Yesterday was an interesting day, even if I did have no hot water at home, and it actually ended with me appearing on the TV news. The no hot water was caused by a broken boiler. It wasn’t broken until the Gas man came to service it last Wednesday. In this week’s blog I am going to blatantly promote the new Virtual SharePoint Shopping Centre ‘SharePoint Village’ which excitedly launches on 1st September. I want to share with you why I think it is going to become a valuable source to both SharePoint End Users and companies trying to sell their SharePoint solutions. But first back to yesterday and my eventful day;
Maybe I am slightly sad, but I decided to go and see the unveiling of the new Aston Villa shirt in Centenary Square Birmingham. The great thing where I live, near Wolverhampton, is there is a tram (called ‘The Metro’) that takes me straight into the Centre of Birmingham. As I approached Birmingham I noticed the stop for ‘Jewellery Quarter’. This made me think about SharePoint Village. ‘Jewellery Quarter’ is a place where all you will find is lots of jewellery shops. Even though many competitors are almost neighbours it works because people go there just for jewellery and it is locally very well known. If you want a special ring or a gold watch the ‘Jewellery Quarter’ is always a good place to start. Jewellers know that even if a visitor is interested in an item in the jewellers next-door there is still a very good chance they will pop into their shop as they are passing. This is the concept behind ‘SharePoint Village’. The SharePoint users, or potential users, get to know that for anything SharePoint the best place to go is ‘SharePoint Village’. For the shopkeepers (there is a limit on the number of shops in SharePoint Village to give them maximum exposure) they know that when a visitor looks at another one of the seven shops in their section (i.e. Web Parts) that the visitor will also see the entrance to their shop and hopefully, in Mr. Benn style, enter in.
As many of you know there are already a number of excellent SharePoint information sites available. For any SharePoint users looking for SharePoint advice, in basic English, then EndUserSharePoint.com is a great place to start including the popular ‘Stump the Panel’. My favourite part is the area ‘SharePoint for Non-Geeks’. Another favourite site of mine and always worth checking out is SharePoint Reviews. This is a little like a ‘Which?’ guide to SharePoint. It offers unbiased reviews on many SharePoint products and services. So when ‘SharePoint Village’ is launched and you see a SharePoint product that takes your fancy then visit SharePointReviews.com and see if anybody has reviewed it. The third SharePoint information site I always recommend is SharePoint Magazine. This is a superb online magazine dedicated to the ever growing world of SharePoint.
Sorry I got side tracked from the events of yesterday. Well, I arrived at Centenary Square just in time to see the unveiling of the new Villa shirt which was, surprisingly, a claret body with blue sleeves. The new away strip was mainly black which I really liked. After the unveiling was completed and the large crowd started to disperse I took out my blackberry to read my emails. My concentration was interrupted by two gentlemen. One had a large camera pointing at me and the other had a microphone and announced he was from the BBC. So my views on the new strip were later transmitted on the Midlands Today news and I was actually the first person to give my opinion on TV about the strip.
My lunchtime was then completed with a visit to the ‘Handmade Burger Company’ at Brindley Place. With a printed voucher in my hand that gave me a 50% discount I was ready for my dinner. It was only at the till that I realised that my voucher was in fact for the ‘Gourmet Burger Kitchen’.
SharePoint Village has its grand opening on 1st September 2010 to find out more please visit http://www.sharepointvillage.com.
If you didn't click on the shopkeepers link earlier and see the classic comedy clip then why not do it now?
Happy SharePoint shopping !!!
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