of Michael on the Go We will answer customer question “In SharePoint, can I e-mail enable a particular site without e-mail enabling all of SharePoint? If so, is this a difficult proposition?”

This session will stress i) the business value of employee / manager self-service, ii) common challenges organizations encounter, and iii) how these can be addressed through design best practices, SharePoint 2010 and a seamless user experience leveraging business connectivity services (BCS) or DUET Enterprise in the case of integration with SAP environments.

Rich media delivery within an Enterprise environment can be an invaluable asset for corporate/client training, internal/external communications, marketing and more.

With ecspand for SharePoint, there is now a single repository for users to surface ANY corporate document. This simplifies their efforts and takes an already compelling ROI and turns it into a stunning productivity enhancement that safeguards critical corporate communications, while streamlining the user experience and returns the users focus to their business tasks.

This is the 3rd in a 6 part Productivity Adventures series on Enterprise Knowledge Centers. In this video I cover the creation of FAQs using SharePoint wikis to structure knowledge coming out of topical discussions.

With the releases of Microsoft Project 2010, Project Server 2010, and SharePoint 2010 project management has reached new heights of flexibility, and power. In this SEProductivity Brown Microsoft’s Tod Monchecourt will introduce the newly released project management tools from Microsoft and how they can help any organization with its project management needs whether used by themselves or tandem with each other. View this recorded webcast to learn about the new capabilities in Project 2010 and Project Server 2010 and see how they fit like a hand in a glove with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Social Media and Innovation go hand in hand. In today’s Productivity Adventure I explore, discuss, and demonstrate some of the key trends in innovative social media focusing on Microsoft solutions in these areas. Featured in today’s adventure are: Communities Mobility Geo-Enabled Data Interactive Displays Connecting Physical Environments with Virtual Content Multimedia Mashups and Dashboards Technologies covered range from SharePoint Server 2010, to Office 2010, Windows Phone, Surface, Slates, and more.

In this episode of the Social Media Samurai I address 3 essential qualities that MUST be a part of an organizations social media efforts: Passion, Predictability, and Sincerity.

Your organization hires smart people so, let's empower those people to drive more insight into your business and make better decisions by leveraging the tools they're already very confident and comfortable in already.... Excel! Brent walks you through some of the new data analysis and visualization capabilities in Excel 2010 while also introducing you to PowerPivot, which allows you to pull Hundreds of Millions rows of data into Excel from multiple disparate Data sources... create relationships between the Data Sources, which allows you to drive insight ​like never before. The icing on the cake is when Brent then publishes all of this insight to SharePoint, allowing the entire organization to gain value from the analysis he's created!

Find anything-anyone in the enterprise using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Brent and Michael take a look at how Windows 7 Slate/Tablet devices can make standard Enterprise applications finger friendly.

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Michael shows how to create rich web forms that are finger friendly using the Windows 7 Slate/Tablet for content creation and consumption.

With many organizations looking to increase IT agility while lowering operational expenses demand for cloud based services has never been greater. Microsoft 365 offers the industry standard for services and value while leveraging the skills your employees already have. In this session Microsoft Technology Specialist Marc Zentmeyer dives in to this exciting new offering from Microsoft.

In this episode of Michael on the Go I answer a question posed to me on Twitter the other day. The Tweet asked "@gannotti do u have any idea how to make users loved to use sharepoint?its a homework in my office." In this episode I discuss three courses of action that every organization should be pursuing as an accompaniment to their SharePoint deployment to increase end user buy in, interest, and to generate a real love for the capabilities of SharePoint. These three areas are addressing pain, training, and serve up carrots.

While driving to Charlotte from Raleigh for a client Architectural Design Session I received a video content request via Twitter. I was asked "@gannotti what about SharePoint hosting for small business?" In this episode of Michael on the Go I discuss small business options and benefits for a hosted Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 solution.

