Hola, once a quarter, I jump on a plane to go connect with the community. This time it's with the Sharing the Point Crew: Ricardo Munoz, Michael Noel, Paul Swider, Dan Holme, Mark Miller, John Anderson and Rick Taylor. Blogging and keeping us in touch are Most of this crew as you may know are popular global speakers, and have travelled the globe filling their passion about SharePoint. I'm very excited to reach out 
to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Montevideo, Uruguay and Santiago, Chile.
Our mission at Sharing the Point as a non profit is to reach out to the four corners of the earth to visit communities that are under served. Our crew *Loves* to travel and by definition in order to travel with us it means you don't mind long flights and awkward travel situations. Most of us travel without checkins, and we roll with the punches. We love reaching the SharePoint community that rarely if ever get any major visits from top speakers. Many of the locations we visit have millions of people, but still may not have user groups. What we leave behind is connections, we leave behind friendships, memories, and many times we've created sparks. Social media creates permanent connections. I personally do have a goal to seek out those most influential folks and connect either on facebook or twitter. That's revealing something personal, but really these most influential are the friendliest and most open and interesting folks who as well are very interested in connecting. Many of these most influential, are MVPs, or User Group leads, bloggers, speakers, and so forth. Many are simply the MCM candidate types, those that are senior consultants who happen to know me from my blog. It's an amazing world.
Check out the new Sharing the Point website. Looks amazing huh? Special thanks to SharePoint Design Labs.
Yes, we are working on a Spanish version.
This isn't the first time the Sharing the Point reached out to new communities. I remember vividly meeting the amazing SharePoint community in the Philippines. This was their very first community gathering. Over 100 gathered to meet our crew. There was even a family that came to the event. That's dedication… Yes, it was a Saturday. Amazing what people will do for their passion and a better tomorrow. Now that same Philippines SharePoint User Group regularly meets and has a very strong online presence. It's amazing to see people grow. One of my favorite stories is one from the middle east. Mo, from Jordan. I hope he doesn't mind. When I first reached out to him… oh yeah. He reached out to me, and brought me in. At the time, he was working hard, but not really recognized very well in his region. In a very short time after my visit, he was becoming well known globally and had his fingers in managing the SharePoint track at Teched Middle East, and ultimately growing in his career, being recognized as a SharePoint MVP, and wrote chapter and scripts used by Michael Noel in his SharePoint Server 2010 Unleashed book. Mo, now lives in Chicago and works for a major consulting company.
Antarctica? I totally understand why you'd visit the other towns, but why Antarctica?
As a speaker who has spoken on the 6 people continents multiple times on each, I personally am very interested in speaking in Antarctica. There are many personal reasons why I'm fascinated by the new frontier, but I also think it embodies our vision of reaching out to the furthest far reaching communities. Yes, SharePoint is used in Antarctica, and we're very excited to reach out to the SharePoint Community in Antarctica. It's some what of a dream, and one thing I've learned in my time in SharePoint Land is that anything is possible, and this dream turned reality definitely nails that vision to the T. It isn't without the power of our sponsors, who we are extremely grateful. You'll see me shouting AvePoint and FPWeb on the tops of the mountains for this event. They're awesome. They are both awesome. You'd be amazed the places I've spent time around this lovely world with amazing AvePoint folks. I mean come on… Tony, Garth, Sarj, . Now FPWeb, they have stayed the distance and created an great brand with staying power. I mean come on they lived through Front Page! Would be happy to recommend any of my SharePoint contacts to FPWeb for their private cloud hosting needs. Chris Webb one of their main architects for SharePoint side is extremely dedicated and has tracked down hairy issues to resolution year over year. When it comes to scale, I've never seen anyone as thorough as Chris.
Hope to see you in South America!
Register!
Adios!
Yes, I will be practicing my Spanish. Still trying to convince my wife we should spend the summer in Costa Rica.