Rich Wood

It’s been a big month around here in a lot of ways. Most importantly, our team was recognized as Microsoft’s 2013 US Partner of the Year.  From a personal perspective, I’m really thrilled to be able to tell you that I’ve just had an essay published over at CMSWire. The topic is something that will […]

No less than Bono once told a UK music monthly, “The blogosphere can put you off democracy. Use it sparingly.” Substitute “enterprise social networks” for “democracy” and you’ll find that statement to be a fairly accurate assessment of the way many companies view the concept of enterprise social, and within that, the subset that is […]

Here’s my last post as an easily consumable, annotated image.  Credit to Microsoft for the original graphic, of course.  (Click to view full-size.)

We’ve read the posts, we’ve heard the presentations, we’ve seen the MTC sessions– but what exactly does Microsoft’s new strategy for Enterprise Social mean?  I’m going to try and break that down both for IT architects and the average consumer.  (See an annotated image version here for easy sharing.) Ever since Jared Spataro’s official update […]

I’ve spent the last two days at Gartner’s Portals, Content and Collaboration Conference soaking up the wisdom of some very sharp analysts (and a very open customer base) about enterprise social.  There’s other tracks here, but with all of the focus Microsoft has placed on Yammer and its potential for transforming how we do business, […]

One thing I don’t want getting lost in the hubbub of how Microsoft’s platform is going social is the powerful social applications– and as importantly, the thought leadership– coming out of Denver, Colorado based NewsGator. While their Social Sites product may no longer be the default weapon of choice for Microsoft field reps trying to […]

As a veteran concertgoer, I’ve picked up some great tactics over the years for how best to enjoy live music.  How not to spill your drink on random strangers.  Where and how to scan the masses for old friends from days long past.  How to snake through the crowd before the show and find just […]

This past week I had the honor of co-presenting at SHARE, the “SharePoint Conference for Business Users”, with one of my most distinguished clients, Andy Farella from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.  While our own presentation was focused on how CHOP found success by planning and rolling out social collaboration tools that were, at the […]

I’ll be speaking at SHARE Conference in Atlanta this week and I have to say, I’m pretty fired up for it.  SHARE bills itself as “the conference for business users” and lo and behold, they’re not kidding– there’s no tech track.  It’s a national conference that is sponsored by Microsoft and boasts real involvement from […]

I’m pretty fired up for my webinar tomorrow on Microsoft’s direction for enterprise social technology.  It’s always fun to talk about a company I love, a set of products that I’ve built my career on, and the pace of change in this exciting arena. We’ll talk Microsoft, SharePoint, Yammer, history, strategy, roadmaps, and maybe even […]

Microsoft’s direction for enterprise social is a little more clear this morning.  And I’ll be honest, the roadmap for organizations willing to move this workload to the cloud—in whole or in part—is pretty exciting.  Questions still remain around just how well this approach covers on-premise deployments, however, and I’d like to spend a little time […]

Finally, a little clarity.  Yesterday’s roadmap post by Jared Spataro on the official SharePoint blog shed some much-sought-after public light on the question of how Microsoft intends to rationalize the Yammer and SharePoint 2013 newsfeeds. “Which newsfeed do we use for enterprise social?  The native SharePoint 2013 feed, or Yammer?”  It’s a question Microsoft customers […]