In this session, Derek Weeks will do a broad analysis of the SharePoint market based upon a SharePoint Community survey from August 2010 with results compared to the January 2011 responses.

This IT Showcase will explore how we built Microsoft’s internal solution on SharePoint 2010 leveraging SharePoint 2010 Social, Search and managed meta data services to drive compelling solutions and content using social capabilities as the common fabric that connects.

Use the wisdom of crowds - your customers, employees and partners to drive revenue, cut costs and improve processes. ​SpigitEngage for SharePoint extends the capabilities of SharePoint by creating a comprehensive collaboration and idea management solution that focuses on inspired communities, agile innovation and measurable results.

So you got that brand new slate with the fast SSD but you worry about filling it up with apps and data. You add an SD Card to the available slot but apps like Zune and Media Center only recognize internal hard drives, not removable storage. In this episode of Productivity Pundits learn how you can turn an ordinary SD Flash card in to storage that your device recognizes as another internal drive

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Brent and Michael, plus special guest Brett Austin, show the real world rich integration between Microsoft Lync 2010 and SharePoint 2010, all enabled through the use of a Windows 7 Slate/Tablet device.

If you are looking to build your corporate brand and better connect with your audience/customers then Facebook Social Stream provides an easy to implement solution for your live events hosted by SharePoint. In this special SEProductivity Coffee Talk Tips & Tricks edition of Michael on the Go I demonstrate how to set up your Facebook Social Stream application and then render it in SharePoint.

Those attending the session are guaranteed to walk away with new ideas on how they can reform their companies with a vision towards the future.

Huh? Did I read that right? Apple and SharePoint - a perfect match? The reality is today's business climate demands more. Organizations every day are creating innovative, mobile solutions that enhance employee productivity, drive revenue, and produce significant competitive advantage. As a result of the consumerization of IT, the popularity of tablets, and the user experience of apps; for many organizations this means Apple iOS. In this session, we will discuss how to expose SharePoint content to iOS apps from a business and technology perspective. We will demonstrate how a device manufacturer used SharePoint in conjunction with an iPad application to introduce new products, enhance the field sales process, and drive sales.

Coffee Talk Episode 9 Gadget of the Week: Microsoft Kinect for the Xbox 360. In this video we take a short tour of the device, its use in controller free gaming and its use as a video conferencing/communication system that can connect with other Xbox user as well as PC users with a webcam and Windows Live account.

In this special guest segment of Coffee Talk we were joined by Microsoft MVP Laura Rogers. Laura takes us though creating Infopath forms that dynamically build as they go through a workflow.

: In this Coffee Talk guest interview Senior Technical Product Manager Mark Kashman walks us through SharePoint Online. Mark introduces us to the offering and benefits, discusses the deltas between online and on-premise hosting, and demonstrates the product offering.

In this special customer onsite edition of Michael on the Go I address a customers concerns around multimedia delivery when moving from a legacy Web Content Management System to SharePoint 2010.

While driving to Charlotte I received a request via Facebook to discuss how InfoPath, SharePoint, and workflow can help enable business process. In this Michael on the Go I discuss this integration with a special eye to extending that experience to partner, vendors, and even clients in a secured extranet.

Use of native Office applications on Windows 7 based tablets/slates are incredibly powerful from a productivity standpoint as opposed to other tablet solutions on the market. In this Productivity Adventure Michael Gannotti takes you through the experience, the various ways of interacting with Microsoft OneNote 2010 from a Windows 7 based Tablet device.

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Michael, Brent, and special guest Brett Austin, demonstrate presenting PowerPowerPoint locally on screen and remotely via Lync all from a Windows 7 Tablet.

Multiparty editing of Microsoft Office documents is huge in Office/SharePoint 2010. What's even bigger? Multiparty editing with the Windows 7 slate! In this Productivity Pundits episode Brent and Michael walk through multiparty editing with Microsoft Word 2010 published to SharePoint 2010 via the Windows 7 slate.

