John Burkholder

After attending #SPC12 and playing in my sandbox, I have come up with a small list of the features I think will most benefit the end users. They are in no particular order. Social integration of Yammer features: This is huge! The ability to have a project-based conversations on the team site is really not a new thing. We had them before and they were called "Discussion Boards". The problem with discussion boards was...it required you to go TO that site to make a comment. Now you have the ability to comment on any of the discussions within your my site. You also have the ability to tag comments much like you do with Twitter. Targeting is another beautiful feature that allows for you to have certain people be notified in their activity stream. In a nutshell, this takes the way you live and use the internet away from the office, into the office. Many businesses will find this difficult as they want that separation of business and personal, but for the workers, this is a natur

What an excellent time! I actually arrived a day earlier for the conference because I wanting to take a pre-conference session. As exciting as the technology covered, and the challenges dealt with, SharePointers really know how to throw parties. For example, Sunday night, the registration and exhibit hall opened for all to come and wander about talking, drinking (this is repeated daily), and catching up with folks they haven’t seen face-to-face for a year. This constant community is not new for SharePoint. There are several volunteer groups to include SharePoint User Groups, SharePoint Saturdays (now called SPS Events), Sharing the Point tours, and conferences like SharePoint Fest, SP Techcon, Connections, and Share. With each of these the vendors will throw parties or a group of people will go have a #SharePint. This year at MS SharePoint Conference is no exception. There was the opening night drinks provided by FPWeb. Monday night, Symantec bought (that’s right..bought) th

Had an issue at a customer that had me stumped and after troubleshooting it by replacing my Office installation to 64 bit (to no avail), trying to remove a KB article that I didn't have installed to begin with (KB2553322), and searching through Google's not so helpful search, I finally found the answer. Background: The customer had custom workflows made in SharePoint Designer. After the most recent Service Pack update for SharePoint, the CC field started showing an error (Form cannot be submitted because of an error). Helpful... Here is how I resolved it: 1) In SharePoint Designer, go to All Files. 2) For local workflows, go to Workflows > and the name of the workflow; for global workflows, go to _catalogs > wfpub > and the name of the workflow. 3) Open the workflows .xoml.wconfig.xml file. 4) Click the Edit File link. 5) Search for the section cc xsi:nil . 6) Delete xsi:nil="true" after the cc.             It should look like when you are done.

Lately I have been working three jobs. Monday through Thursday at a large insurance company, and Friday and Saturday at a University. Sunday was kept open for family and just to give my brain a rest. I love SharePoint. But with so few people in the area with enough SharePoint expertise to support the ever-expanding need, I decided to help out the University on the "weekends". But this last weekend may have done me in. I ended up rebuilding a SharePoint web application with multiple subsites from the ground up. The reason for this was due to the Metalogix tool migrated some SharePoint components into the environment from 2007 version that actually caused more problems than it resolved. After a few weeks of having open tickets, the University decided it was easier just to rebuild it from the ground....easy...for them maybe... So this last weekend was spent entirely rebuilding their site. This Friday I have a large presentation that I haven't started regarding My Sites,

I hate when these dreams hit. It seems they happen multiple times in a row until I resolve whatever issue I am facing (which has yet to be determined). This time it appears to be a personal attack against me by a group. There were multiple people in my house grabbing what they could before bolting out my busted front door. Nobody paid attention to me until one person saw me. I immediately ran towards them and attempted to fight them off. This only caused me to end up writhing in pain in a pool of my own blood. The dream stops as they head toward my bedroom. Normally, I am fairly decent at interpreting these things. But lately I have been perplexed as to why I am having the dreams and what they mean. I guess it could be my drugs are causing this, but this would be an entirely new set of side effects. Let's just hope for sleep tonight.

About once every 6-7 years I get hit with a nightmare of some sort. For the most part I have been able to keep them away. But last night was possibly one of the worst so far. No, contrary to popular belief, this was not an "out-of-toilet-paper" dream. This dream involved my Queen, and all of my kids. It also involved a direct attack that reminds me of September 11...except much worse. But this dream was just the start of it. To avoid further attacks and being caught, we had overstayed our time. Anyone who knows me is aware of how I move from place to place, job to job. This is usually because I feel I need to have that change in order to avoid capture. I know this sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic...and maybe I am. Maybe this life of being nomadic is the cause of my delusional nightmare. But my personal history of my intuition has never led me off target before. Something is coming. I am not looking forward to it. I am not quite sure what it is yet, but my spidey-sense

I watch SourceFed. The team of people running this service are hilarious and at times have made me cry. A strong man like me cried? OK...I teared up...and ran out for a banana split. But you would have to play the video to understand. Today blog entry is not about Ryan though. It is about SourceFed's conclusion of the meaning of life. Yes, I am fully aware that this video is just a extreme speaking, comical launching point for discussion, but it did make me realize how many people followed the same belief system as Joe and Elliot have derived. So, let's expound upon this. Of course a belief system with a punishment is going to have less crime. But the road to life is not built on the golden rule. If that is that were true, then why would we need to have life lessons to learn it? Instead,I think the meaning of life is built on the platinum rule. The golden rule in a nutshell is "treat others as you wish to be treated." And this is found in all kinds of rel

So...here I am...1 year in Clinton and my rose colored glasses have been removed. I now I have to reflect, make decisions, and figure out the next step...again. I lke the small town feel of Clinton. The ability to let my kid walk by herself to the library (while I watch her out the window of course); and her active lifestyle here I am sure has brought her out of her shell. She has run and made stu ... dent council, was in a pageant, and plays softball now. She has friends. She attends camp. The cost of living is considerably lower in Clinton. What we used to pay for in Northern Virginia I am paying half that and I have a house (although a bit small, older, and noisier) and I have an office on the square (beautiful but very noisy)...motorcyles (hmph). All this said...why would we change that? Clinton doesn't care. Let me clarify. Clinton people care about what THEY want to care about...Supporting the YMCA, Amercian Legion, blah blah blah. But when it comes to a holistic support

An "old" high school friend is in an interesting situation. He isn't fond of his job, he loves music, and he is not tied down with any family obligations. Tonight he made a comment about not know where life will tak him now and it made me take notice. Often in life people have "things" (good and bad) tying them down in one place, doing the same job over and over again. There are not in a rut, they are in a crater. The possibility of getting out of the debt hole, unhappy relationship, miserable job, or geographic location due to family is often a struggle. Many feel that it is like standing in quick sand. One move and you end up deeper in it. I on the other hand have had the fortunate (or unfortunate) life of a nomad. I have touched ground in 49 states (missing Hawaii), and been in and around the fastest movers and shakers in the world. My nomadic nature has afforded me the ability to adapt quickly, watch for changes and adjust to what I THINK may happen next

Both are questions I would really love to know. I am back in the town I grew in of Clinton, IL. I came here to make a difference. I have hundreds of plans and ideas. So why question it? We took a trip to Chicago. I work in Bloomington. I live in Clinton (population 7300, and often referred to as Clintucky by others). But it doesn't have to be this way. Clinton could easily turn itself around if only the people in town cared. We moved here for community...which except for the very few, we have been ignored and shunned most of the time. So...community, the one thing I was looking forward to and expected in a small town really doesn't exist. At least not a welcoming community. I figured by bringing a lucrative career and setting up a business (or 2) that people would want to find out what we do. But, nobody cares. I know how to make the changes that need to be made to put this town back in the right direction...but nobody wants to hear it. Wake up Clinton! You are centrall