This Wednesday, I had the pleasure to join the NY Office 365 User Group. We were a small group this time, but the enthusiasm and community feel wasn't lacking. Gwen Bonaparte, the speaker arrived bright and early to greet everyone while she set up. She was there to talk about Automating Business Processes Without Code in Office 365. We learned quite a bit about Gwen, before the event began which made the intimate feel seem right. This was Gwen's first talk after all.
Unfortunately Gwen's hard drive died prior to the presentation, which took away from her prepared talk. But what the hard drive took away produced a very lively discussion around Office 365, SharePoint Online and InfoPath. Gwen had excellent skills involving the audience, and getting us to ask questions from the basic to the advanced.
After Gwen demontrated a couple of timesheet workflows using InfoPath, she wanted to find out what we were doing. Most were just beginning their adventure into the cloud. InfoPath was glorified as a must have tool. A very key misconception was also discovered and corrected. InfoPath and all its heavy files do NOT have to live on every users computer in order for them to be able to use the handy forms. This made quite a few very happy campers.
Comparisons were also made about the different versions of Office and Outlook. Everyone was pleased with the progression. All in all, Gwen became the leader of a discussion based User Group where everyone including myself became involved. What we learned was that most of us were there for the very same reason, to learn what others were doing with Office 365, and to begin to venture off into a world of testing it's capabilities.
I want to add one final statement, I give credit to anyone who decides to speak at a User Group or any other event for the very first time. It's not easy, you really don't know what to expect. A million things can go wrong and for some reason they always do. But guess what, you are lucky to learn so much from that one experience. Gwen, through functionality hiccups, represented a person who actively used Office 365 and InfoPath and she created an overall enthusiasm for others to do the same. Great job Gwen, keep going!
Want to begin speaking? Confessions of a Public Speaker is great book to get control of the jitters and gain confidence.
Have aspirations to present a topic around SharePoint or share a SharePoint story? Contact me at jamees.wright@arcovis.com
Unfortunately Gwen's hard drive died prior to the presentation, which took away from her prepared talk. But what the hard drive took away produced a very lively discussion around Office 365, SharePoint Online and InfoPath. Gwen had excellent skills involving the audience, and getting us to ask questions from the basic to the advanced.
After Gwen demontrated a couple of timesheet workflows using InfoPath, she wanted to find out what we were doing. Most were just beginning their adventure into the cloud. InfoPath was glorified as a must have tool. A very key misconception was also discovered and corrected. InfoPath and all its heavy files do NOT have to live on every users computer in order for them to be able to use the handy forms. This made quite a few very happy campers.
Comparisons were also made about the different versions of Office and Outlook. Everyone was pleased with the progression. All in all, Gwen became the leader of a discussion based User Group where everyone including myself became involved. What we learned was that most of us were there for the very same reason, to learn what others were doing with Office 365, and to begin to venture off into a world of testing it's capabilities.
I want to add one final statement, I give credit to anyone who decides to speak at a User Group or any other event for the very first time. It's not easy, you really don't know what to expect. A million things can go wrong and for some reason they always do. But guess what, you are lucky to learn so much from that one experience. Gwen, through functionality hiccups, represented a person who actively used Office 365 and InfoPath and she created an overall enthusiasm for others to do the same. Great job Gwen, keep going!
Want to begin speaking? Confessions of a Public Speaker is great book to get control of the jitters and gain confidence.
Have aspirations to present a topic around SharePoint or share a SharePoint story? Contact me at jamees.wright@arcovis.com
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