In this SEProductivity Brown Bag session Microsoft Principal Technology Special Brent Whichel will walk you through the end to end process of creating a business solution using Microsoft SharePoint Server, InfoPath, and Excel with PowerPivot. Learn how easily you can leverage these components to build rich applications with no code. In this solution Brent will build an InfoPath web form that feeds a SharePoint list data. That data will then be served up to Microsoft Excel by another new SharePoint feature, Atom data feeds. Finally, in Excel he will create a rich Business Intelligence dashboard using PowerPivot and publish it all to SharePoint 2010. Recorded 11/10/2010

Office Web Applications provide rich online productivty and collaboration leveraging existing skillsets in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Now Facebook users can take advantage of the power of Microsoft Office Web Applications to supercharge their collaborative Facebook experience.

We will discuss methods that have been leveraged along with "Lessons Learned" and "Best Practices". We will also discuss techniques and the process for Application Rationalization. A discussion of tools and processes like Software Inventory and Application Compatibility and Software Deployment will also be covered

In this Coffee Talk (episode 23) guest segment Brent Whichel walks through building a PowerPivot and publishing it to SharePoint. Learn how, step by step, to create a PowerPivot using different data sources, how to relate the data, create compelling visualizations, and then to publish it all to SharePoint.

In this episode of Michael on the Go I discuss, and demonstrate, how you can embed any PowerPoint presentation in to a web page as easy as 1, 2, 3. Using a combination of Office web applications delivered via Windows Live anyone can now share presentations with their audience on the web with a few easy clicks. During my demonstration I show embedding with PowerPoint but the same steps can be taken to embed Excel content as well.

In my new web program, Coffee Talk, at http://www.seproductivity.com we recently introduced a new feature on our show that I have have gotten numerous questions about. Using native SharePoint Enterprise functionality (Web forms using InfoPath forms services, SharePoint lists, and web-parts) we have set up a simple method where live stream viewers can submit questions and comments during the live event. These questions and comments are then shown in an auto-refreshing feed represented as a sort of social stream. In this special edition of Michael on the Go I not only talk about how to set up such a system for your own organization but I actually provide a step by step how to video demonstration on building one.

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Brent shows Michael how they can leverage Excel, PowerPivot, and SharePoint to deliver business intelligence via the Windows 7 Slate/Tablet.

A few days ago I had two separate meetings with clients who had organizational needs around streaming audio and video content within their Enterprise organizations for communications, training, and more. In both cases the clients had existing SharePoint 2007 instances in place with plans to move to 2010. However, they also were considering additional media functionality beyond what SharePoint provides natively out of the box. In this Michael on the Go video I discuss what SharePoint offers media streaming wise out of the box as well as how that can be extended. I also discuss the rich media delivery possible with IIS Smooth Streaming. Finally, I discuss how both IIS Smooth Streaming and SharePoint can be integrated to provide the best of both worlds.

SharePoint 2010 provides a rich environment for building robust enterprise FAQs, training sites, and help desk self-help applications. In this SEProductivity Brown Bag session learn how you can create compelling online knowledge repositories using the updated Wikis, rich media libraries, enhance/extend the wiki, and the desktop tools needed to create the content for these enhanced Wikis.

Mobile workers are often challenged with situations that interrupt important conference. In this episode of Productivity Pundits Michael and Brent show how seamless conferencing can be achieved using Lync, Windows Phone 7, and the Windows 7 slate.

Self service business intelligence with Microsoft PowerPivot for Excel 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010

Lync is hot! At a time when most organizations are looking at how they can cut costs while increasing the value they offer Lync delivers the goods. Join Microsoft Solutions Specialist Kelly Mataya as she takes us through Lync capabilities and scenarios where it addresses real world business problems.

Take your meetings and meeting minutes to a whole new level! In this episode of Productivity Pundits Michael and Brent walk through the shared OneNote experience on the Windows 7 Slate/Tablet. See how SharePoint, OneNote, and Windows 7 slate can enable true collaborative note taking.

