To me, that makes about as much sense as saying that you can’t learn how to drive unless you have the latest model car, or that you can’t learn to cook unless you have the correct oven.

Let me elaborate a bit on what I mean by that.

SharePoint Isn’t About Technology

A frequently heard quote in the SharePoint community is that SharePoint is far less about technology and much more about business. Developers know that when you’re dealing with business problems, you deal with business objects. You don’t walk up to your client and say that their vacation request problems are solved by X amount of classes with Y amount of methods or properties.

Business users don’t care about technology, and don’t let marketing or sales tell you otherwise. Business users care about themselves and the problems they face. When Frank in HR has to work two extra days every April to handle all the vacation requests, he doesn’t care whether what gives him those two days back is called SharePoint or SAP, and least of all which version of those platforms help him. He’s only happy to spend the additional time with his wife, mistress, or motorcycle, whatever his fancy is.

Tell me, in your car, assuming you have one, who made the chip that controls everything from the engine to the AC? You don’t know, you say? Well, it’s quite often the same for business users when they work with software.

In fact, it’s quite often the same with us developers. Do you really know what platform Google or Facebook uses to build their software? Or in what language the web services from Amazon are written? Most likely, you don’t, and you don’t care, at least you don’t need to care. All we need to know is how to interact with those platforms, through programming interfaces, web services, or whatever we can access.

SharePoint Isn’t About Versions

I have heard, more frequently than you’d imagine, people claim that there’s absolutely no point in upgrading to SharePoint 2010 when their 2007 custom solution solves their problem.

In other words, people’s problems aren’t going to change when Microsoft releases a new version of SharePoint. If you solve your problems with SharePoint 2007, why is SharePoint 2010 required at all? Or even SharePoint 2013? You built a solution to fix what ached you, but you won’t get different or new aches when there’s a new version of SharePoint out.

There’s even a huge chance that you get new problems with your existing solutions when you upgrade. Features change, custom code may break, your neatly designed layout may suddenly get an ugly ribbon bar, or a range of other things may affect what you already have. So, upgrading is a huge risk that may break what you currently have.

If you’re fond of food, you may have had a soufflé. Cooking a soufflé is quite tricky and depends greatly on temperature control and knowledge of your tools, most importantly your oven. You need to learn how your oven works in order to get the best soufflé possible.

Well, when you introduce a new oven, you’re actually not getting to cook new things, but you’re forcing yourself to learn how to cook soufflés all over again.

I’m not a fan of upgrading anything until there is something that I am unable to solve on my current platform. My current workstation, for example, on which I do all my development, authoring, gaming, and social interaction, is a rig I built in 2007. Granted, I upgraded the graphics card recently because I couldn’t play Skyrim comfortably on the old one, but beyond that, it’s exactly the same machine I bought five years ago.

And speaking of upgrading tools…

SharePoint Development Isn’t About Visual Studio!

The specific comment I got on the USPJ Academy training is that the Beginning SharePoint Development course isn’t targeted at Visual Studio 2010 or even SharePoint 2010. The examples are all in Visual Studio 2008 (and I only upgraded from 2005 just before authoring the journal issue) and screenshots are in SharePoint 2007. Apparently, that means that people can’t learn how to do SharePoint development.

Look, I understand the desire to have and use the latest gadgets. After all, the cool kids always have the latest fashion clothes, the newest phones, and play the latest games, and we all want to be the cool kids, right?

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint, but SharePoint development is as much about Visual Studio as astronomy is about telescopes, to almost quote a famous programmer. Visual Studio is just a tool, little more than an advanced hammer, when you’re trying to build a house. Unless you understand how to build the foundation, how walls provide support, and how to build a roof that will keep the elements at bay, well, being the world champion of hammers isn’t going to mean anything.

Even if you learn how to use a certain hammer to build a wall, all you know is how to build a wall with that hammer. You still don’t know anything about building houses. You don’t know how people will live in the house and what they need to be safe, happy, and comfortable, which means a hell of a lot more to the residents than who made the hammer and whether it was a new or old hammer.

