After jumping through the various hoops and logistics of getting SharePoint Rockstars and MVPs Dustin Miller and Heather Solomon I was looking to really transform the way the business and IT approached branding and design on Intranet applications.
Monday morning this week Heather Solomon shows up and immediately starts building credibility with the crowd. I couldn't distinguish the first half of day 1 between a consulting engagement and our time with Heather our instructor. In fact much of what we ended up with was very much a custom experience by these SharePoint design experts. Heather took furious notes on each attendee including background and what they wanted to get out of the class. My group hosted this course for various parts of the business. My goal was to get all of those building SharePoint apps as well as those building designs for SharePoint apps and beyond. With a sellout class, I was very pleased to see people from all divisions within IT and good portions of our SharePoint Apps team and the designers and developers on my Collab Team.
After day one not seeing a single PPT slide and no attendee handouts, we either had an amazing consulting engagement that would kick off, or … It was a lot of take on day one. 2nd half of the day Dustin started really digging in, and it was apparent where he was going for a while. The key thing was we were getting exactly what we were looking for. That was the amazing thing that happened. By the first half of day two, my developers and designers were grinning ear to ear.
So as we finish up day 3. I can't be happier. It's been peachy, now in class we are deep into CSS and deep into custom master pages, and I haven't heard a negative whisper.
Conclusion:
Yes, it felt like a consulting engagement the first day, but the payoff was big. What we got out of the class wasn't a manual or a set of power points, but a lot of real world lessons and practices that will help all that were in the class. My designers stopped me on the beginning of day 2 and said it's already fully worth it, and has been great ROI. Our class has been way more tied to our environment and scenarios. Dustin's dry humor has made the class easy to follow… he's got great energy. Heather with her incredible knowledge and expertise has not only taught us a bunch, but she's actually delivered work that we can then reuse. Dustin is leaving us solutions that will make our work a lot easier. Very practical design elements we can use to simplify SharePoint design work.
It's been an unconventional course, but that's one of the many reasons it's been awesome. I knew it would be great, and it has been.