John Burkholder

I have always been a SharePoint guy.  I have spoken at SharePoint Saturdays and user groups all over the US.  Now that I am a full time employee at NORC, I am being saddled with all portals and collaboration tools to include... Liferay. What is it? What does it mean?  Liferay markets itself as the best portal. Wow. Bold statement. Gartner places them in the top right quadrant repeatedly so I guess they have that going for them. To better learn and understand this product, I am attending the Liferay Symposium in Chicago. It is Liferays big yearly conference featuring the best and brightest of Liferay.  Keep in mind, I have attended many SharePoint events ranging from SharePoint conferences by Microsoft to volunteer run SharePoint Saturdays. These are my observations after 1/2 day: "Over 600 attendees" is more a SharePoint Saturday than a global product conference. It is true the conference brought people from all over the globe.  Sausage festival. Do you think part of the reas

Most of my life has been spent on technology. Having a hobby has not really been a priority.  But I have found myself taking photos with my phone of Chicago.  Andi had been telling me to set up an Instagram account so I can share the photos. Sure... Why not?  Look me up. John.burkholder

A challenge associated with information architecture is understand the needs of the target audience. The target audience can range from the customer team being used as a collaboration environment to share information amongst themselves, to an internet site presenting information for the world to see. You need to know the target audience and the expectations of the audience. Of course you start by asking the customer questions like:   Is this site only being used by the team?   Will management ever need to access this site?   How far up the management chain will this information need to be accessed?   Are there other work teams that you interact with that need access to this information?   What are your target audience’s expectation for the information? You have your answers from the customer. So, let’s go get started! Sike! The risk with just taking the customer’s word for it is you may end up in conflict or worse, missing a needed item. Once you have dis

This is possibly the hardest question to be answered regarding information architecture. I have been in meetings when the customer will say “I want it to look flashy”. Seriously? I figured I would throw an animated flame bar on the page and maybe a scrolling marquee saying “I am looking flashy”. Not every customer is in this same state though. There are customers who know exactly what they want and even have some basic ideas on how to accomplish it. Your objective during this part of the questions is just to gain a baseline of what they want and what they need.    Need: The information that must be part of the solution in order to succeed. If you were to give a weight to these items, it would always be 5 out of 5. Want: The information that would be helpful to make it easier for the solution to succeed. If you were to weight these is would be 1-5 out of 5. An example of how this can be broken down is below: Title Description Want/Need Weight

Congratulations, you have been given the task of laying out some sort of information in SharePoint and your objective is to try to make it repeatable, usable, and easy to administer. You may feel like you are looking to the rabbit hole but it is really not as rough as it seems. You main objective is to think about the basics: ·          What do they want and/or need? ·          Who is your target audience? ·          Who are you trying to keep out? ·          Where else will this information be needed? ·          Where is the information coming from? ·          How will you find the information? ·          How will the information be presented? ·          Who will maintain the information? ·          Do others need to approve this information prior to it being published? ·          Does this information need to be published to other locations? When it comes to the questions, I find often that people (your customer) either don’t know the answers, think they know

I am down to having only 30 days left of this contract to hire. The interesting thing about contract to hire is that they get to see what my skills are and whether or not I will be worth the money I ask. Additionally, I have the option to try out the company to see if it fits my work style.  Up until Friday, I thought this was going to be a fit. I had one challenging person to compromise with but that was workable. But since Friday, I am beginning to think that the position is not quite right for me. I took the weekend to digest it, hoping that my direct manager (who is fantastic) would have some insight on how to handle this. So far, all attempts have been futile.  30 days. With only 30 days I think it may be time to light up the resume. Whatever you do in your life, you should enjoy. Yes, you will have to make compromises, but at some point you need to make sure you are not just living to work, but are working to live. 

I changed jobs and moved last month. I love the new place. The job is a challenge. For that reason, I like it. What I am not so sure about is where they are going with the SharePoint evironment. It seriously needs an upgrade but they are not too keen on throwing away all of the development work this far. I can understand that. But when you are sitting there looking at a monster site collection that only 20 people regularly use, you have to wonder how effective it is. Add to that the fact people are still using the older environments, it doesn't make sense to move them to the 2010 environment when we could move them directly to the new environment.  The commute is rather easy from the new place. Taking about 40 minutes in total, it is a 5 block walk to the station, a 12 minute train ride and another 4 block walk to this office. Most of my time is really spent waiting on the train.  I am trying to figure out my schedule so I can do some volunteer work. Heartland Alliance is a good ca