So, learning SharePoint development is like learning how to be a chef. You don’t learn recipes for your oven, you learn how food and ingredients work, how to mix them to produce great dishes, how to handle meat safely so you don’t get cross contamination, and, most importantly, how to give your guests or consumers of your food a great experience.

Screw the oven, I just want a nice, juicy steak!

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You probably also know that I’m highly focused on learning what’s new on any new SharePoint version and that I write a USP Journal series that details this research and the findings. In the first issue, now freely available to members of the USP Journal mailing list, I wrote about the new App store.

You can read more about the series on the SharePoint 2013 Beta series webpage.

Here’s the third part of what I wrote about the new App Marketplace (and also the final part of this mini-series, at least for now):

Other Functionality

Although probably not for the layperson, the protocol documentation also reveals a rich framework for managing Apps, rights, and licenses. This means that not only will there be a SharePoint App marketplace from Microsoft, but it will also be possible for third-party vendors to build their own marketplaces.

Already there are several vendors who do this, with varying success. Although the new marketplace model may seem to compete, I am certain that most of these vendors will welcome better tools for building their solutions, deploying their products and services, and even competing with Microsoft in providing the best applications for users.

One clear sign of this is that the SPWeb class, which in the object model represents a site in a site collection, contains a new method in the SDK called LoadAndInstallApp. This method allows developers to send an App package into the web and install it.

Note: There is a class called SPSolutionExporter which may trick someone to believe there is a way to export an app, but this class exists in SharePoint 2010 and is only use to export a site as a template to the solution gallery.

I have found no evidence, and it would be strange if there were, of a method to export Apps using built-in functionality. I’m sure someone will make it, though.

Beyond these functionality extensions, the SPApp model also supports easy database provisioning. Many custom applications require data storage, and with SharePoint 2010, the methods for doing so is limited to what are known as Service Applications.

The problem, though, is that Service Applications can be difficult to build and maintain. When developers want custom data storage, they often either store data in SharePoint itself, or just build a custom database outside the realm of SharePoint, adding burden to administrators and dependencies on external resources.

Hopefully, the new functionality in Apps allow for easier provisioning of custom databases so that this hassle is removed from the development cycle. The methods suggest so, even including the aforementioned support for SQL Azure databases, but of course, nothing is known at this point.

I’d like to mention that Apps are deployed on sites (SPWeb) or possibly even as sites. That means you can deploy an App highly targeted to ensure you get the functionality you need only where you need it.

Note: I mentioned security as a main focus of the SDK App documentation. There is a rich model for ensuring applications can’t behave in a way you don’t want and for ensuring only the right people get access. However, I’m not going to detail these features in this issue because of space constraints.

The huge question, however, is whether SharePoint Apps will be full farm solutions or just sandbox solutions. I have some thoughts on that too, but I need to do a bit more research first.

Also, I’m thinking that these features are what’s going to be most important to most readers, but please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

This article is an excerpt from the first issue of the USP Journal  SharePoint 2013 Beta series. The issue contains more on the SharePoint App Marketplace as well as additional information, comments, news, and rumors. You can get the first issue free of charge on the issue web page.

Combined, this mini-series comprise only the content related to SharePoint Apps from the first issue. Later issues, included in the subscription, contain even more information, both in SharePoint Apps and other new features.

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You probably know that Microsoft released literally thousands of pages of documentation on SharePoint 15 (or SharePoint 2013, as I believe it will be called). Most comprehensive is the less intelligible open specification documentation, although that’s also where the good bits are.

You probably also know that I’m highly focused on learning what’s new on any new SharePoint version and that I write a USP Journal series that details this research and the findings. In the first issue, now freely available to members of the USP Journal mailing list, I wrote about the new App store.

You can read more about the series on the SharePoint 2013 Beta series webpage.

Here’s the second part of what I wrote about the new App Marketplace:

Licensing

Microsoft will also add support for licensing of the application packages that developers deploy. What this means is that vendors or even regular folks can put a price on their application and sell it through the marketplace.

