SPFoxhole Blog

So we launched the ISPA web site back on the 16th of July.   We have seen a tremendous outpouring of emails and it appears our goals were in line with the community.  We were a bit rushed to get the site up and thanks to some quick and great branding work from Heather Waterman we were able to put out something that was pleasing to the eye.  Most of you that know me well know I strongly lack any artistic or creative talents when it comes to this stuff so I want to personally thank Heather for her work.  

If you ask people the importance of an organizations web site you will get alot of different answers.  For me it was somewhat important as we are an official Not for Profit Organization.... imagine that... me on a board of any type  :)   But here i stand.  My role with the ISPA is to work with the User Group Leaders and the ISPA Evangelists that I have brought in to work with the world regions.   Some comments I have gotten was that this seems to be a largely US based Organization.  This is something i want to clear up for everyone.  We (the ISPA Board) are all based here in the US but the people we have on board with us are largely outside the US.  I wont list all there names here but Steve Smith in the UK is my direct equal for providing support in EMEA and he is the lead Evangelist for that region.  People like Muhanad Omar and Marwan Tarek who are supporting the Middle East (very busy and active region thus far)  Chandima in New Zealand, the Australia Team,  Micheal Greth in Germany, and the Spanish community who we are going to be working very closely with in the next few months as we are trying to set up variation pages so we can truly cater to the international audience.   We are worldwide.  We are one community.  The ISPA doesn't belong to Bob Fox or any of the other Board Members...  it belongs to you.

Some quick success stories I would like to bring up is that we are looking to bring the first SharePoint User Group into Vietnam.... we are also talking with people in Russia to expand into that area.  It has been a very exciting two weeks for us. 

We recently put out a FAQ page that we hope answers some of the questions we have been getting and we will expand on this as we move forward.  We are also ready to have people join us.  We have enlisted the help of Eric Shupps to come onboard and assist with publishing and he put out a fine "Notes from the Field"  article this evening.  It will be the first of many from not just Eric but many others as well.   This is just one of many plans we are formulating to bring to the community.

Did you know we also offer sites for SharePoint User Groups?  Well its true we do.  You can submit a request here.   Please note that we are a fairly small shop at this level and its just myself and Natalya Voskresenskaya doing this work so depending on when your group is going live and the demand we get for groups it may not be an automatic quick turnaround but we promise to do our best to meet your timelines.

Do you already have an existing User Group and just want it listed on our site?  You can submit your information here.  This by the way was the single most asked question so I am glad we now have the mechanism in place for the members to submit to.

Most importantly ... would you like to be a member?  We admit that this is still a work in progress offering with regards to the web site but we are moving forward nicely and hope you will grow with us. You can sign up here.  Please note that we will be setting up a area for members to add there profiles.  You may see a link to this but its not available at this time.   We will post on the front page when this is up and running.

So there it is.... two weeks into our journey.   Hope you enjoy the ride as much as we are.