Whether it's on-premise, in the cloud, or a hybrid, SharePoint is an enterprise ready platform that can help solve many business problems. This session will review the differences between SharePoint on-premise and SharePoint Online as well as the different workloads/scenarios where one or the other makes sense.

SharePoint 2010 plays a big role in integrating with line of business applications like SQL, Oracle, CRM, etc.. in this session, we will see the beauty SharePoint 2010 that gives when integrating with CRM 2011 as well as be able to use Fast Search to search in CRM 2011.

In this Coffee Talk Tips & Tricks session I demonstrate how to publish a Project plan to SharePoint, synchronize the Project tasks with a SharePoint Project Task List, and then how to facilitate users updating the plan using Microsoft Outlook.

In this episode of Productivity Adventures I present, and demonstrate, my personal top 5 favorite features of SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 covers a vast array of Enterprise class workloads including delivery of sites, communities, content, search, business insights, composite applications, and more. In my personal top 5 I focus in on capabilities that can address common Enterprise challenges around: Training, corporate communications, social networking and collaboration, subject matter expertise discovery, Office desktop deployment and file compatibility, extended collaboration with partner/vendors/clients, line of business application development and Access proliferation, and finally large data set number crunching and distributed high end/easy to use business insight/intelligence. While these areas alone should get people excited about the ground breaking capability of SharePoint 2010 they really just scratch the surface. So tune in and enjoy but remember, SharePoint 2010 isn’t just an application… it’s an ADVENTURE!

This session will explore tactics and strategies to handle issues of low bandwidth, high latency, and unreliable connectivity. These will include the distribution of SharePoint services and the impact of client applications and cloud-based services such as Office 365

The speaker will take the audience through the Maturity Model and will discuss when, in the maturity process, companies should start considering a Business Process Management solution. Templates for self-assessment will be provided.​

Organizations are increasingly looking to the cloud as a way of reducing operational expenses while increasing organizational nimbleness. As such the idea of a cloud hosted instance of SharePoint can be an attractive option. In this session Mark will cover the benefits of SharePoint online, the power it delivers to organizations, and cover the differences between self-hosted SharePoint and cloud hosted. Additionally, he will demonstrate the new features available in the Office 365 cloud hosted service.

With all the influx of daily it is easy to get overwhelmed in today’s business environment. SharePoint Server 2010 makes it easy to create dashboards for you and your team that cut through the clutter and deliver you the information you need, when you need it. View this archived webcast by Microsoft Collaboration Technology Specialist Michael Gannotti in learning how to set up SharePoint dashboards. This session is appropriate for all and will NOT involve programming (if you can handle Excel you can handle this!)

I recently spent the day in Charlotte for an all day client Architectural Design Session. During the course of the day the topic of leveraging social media for collaboration and communication came up. The client in this case was considering which technology would be most appropriate for a scenario where they wanted to put out a proposal or thought for consideration with the expectation of generating feedback from their end user populace. The answer was blogs but before delivering that answer I set out to have them understand the difference, and focus, of the various technologies they were considering in light of their use in a corporate Intranet setting. In this nighttime episode of Michael on the Go I discuss the strengths and focus of SharePoint Server 2010 Discussion Boards vs. Blogs vs. Wikis.

While traveling to Charlotte for a client architectural design session I received a video topic request via twitter. @alanr100 asked, "@gannotti Not sure if you have done a Michael on the Go: "SharePoint 2010 for SMBs" yet but interested in your thoughts." In this episode of Michael on the Go I discuss my thoughts on what makes Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 such a good fit and great value for use by small businesses.

The other day I received a great question via Facebook around whether or not having a social interactive presence on a SharePoint instantiation would drive increased sight intuitiveness as navigational ease of use. While at a first glance this may seem to be the case it is not in fact necessarily so. In this Michael on the Go video I discuss sight intuitiveness, social interactions, and usability activities that can drive ease of use for your corporate SharePoint instance.