The first clue to this is a method attached to the SPWebApplication class called IsUserLicensedForEntity.

Note: Apparently, licensing can also be turned off, which could mean that either no applications requiring licenses will be installed or that the application developer has not set a license at all (in other words freeware).

However, there’s much more information in the protocol documentation, specifically in the MS-APPMD document (or SharePoint App Management Database Protocol Specification if you insist on the full name).

That document says that there are four license types that you can add to your package:

• PerpetualMultiUser marketplace license type.
• PerpetualAllUsers marketplace license type.
• TrialMultiUser marketplace license type.
• TrialAllUsers marketplace license type.

In addition to these license types, there’s also something called an OMEXLicenseType, but the description doesn’t clarify what the purpose of this license type is:

“The commercial type of the marketplace license, used for commercial purposes and stored in the protocol server.”

From the documentation, it does not seem like this is an alternative license type to the perpetual or trial licenses, but something that is added on to every license, regardless of license type.

The ‘protocol server’, by the way, is the SharePoint server. Wonder why they can’t just call it that.

The model also defines a license director who is a person (or maybe group) who are allowed to assign licenses to users. For example, a company may buy 10 user licenses for a product, but have 50 active users. The license director will be able to select which of those users get access to the product.

Licenses can also be timed so that they expire after a certain time. The expiration applies only to trial licenses, so perpetual licenses aren’t affected (duh).

This article is an excerpt from the first issue of the USP Journal  SharePoint 2013 Beta series. The issue contains more on the SharePoint App Marketplace as well as additional information, comments, news, and rumors. You can get the first issue free of charge on the issue web page.

Combined, this mini-series comprise only the content related to SharePoint Apps from the first issue. Later issues, included in the subscription, contain even more information, both on SharePoint Apps and other new features.

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Oh, and in case it isn’t bleedingly obvious; don’t make important decisions based on preliinary information. You’ll stand a fair chance of getting burned, but hey, if you’re willing to risk it, that’s entirely up to you.

If you are looking for more bleeding edge information on SharePoint 2013, though, I try to keep up to date and post interesting findings on my twitter account too. You can follow me on @furuknap.

SharePoint Server 2013 keeps many of the existing SharePoint 2010 features, such as:

• Excel Services
• Access Services
• InfoPath Forms Services
• User Profile Service
• Search Services
• Business Connectivity Services
• PerformancePoint Services

These features do get upgrades in both functionality and organization. For example, there’s a new analytics service that seems to allow custom usage reporting, possibly enabling features such as mobile and tablet usage for custom applications. Of course, I’m only speculating at this point.

In addition, however, there are new, or at least radically expanded services, such as:

• Content Management Service
• Translation Services
• Workflow Services
• SharePoint Quiz Client-Side Object Model Protocol
• Education Services
• Work Management Service

To me, being active in the education industry, SharePoint Education looks like a really interesting new component. In short, SharePoint Education is a major addition to SharePoint Server 2013 (or SharePoint Server 15 as it is currently known). The goal, I would assume, is to compete with online and internal training platforms such as Moodle and Blackboard.

I’ll talk much more about SharePoint Education in the second issue of the SharePoint 2013 Beta series of USP Journal. The first issue is available free of charge to members of the USP Journal mailing list, and you can sign up for that to get the first issue now.

If you’d like to read the other issues, however, you have to purchase a subscription and you can do that on the series webpage at http://www.sharepoint2013beta.com/ or directly from this link ($14.95 for the entire series):

SharePoint 2013 Beta series subscription

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You probably know that Microsoft released literally thousands of pages of documentation on SharePoint 15 (or SharePoint 2013, as I believe it will be called). Most comprehensive is the less intelligible open specification documentation, although that’s also where the good bits are.

You probably also know that I’m highly focused on learning what’s new on any new SharePoint version and that I write a USP Journal series that details this research and the findings. In the first issue, now freely available to members of the USP Journal mailing list, I wrote about the new App store.

