On behalf of Penton and the entire community, welcome to Office and SharePoint Pro!
We are excited to introduce this portal to IT professionals, developers, and end users who support, extend, and apply the Microsoft Office System every day.
For some of you, this site will be a new home for a familiar resource. Up to today, MSD2D.com hosted the most exciting community on the Web for SharePoint developers and IT pros. Well, we’ve gone through an extreme makeover, and OfficeSharePointPro.com will take this community to the next level.
For others, this site will be a welcome new community. There are very few sites dedicated to supporting IT pros, developers, and end users of the Microsoft Office System—an amazing fact considering the pervasiveness of the applications it comprises.
Just how big, how exciting will this be? Well, let’s begin by “tooting our own horn.” MSD2D.com was the one of the most active SharePoint communities in the world, outside of microsoft.com itself. Penton’s windowsitpro.com site, which features content from Windows IT Pro magazine, is the most visited Windows independent community Web site in the world, again second only to microsoft.com. Following in their footsteps, we expect OfficeSharePointPro.com to become the preferred source of independent, real-world Microsoft Office and SharePoint knowledge, training, solutions, answers, and community.
What do we have going for us, already?
- The content from the active and popular MSD2D forums will be migrated in their entirety to this site.
- A slew of content to train end users and IT Pros on the intricacies and real-world issues related to Microsoft Office 2003. Check out our Office 2003 articles.
- We're beginning to load in content for Office 2007 and SharePoint (MOSS 2007 and WSS v3). Check out these Office and SharePoint articles.
- You—our most important resource. You represent our reach to over 2,500,000 (yes! two and a half million) IT pros and developers, 80,000 of which are members of our community. You, and your peers, are more equipped than anyone else in the industry to answer each others’ questions and to provide guidance as we navigate the complexities of using, supporting, and developing the Office System.
What’s coming?
- A library of e-learning for Office 2003 that we will make available in just a few weeks.
- Lots and lots of Office 2007 content which, again, will be released over the summer.
- Blogs and community support—including answers to your questions—from the most respected Office and SharePoint gurus in the world, including Alison Balter (Microsoft Access) and Doug Spindler (Groove).
Who am I?
I am the luckiest guy in the world. My job is to help you connect with your peers and with the experts we have at our disposal—to help you solve your problems, to help you proactively design and implement a productive, agile enterprise, to improve your end users’ productivity and to save you money.
My name is Dan Holme. My “resume” includes my Yale undergraduate degree and my MBA from Thunderbird, the top international business program in the country. Over the last 13 years, I’ve been fortunate enough to “ride the wave” of Microsoft technologies. I’ve been delivering training and consulting to IT organizations and end users. I’ve reached hundreds of thousands of folks through my training, the articles I’ve written for Windows IT Pro, and my books, including the Windows Server 2003 training kit from Microsoft Press. I’m an MVP in Windows Server Directory Services. My clients are mostly Fortune 200 organizations with global reach and tens of thousands of users. One of the most exciting projects I’m involved with is the broadcast of the Olympic games as the Windows Technologies Consultant for NBC Olympics, a fantastically talented team with whom I have been privileged to work in Torino and, soon, in Beijing.
So I’m deep in the “real world.” I’m independent and, honestly, I don’t give a hoot whether you actually purchase Windows, Office, or any other piece of software. I do care that you solve your problems, that you move your business forward, and that your entire organization is able to move towards an agile, efficient, productive enterprise.
What do I want from you?
This is a community. It is all about you. So all I want from you is your participation… your feedback… your questions… your answers. Join in, and join in early. Help build upon the successful legacy of MSD2D.com and give me guidance as to what we can provide to help you do your job better. We have a powerful new platform, a renewed focus, and a significant investment in new content and resources. This is the time to leverage these assets, and your expertise and experience, to create the most effective portal on the planet for Microsoft Office and SharePoint Pros. This is, indeed, a people-ready community. Welcome!