In this special TechReady 11 episode Michael Gannotti speaks with social media expert and pioneer Paolo Tosolini ( @tosolini ).

In this episode of Productivity Pundits we take a look out how the Windows 7 Slate provides a rich experience for hands free operation and content productivity. Speech recognition is an out of the box feature built in to the Windows 7 platform and slate devices based on Windows 7 provide an ideal platform for mobile hands free content production. Applications demonstrated include Microsoft Word 2010 as well as end to end emailing with Microsoft Outlook 2010.

In this Productivity Adventure Michael Gannotti tackles the issue of the mobile worker in need of BPM (Business Process Management). Accessing and submitting data can be a challenge for mobile workers. See how the convenience of the tablet format, combined with common Microsoft productivity tools (InfoPath 2010, SharePoint 2010, and SharePoint Workspace 2010) can enable on the go BPM whether connected to the corporate network or disconnected.

In this Productivity Adventure Michael Gannotti shows how you can centrally manage your Microsoft Project Plan and extend its use to your team without loading Project on everyones PC. Highlighted in this ideo are Project 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Outlook 2010. All work is done in a mobile fashion care of an ExoPC Windows 7 Tablet :-)

In this Productivity Adventure Michael Gannotti and Brett Austin team up to explore how Microsoft Lync, combined with a Windows 7 Tablet, can facilitate improved collaboration between mobile professional. In this segment they use the medical profession as a focal point but the same enablement is viable in any scenario with mobile workers.

In this episode of Michael on the Go I address the why execs should blog, provide two contrasting examples of successful executive blogging, and finally how executives can blog using familiar tools to eliminate technical hurdles.

This past week during the weekly airing of Coffee Talk at seproductivity.com I got a question via the Coffee Talk Mailbag about MySites. "Mike, I met you at ShareFest2010 Philly..I need to somehow sell the value of mysites on MOSS and upgrading to 2010 to mngmt..advice?" In this episode of Michael on the Go I walk through three SharePoint must have's that require MySites and deliver the case for deploying SharePoint 2010 MySites.

Tablets are hot but are they appropriate for the enterprise space? In this Michael on the Go video the topic of tablet use in the enterprise is addressed, requirements for consideration around security and applications, and why Windows Tablets can meet corporate needs.

I recently spent the day in Charlotte for an all day client Architectural Design Session. During the course of the day the topic of SharePoint Governance came up. While we did not dive deeply in to governance (that would be an all day affair) we did touch on two points of consideration to make sure are implemented. In this nighttime episode of Michael on the Go I discuss them implementation of an organizational SharePoint governance board as well as the establishment of an internal SharePoint town hall.

In this session, we will discuss some methods that have proven to be successful for explaining these concepts and then organizing the taxonomy. You will see how to use tools that help users to inventory their documents and capture the metadata.

In this session, we will discuss how to use Visio 2010 Premium to document, model, and simulate your business processes. We will show you how to gain visibility into your business, so you can make better decisions – quickly! Learn how to get the most from your people and processes without wasted time, money or productivity. Streamline business processes easily Understand the impact of decisions on your business – before you make them Optimize processes to reach your full potential Watch your business GROW!

One of the challenges of social media outreach efforts is that it takes a lot of person hours and commitment to deliver repeatable weekly outreach efforts. The resource requirements are often daunting and can result in failed attempts or no attempt.In this Social Media Samurai episode I discuss, and demonstrate, how to utilize a combination of pre-recorded and live content to interact with customers in a scalable fashion. Technology used in this solution include SharePoint Server 2010, Expression Encoder, IIS Smooth Streaming, and Facebook Social Streams.

This seminar focuses on how to turn organizational "baggage" into true assets that increase productivity, improve quality, and reduce time to market. The use of SharePoint as a collaboration platform can be leveraged to create a "step change" in your project performance.