You can read more about the series on the SharePoint 2013 Beta series webpage.

Here’s the first part of what I wrote about the new App Marketplace:

New App Store in SharePoint 2013

It seems Microsoft is planning to include a new App store in SharePoint 2013.

An App store, in cased you have been living in a cave in the previous decade, is a marketplace for applications that are easily installable in the environment. Smartphone users have access to such marketplaces already and sales of applications through such app stores are enormous.

You may not know this, but there’s actually already something akin to an App store in SharePoint 2010. When you’re creating a new site, you have the option of looking at Office.com, for example, to find additional downloadable site templates.

However, the current version is barely used and the last time I checked, there was only a single site collection available.

The current App store also works for Sandbox Solutions only, which essentially greatly limits its usefulness for practical applications. Sandbox Solutions, if you don’t know, are limited SharePoint solutions that contain only ‘safe’ functionality, sadly limiting them from many of the powerful features of SharePoint 2010.

Finally, there are no provisions for licensing in the current App store. Naturally, this is a deal-breaker for many vendors as they’re likely not going to want to give away their software without any license control.

The new App store, which Microsoft calls the marketplace, solves all of these issues and looks very promising as a new way of getting and distribution applications both for users and developers.

First, there is a new application model in SharePoint 2013, evident by the inclusion of new classes such as SPApp and SPAppCatalog, plus a range of similar classes. The preliminary functionality seems to focus on deployment of functionality as packages, as well as management of security, licensing, functionality, and custom databases.

Speaking of custom databases, the protocol documentation suggests that custom App databases can be stored in SQL Azure, also known as SQL Server in the cloud.

What’s really cool, however, is that the SDK reveals we will be able to use not just Microsoft as a marketplace, but also other sources. There is a so-called enumeration that lists multiple sources of packages (Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.DatabaseProvider.PackageSource):

• StoreFront
  The package is from the marketplace.
• CorporateCatalog
  The package is from a corporate gallery.
• DeveloperSite
  The package is from a developer site.
• ObjectModel
  The package is loaded via an object model.
• RemoteObjectModel
  The package is uploaded via CSOM.

The latter two options mean that we are also able to programmatically add applications to the marketplace using code, even from the client side (CSOM means Client Site Object Model).

The CorporateCatalog indicates that organizations will be able to build their own internal marketplace where they allow their users to add and install only approved applications.

The DeveloperSite option may indicate that you can also go online to retrieve applications, much like you can on platforms such as WordPress, but instead have those application packages hosted on the developer site.

This, however, isn’t the beginning of the ‘how cool is that’ on the SharePoint 2013 marketplace.

This article is an excerpt from the first issue of the USP Journal  SharePoint 2013 Beta series. The issue contains more on the SharePoint App Marketplace as well as additional information, comments, news, and rumors. You can get the first issue free of charge on the issue web page.

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MVP Ruben Alonso published a blog post about being accepted into the Office 15 TAP program, stating that he couldn’t post any screenshots due to the NDA. However, according to the post, and assuming Google translate isn’t playing too many tricks on me, Office 15 is both expected to be released by the end of 2012, it will be named either Office 2012 or Office 2013, and it is definitely “very prepared for a visual interface integrated into Windows 8 Metro”.

Of course, we know from the original announcement about the program that Microsoft will do a massive release including servers and clients for a range of products including SharePoint. That means, if Mr. Alonso is correct, that SharePoint 2013 will release this year and be named either SharePoint 2012 or SharePoint 2013.

I have previously posted my thoughts on the naming thing in a blog post called “Could SharePoint 2013 be SharePoint 2012” and I have elaborated further on the topic in the first issue of my USP Journal series SharePoint 2013 Beta (which is now available, free of charge). In short, I doubt that Microsoft would use the 2012 moniker because it will be released too late in the year to get the marketing effect of being ‘new’.

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PS: I’m starting a mini-series here on the new SharePoint 2013 Marketplace today. A great place to follow along is through my RSS feed.

