FREE STARTER OFFER : Pizza and SharePoint

This week despite still being depressed over the Villa’s unjust exit from FA Cup I am going to let you into the secret of two great starter offers.

Firstly, many of you will know about Orange Wednesdays when Orange Mobile Users can take a friend free of charge to the cinema, but did you know you can also take them to Pizza Express afterwards and get them a free main course? Even better you both get free starters (just click link below to find out more). So if you are a gentleman on a low budget trying to impressive a certain lady make sure you ask her for a date on a Wednesday.

http://www.orange.co.uk/images/editorial/Pizza%20Express_2.pdf

What about FREE STARTERS with SharePoint? Well, Office Talk has decided to create a special Site Template that works with either WSS or MOSS to get your SharePoint Project Started. It is imaginatively named ‘SharePoint Project Starter’ and you don’t even need to buy anything from Office Talk or even have an Orange Mobile phone to get one. All you have to do is drop and email to myself andy@office-talk.com with the Subject “Free Starter Please”.

The great thing about this second offer also is it is not restricted to UK like the Pizza Express Orange offer. Although, if you do find similar offers in other countries please add the link below in a comment. Oh, and you don’t have to wait for Wednesday to install the SharePoint Template.

The SharePoint Project Starter includes selecting Project Team Members, defining Scope of Project, the popular Office Talk Project Checklist, Project Issue Log, Suggest a Project Name and many more useful SharePoint Project starting tools. Best of all it gets the Project Team use to using SharePoint.

A list of all winners and runners-up in my SharePoint Awards can be found by CLICKING AWARD WINNERS.

Well done to Portsmouth for reaching the FA Cup Final. The Villa must now concentrate on the league and a win against Portsmouth on Saturday would do for STARTERS.

Email andy.dale@office-talk.com to claim your free starter.

SharePoint Awards 2010 Winners

New SharePoint Awards 2012

What a week; a General Election called in England, a Messi master show in the Champions League, shockingly Lenny Henry split from Dawn French and now the unofficial SharePoint Awards announced. So the waiting is over it is time to reveal the winners of the Andy Dale SharePoint Awards 2010.

All the votes have been counted and four SharePoint experts from around the globe have awarded their scores. Just to clarify the scoring system follows the Strictly Come Dancing format. The first half of the score comes from the votes cast on website (amazingly over 6000 unique votes were cast). The finalist who received the highest number of votes in each category was given 5 points, then second highest got 4 and so on. The second half of the score came from four ‘SharePoint Experts’ all ranking each of the finalists in each category from 5 (the best) to 1 (their least favourite). The four scores from the Experts for each finalist were then added together and divided by 4 (number of Experts). Hope you are following this. Then the score from the voting was added to the average score from the Experts to get a score out of ten for each finalist. In the event of a draw I had the casting vote. Well, they are my awards!

So here are the Winner and Runner-up in each SharePoint category. These companies will all be receiving a special ‘Seal of Approval’ in the next ten days.

1. BEST SHAREPOINT INFORMATION SITE

Winner - EndUserSharePoint.com

Expert Comment –

A great site written not for developers but for real SharePoint Administrators. It really feels as if they care.

Runner Up - SharePoint Magazine

2. BEST SHAREPOINT WEBPART PROVIDER

Winner - Amrein Engineering

Expert Comment -

Very easy to navigate round site. Like the variety of web parts on offer and how they are explained, lots of crowd pleasers in there.

Runner Up - Kwizcom

3. BEST SHAREPOINT ADMINISTRATION TOOL 2010

Winner - ControlPoint (scored a perfect 10)

Expert Comment -

Hands down the best in the industry. Very user friendly. Extremely strong permissions reporting capability – the top requirement for managing large farms as 80% of all support calls come from permissions management.

Runner Up - DocAve Administrator

4. BEST WEBSITE BUILT ON SHAREPOINT 2010
Winner - Chilis

Expert Comment -

The most fun site I have seen in years! That chalk work is amazing! Great branding.

Runner Up - Swatch

5. BEST SHAREPOINT TRAINING PACKAGES 2010

Winner - Combined Knowledge CBT

Expert Comment –

Combined Knowledge continues to lead the way with SharePoint Training. You can tell they understand SharePoint.

Runner Up - CBT Clips

6. BEST SHAREPOINT OFFLINE SOLUTION 2010

Winner - Colligo Contributor (perfect 10 again)

Expert Comment -

An all great round solution which is easy to use. They offer more than just Outlook integration.

Runner Up - MyDocs from Nsynergy

7. MOST USEFUL SHAREPOINT WEBPART 2010

Winner - Column\View Permissions from SharePoint Boost

Expert Comment -

By far the most business benefit – one of the top requests I get on a daily basis. This tool is perfect to resolve that!

Runner Up - Bamboo sharePoint video Library

8. FAVOURITE FREE SHAREPOINT WEBPART/ADD-ONS 2010
Winner - Google Charts

Expert Comment –

Making life simple is what we all want and this is what Google Charts does.

Runner Up - Visualizer from Equilibrium (Digital Assets)

Expert Comment -

Phwooaar, coooool. Very slick. Great way to wow your audience. End users love stuff like this.

9. MOST FUN FREE WEBPART 2010

Winner - Daily Dilbert

Expert Comment –

Start your SharePoint with a smile every day.

Runner Up - Hello User from Bamboo Solutions

10. BEST SHAREPOINT APPLICATION 2010

Winner - ShareKnowledge – E-Learning Solution from Competentum

Expert Comment –

Brilliant ! Now businesses can really use SharePoint to train their workforce. Great for Health & Safety courses. So easy to design courses as well. Ideal for any size organisation who have SharePoint.

Runner Up - MediaRich Digital Asset Management from Equilibrium

So those are the winners but all the finalists offer terrific SharePoint products and I recommend you trial a few yourself.

Now, the Office Talk (SharePoint Specialists) management will be having their fingers, toes and everything else it is possible to cross crossed this weekend. As both Aston Villa and Portsmouth are at Wembley to try and reach the 2010 FA Cup Final. If both are successful Monday might well be declared an Office Talk company holiday.

Up the Villa.