Microsoft's 2010 release of products allows customers to manage their eDiscovery and compliance rules and searches using the technology your users every day. In this session, we will cover the features and how others are using this technology to simplify this complicated and costly process.

In today’s economy human resource departments need to have compelling and cost-effective solutions to get things done. Join us for an overview how existing technologies and new products like SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft InfoPath can provide your HR department the tools necessary to streamline and manage operations with robust functionality. We will also review the complex process of onboarding a new employee, and how to leverage these technologies to create a process that will have a new employee completely ready to go before their first day on the job including automating tasks such as necessary account creation, document creation and collection and notifications.

Microsoft Office Visio 2010 makes it easy for IT and business professionals to visualize, explore, and communicate complex information. Go from complicated text and tables that are hard to understand to Visio diagrams that communicate information at a glance. Instead of static pictures, create data-connected Visio diagrams that display data, are easy to refresh, and dramatically increase your productivity. Use the wide variety of diagrams in Office Visio 2010 to understand, act on, and share information about organizational systems, resources, and processes throughout your enterprise.

In this segment form episode 8 of Coffee Talk Microsoft Solution Specialialist Natalie Zora show us how to connect Visio to back end dynamic for unique and powerful data visualizations using Microsoft Visiio

Microsoft Visio Specialist, Natalie Zora, provides an in-depth, fast paced, Visio Tips & Tricks session. Visio 2010 takes visualization and process mapping to a whole new level whether as a stand-alone desktop product or as part of SharePoint Visio Services.

In this episode of Productivity Pundits Brent and Michael take a look at visualizing data in a non tabular fashion. See how they leverage the power of the Windows 7 Slate in combination with Visio 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010 to deliver rich, web based, visualizations.

In this special guest segment of Coffee Talk we take a look how you can get a holistic view or your organizations software and hardware using MAPs and then visualize it for manipulation using PowerPivot for Excel.

In this episode of 3 Minute Adventures (or in this case more like a 5 minute one ;-) I cover an issue a colleague of mine faced this morning with Microsoft InfoPath and InfoPath Services. Having created his InfoPath form and then publishing it to SharePoint InfoPath from services he found that the form was still opening in the InfoPath client instead of a web browser. In this episode I show how to ensure that your InfoPath forms open properly in the web browser.

In this video Brent Whichel demonstrates the creation and use of web forms using Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft InfoPath

This a great demonstration of navigating SharePoint on a Windows Phone 7 device. In this video, Brent Whichel shows a SharePoint library in Office365 and watches a video downloaded to his phone.

Brent shows Mike one of his favorite apps that allows him to "Grab and Go" with his slate without interacting (by mistake) with the open apps. Perfect for those time when you need to walk from meeting to meeting. A must have app for all slate owners!

So what do you get when you combine Windows 7 Slate, Microsoft Lync, and a high speed air-card? Anywhere, anytime, full business productivity access. In this short clip Brent and Michael give a little taste of mobile productivity. Filmed pointing my Kodak PlaySport at my own Windows 7 tablet.. We will be filming a more comprehensive session in a week from a parking lot and possibly also passenger seat for interactivity with SharePoint, Office and more!

IDC is forecasting that Windows Phone will surge to second place in global smartphone OSes by 2015. Studies show how 93% of Windows Phone 7 owners would recommend it to their friends and family. Come learn how your users can extend their productivity to this platform using the built in Office Hub, which allows them to connect to SharePoint (hosted or, on Premise) and Open, Edit, and Save their documents right there on the Phone! Brent shows the Mobile experience with Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Everyone knows the Windows 7 Slate is THE slate device for Enterprise class productivity but what about personal enjoyment? What about playtime? In this quick video join the Productivity Pundits as Brent takes us through a fast paced walk through of some of the applications that bring a fun consumer experience to the Windows 7 Slate. Windows Slate - Where Productivity Meets Playtime