PPS: As always, assume everything you read about SharePoint 15/2013 is unreliable at this point, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Oh, and while I have your attention, I just wanted to once again mention that Joel and I are good friends, despite the staged controversy last spring. If you haven’t read the story, please check out this post as a start and feel to read up on my sarcastic tribute and real tribute to a person for whom I have nothing but the greatest respect.

Now back to explaining why the man is dead wrong.

What Does Microsoft Think?

Joel believes it is good advice to not blog about SharePoint 15 for several reasons. First, although the information is public, it is preliminary and may change at any time. This may be good advice, especially to those who will base their future on what they read willy-nilly on the web.

Second, apparently Microsoft disapproves greatly (I can vouch for that) and it may even affect your career options (which Microsoft certainly wants to see, and I can vouch for that too). Microsoft are famous for their strict NDAs and those that already have access (TAP customers) will be under tight scrutiny from Microsoft to ensure no information is leaked.

However, what surprises me is that Joel claims that Microsoft assumes everyone in the community is under NDA, not just those that sign the agreement. That claim is completely ludicrous, considering you can’t give out information first and then ask people to not know and talk about it, simply for the reward of absolutely squat.

Now, Microsoft has previously offered me access to early bits if I just shut up and don’t write about what I know. Although there will be cold days in hell for months in a row before I’d agree to something like that, it’s an offer I can understand. After all, they’re giving me something in return for something. If Microsoft expects people to shut up simply because they want to, well, it’s time that Redmond woke up and smelled the coffee.

What About You?

Joel is right in that people are motivated by short-term popularity. In fact, I wrote about that in my comment on “What’s Wrong with the SharePoint Community”. It’s a plague on the community if you ask me, especially when I see blog posts that regurgitate the same content that everyone knows already, or even copies information from the SDK and post verbatim copies on their blogs.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone is motivated by popularity alone. Since this post is about why I’m writing about SharePoint 2013, I’ll let you know exactly what my motivation is.

I write about SharePoint because I believe it is to the betterment of a community of equals. I’m highly excited about learning new things, and when there’s a new version of my favorite platform… Well, let’s just say I could be more happy in a year of Sundays.

So, I read. I’ve read literally hundreds, if not thousands of pages about SharePoint 2013 already, information that Microsoft has made available to me. I have barely slept in days, and I couldn’t if I tried, simply because I’m so excited.

However, I understand that most people aren’t as hooked on this as I am. Some may even have families or jobs that require them to do something else than read protocol specifications for days on end. Those people, however, still need to be prepared for what’s coming. It’s their jobs to do SharePoint and they give advice to their clients on what to do over the next months or years. Knowing what goes on is essential to your career, not detrimental.

So, I share. I share because I have spent the time researching the topics. I share because I have time to follow what goes on related to SharePoint 2013. I share because it saves other community members literally hundreds of hours of digging. Scale that saving to the thousands of people who will read what I write and you’ll see that I’m actually doing the community a massive service.

Yeah, I’ll piss off the MVPs and anyone in the TAP program who may want to spill their guts, and definitely Microsoft. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, but nobody forces guns to their heads to accept those NDAs. Nobody, in their right minds, expects anyone to not save everyone else thousands of hours of work simply because they don’t want anyone talking about what they are already publishing.

By the way, I am a selfish bastard, and to afford some flowers for my wife for the days and weeks she won’t see me, I’m publishing what I find first to those who purchase a subscription to the new USP Journal SharePoint 2013 Beta series. It’s an issue series that runs from now and until the public beta becomes available, it costs $14.95 for the entire series, and you can get the information on the USP Journal mailing list if you’re so inclined.

I’ll even make it dirt simple for you: Just fill in your name and email below and I’ll send you the information you need:

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PS: Joel knows all this already, and in fact mentions in his post that some people understand the risks and choose to accept them. I’m one of those.

Microsoft just today released a preliminary SDK for SharePoint 15, called the SharePoint 15 Technical Preview Managed Object Model Software Development Kit. That’s right, campers, we’re ready to start consuming information about SharePoint vNext, SharePoint 2013, or whatever it ends up being called.

I’ve already started to read the SDK and found some extremely interesting things there. As always, I’ll be distilling this information and making it available to you, most likely in the form of a USP Journal issue series, just like I did for SharePoint 2010. If you want to keep up to date on that, the easiest way is to sign up for the USP Journal mailing list.

Of course, don’t be a stranger here either, I’ll definitely post a lot of public information. A great way is to follow the Furuknap’s SharePoint Corner RSS feed or just follow me on Twitter and you’ll get information as soon as it’s available.

Oh, and I’ll tag the articles with SharePoint 2013 too, so you can check out that category here too.

That’s it for now, I’ll get back to reading and I look forward to keeping you up to date on SharePoint 15

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Now, if you drink the Kool-Aid, you know that for several years, the SharePoint community has been a great place to hang out, with tons of learning, constructive debate, and a social atmosphere where both newbies and seasoned professionals can mingle with friendly peers. In fact, in a rather short list, I pointed out the SharePoint community as one of the primary reasons why I love working with SharePoint.

When I wrote my first book, Building the SharePoint User Experience, that community helped me, both prior to getting the contract, during the writing, and also afterwards. I am still grateful to the community, both then and now, and will continue to contribute in any way I can.

But there’s still major problems with the community, and here’s what I think is wrong.

You Suck!

Becoming part of the community includes great benefits for all involved. New blood brings new perspective to old issues and bring new problems for the group to solve, further increasing the ‘global brain’ of SharePoint knowledge. At least that’s what the posters should say.

However, in reality, it’s every man, woman, and child for themselves. Really, we’re here just because we gain some benefit from it.  I’m motivated by learning, for example, so I focus most of my efforts towards that goal. Others may be motivated by gaining money, prestige, social acceptance, a sense identity, or any other factor. Once you get to the bottom of your motivation tree, it’s eventually all about you.

Which is perfectly OK. You’re selfish, and that’s good because you’ll do best if you are motivated by the betterment of someone you love or at least have to hang out with every day.

The problem arises when the goal becomes more important than the means because that’s when people start taking shortcuts. You want to be faster so you do anabolic steroids, you want to be smarter so you cheat at an exam, you want to pick up that hot blonde chick or hunk over at the other end of the bar so you lie about your job, you want to have more money so you deduct a few creative expenses on your taxes.

The more prestigious and valuable a goal seems, the more people will do whatever it takes to get there. As the SharePoint community grows, being noticed as part of that community becomes both more rewarding but also more difficult. As the community grows, the reward for being recognized also increases, whether you are motivated by money, peer recognition, prestige, or whatever.

You’re Paid Too Much!

The reward, or promise of reward, in SharePoint is fabulous. SharePoint is booming and there is a desperate shortage of skills. Those that are recognized as skilled can ask clients and employers for massive amounts of money. I’ll not argue here whether that pay is fair or not beyond saying that I think it is, but regardless of whether I’m right or not, the fact remains that begin recognized as skilled in SharePoint is lucrative.

It’s easy then to focus on getting that reward at virtually any price. Heck, who wouldn’t take a few shortcuts to earn ten thousand dollars over a few days in a repetitive way? Add to that the pressure to produce at an ever increasing rate, combined with the difficult economic times, and the temptation to seek quick fixes to complex problems may be too hard to resist.

Even if you currently are a long-term member of the SharePoint community, it’s still a struggle to keep up. Not just are you expected to do your regular job, but in order to keep that job, you need to keep up with new ideas and topics, expand on the knowledge an ever increasing topic list, practice what you already know so you don’t forget, and answer questions from peers and others.

And then you’re supposed to contribute actively to the community. The more the community grows, the more you need to deliver back to stay on the top, and the more tempting it may be to take those shortcuts. There’s simply not enough time to do proper research or to fully evaluate someone else’s arguments. Changing your opinion even if you realize you’re wrong may be perceived as a sign of weakness, and if you’re going to be ‘a SharePoint guru’, you can’t have a dent in your reputation, right?

After all, with the amount you’re paid  and the income to which you have become accustomed… Well, slowing down isn’t an option.

Back to the Roots of Quality?

When I first joined the SharePoint community, information was scarce. That’s one of the main reasons I wrote my first book; to uncover what was missing.

However, at the time, there wasn’t the same amount of prestige and money in SharePoint. Granted, it was a growing technology, but adoption was still slow. Those who wrote had little other motivation than to post to help others. That meant that their reward was simply a ‘thank you’ if they even got that, and not a $300/hour paycheck. There weren’t any SharePoint Saturdays with fans lining up to meet you, nor 7,000 people conferences where the superstars never had to buy a single beer at the ensuing SharePint. Heck, there wasn’t even SharePint.

These days, money and prestige seems to be the main motivators, maybe not as much for the old-timers, but certainly for both ISVs, consulting houses, and perhaps especially for new people arriving at the scene, drawn by the smell of money, boothbabes, and recognition.

The sad fact is that this is detrimental to the very community we try to maintain. Sure, we need money, and peer recognition is nice and all, but when that becomes the goal, and such a sweet goal, we tend to sacrifice quality in too great an extent.

It’s been a couple of months since I really took a deep look at what’s being written about SharePoint and the responses people get in forums. It’s a sad state, to be brutally honest, when many of those I previously admired for being highly skilled and great role models start churning out content that lacks even basic research. I see SharePoint MVPs who can’t even spell SharePoint, I see articles that make ridiculous claims about what’s possible and not, I see people promoting rubbish as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I especially see ‘experts’, often with just a couple of months of SharePoint experience but also those with track records of literally years, throw proper research and great ideas under the bus because it does not fit into their picture of the world.

Sadly, I can’t see any way for this to change. Well, human nature could change, but the moon could also turn into chocolate mousse, and it’s not likely. The rewards are simply too great and the temptation is too strong to ask anyone to just stop and don’t produce for the sake of production. The SharePoint community is rapidly turning into an unmanageable mass of junk where the newbies scream as loud as they can to get attention and the old-timers struggling ever more to keep up with the rapid pace.

I know one thing, though, and that is that when SharePoint 2013 hits the shelves, or even as soon as people start posting information, we’ll have a completely new definition of community chaos on our hands, and I for one do not look forward to that.

Thanks for your time,

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Wait! Hang on, what is formal learning? Why is it not good, and, far more importantly, what is the alternative?

Formal Learning

It stands to reason that the opposite of formal learning would be informal learning. Now, if we ask Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, about informal learning, they certainly have an explanation on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_learning.

How does this help us understand what formal learning is? Well, check the URL. If you change the Informal part of the URL to Formal, you would get http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_learning, right? Well, try that link and see what happens.

That’s right, we’re now talking about education. Formal learning, easily defined, is the training you get while attending traditional schools, universities, classes, workshops, and so on.

Traditionally, these forms of studies have a fixed curriculum and you are lead through that curriculum by someone. It doesn’t matter whether you want to learn everything there or just a portion of the content, you still need to go through all the content.

This may be a good thing in some situations, after all, if you ask a child of six what they want to learn, I highly doubt it will be art history, grammar, or integral math. They probably really want to go to school and learn, but we still need to give them direction and tell them what they need to learn to be productive and responsible members of society. Can’t have that without calculus, after all.

Even if you do detect my slight sarcasm there, especially considering I’ve never passed any math class myself, the argument about needing to formalize the paths of students at the very best applies only to small children. It definitely does not apply to older children and least of all to grown and mature adults.

As adults, we need to learn math only if we are hindered by our lack of math skills. And if we do need to improve our math skills, we likely would want to improve our math skills in something that has a real life impact, such as understanding how to calculate a mortgage or figuring out how sales tax works.

However, I’m still not sure that formal learning really has a place at all. Coming from a dean at a university seeking accreditation for a formal education in SharePoint, that may surprise you.

What’s the Alternative?

When you learn, you mostly learn from non-formal studies. There’s no formal education in walking, blowing your nose, moving your head around, or scratching your elbow. Still, by the age of five, you know how to do all those things, and you don’t have a day of formal training on your resume.

Even when you start school, there are no formal classes in making friends, finding your way home from school, getting a girlfriend or boyfriend, or behaving around other people. Still, by the end of your high school years, you likely master these aspects of your life, and more. You’ll have learned how to sneak out without your parents noticing, you’ll have learned to get dressed and brush your teeth, you will have learned so many things that formal training wouldn’t dream of teaching.

So, what about after high school, or even college? Is there a formal education in hanging around the water cooler or coffee machine at work? What class did you take at college to learn where your cubicle is, or what your daily routine would be at work? What teacher taught you how early you’d have to arrive in the morning to get the parking spot you wanted?

Trivial tasks you say? Maybe, but trival doesn’t mean unimportant. You may get a job without the right education, but you won’t get a job if you can’t dress in the morning.

But let’s assume you are right. Let’s say that all the things I’ve mentioned so far are solely trivial and meaningless tasks that everyone takes for granted. If so, what additional formal education does one employee with 20 years of experience have that makes them so much better than a PFY fresh out of college? No formal education you say? Well, the more experienced employee has 20 years of informal training, training that they have received on their job, from their co-workers, or from mentors who they have looked up to during their careers.

Why are your parents always wiser than you are? Do they have more education? Well, they may, but even if you vastly outrank your parents in education, they are most of the time the wiser, not because of their formal training as parents, but because of their informal training that they have received during their additional years of social interactions.

On the job, what class did you take to understand how your current client’s needs match what you have done before on other projects? You’d chalk that down to experience and there are no university classes teaching you experience. Still, it’s what comprises most of our adult learning.

Education or Experience

If you ask any 22-year old CS major about how easy it is to get a job, they’ll likely say that they’re struggling with getting interviews because of their lack of experience. Recruiters want a good education but employers want to know how you handle real life situations. That’s rather hard, considering you’re not going to get that experience until, well, you have the experience. It’s a chicken and egg problem if there ever was one.

So, how about doing it the other way around? How about skipping the formal education completely and focus solely on gaining experience through work? If you’re going to land a job, especially in the economy of the recent financial turbulence, you need to offer employers something that makes you valuable. Considering you’re likely going to be less productive and make more mistakes than someone who has decades of experience, your value delivered will be lower. That means you’ll likely need to accept a lower salary.

But wait a moment, is that really so bad? Your salary as a student is practically nothing, so anything you get above that will be pure profit, even minimum wage. At the same time you are gaining experience that increase the value of your ‘product’, so it’s not like you’re sitting down for four years when all your friends are being good and attending university.

Add to this the fact that your education will cover tons of material that an employer can’t turn into money and you’re actually wasting at least a portion of your time spent in classes, simply because your education is never targeted completely at the job you want.  

I’m certain that other employers will have different opinions on this, but I would much rather hire a 22 year old person who has done 8-10 projects over the past four years than someone who just spent the same four years on a chair in a class room, studying stuff I don’t really need. In fact, I’d much rather train someone on the job or send them to specific training if they have proven that they know how to work. I would even value someone who failed miserably in their first couple of years, simply because they are far more likely to learn from their mistakes than someone who has never seen anything but the perfect scenarios they often face in school.

My advice to those who struggle getting a job is thus this: get a job at any cost. Work cheap, heck, work free, if that’s what it takes. Prove to your employer that you can produce value, fall into the pits and prove you can get out, and prove that you know how to handle real life. You’ll pick up a lot more learning a lot more efficient than you would attending a university, learning informally rather than formally.

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Sources read:

The Other 80%. http://www.internettime.com/Learning/The%20Other%2080%25.htm