The Web Goes Dark Thanks to SOPA

Wikipedia and O’Reilly Media are just two of the websites that went dark today in protest of the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) legislation in the United States. The US already has anti-piracy legislation and this new bill goes too far. As an author, I understand how terrible it feels to have your work stolen. My first Halo book was actually hand scanned then posted online and many of my other books have also been pirated in one way or another. I also have an interesting perspective on this issue because I was also wrongly accused of violating a legal agreement by writing one of my books—something I put to rest when I hired a lawyer and then went on to write two more books on the subject (one for O’Reilly Media BTW). The publisher in that case handled the issue extremely poorly and it’s precisely the sort of thing that would enable SOPA to shut down an innocent website. Copyright infringement is awful, but this bill simply isn’t the right way to deal with the issue.

What’s in this bill? Here’s some text from the summary: “This bill would establish a system for taking down websites that the Justice Department determines to be dedicated to copyright infringment [sic]. The DoJ or the copyright owner would be able to commence a legal action against any site they deem to have "only limited purpose or use other than infringement," and the DoJ would be allowed to demand that search engines, social networking sites and domain name services block access to the targeted site.”

From the Washington Post: “Why are tech start-ups so vehemently opposed? These companies have argued that the bills are tantamount to Internet censorship. Rather than receiving a notification for copyright violations, sites now face immediate action — up to and including being taken down before they have a chance to respond”

If you would like a quick visual explanation of this issue, visit americancensorship.org.

From today’s O’Reilly message…

Today, we’re going dark to show the world that O’Reilly Media does not support the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives or the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate.

…

These legislative attacks are not motivated by clear thinking about the future of the Internet or the global economy, but instead seek to protect entrenched companies with outdated business models. Rather than adapting and competing with new and better services, these organizations are asking Congress for cover.

Any forward-looking country must encourage its emerging industries, not protect its laggards. Yet, in a time when the American economy needs to catalyze domestic innovation to succeed in a hyper-competitive global marketplace, members of the United States Congress have advanced legislation that could damage the industries of the future.

…

Here’s what you can do:

1) Learn if your U.S. Representative or Senators support SOPA or PROTECT IP through SOPAOpera.org.

2) Use the tools at AmericanCensorship.org, StopTheWall.us and POPVOX to tell Congress where you stand.

3) Participate in Better Activism Day, a free livestream of experts discussing ways to "improve your power in Washington from people who’ve been successful at moving it."

4) Call or meet with your representatives in Congress. The single most effective action any concerned citizen who wants to talk to Congress can take is to see your Senator or Representative in person. Failing that, call them. Write them a letter. Make sure your voice is heard.

– Tim O’Reilly, CEO and Founder of O’Reilly Media

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SharePoint Saturday Honolulu 2011

This year marked the first SharePoint Saturday Honolulu event. And to distinguish themselves, they held the event on a Friday. I greatly enjoyed this event and it was well organized, so hats off to the organizing committee and the volunteers. It also didn’t hurt that I got to spend the week in Oahu, Hawaii.

- Yes, it was on a Friday

At the event, I presented a session about the SharePoint 2010 SP1 supportability changes and how these changes affect real-world storage considerations. Naturally, since Remote BLOB Storage (BLOB offloading) is the future of SharePoint storage management, I spent a good deal of my time talking about RBS.

I also enjoyed being on the Ask the Experts panel, which featured some prominent SharePoint community characters and some great conversation.

- Yes, that’s a dinosaur foot behind me. Honolulu Community College has dinosaurs

Thank you to the organizers and thanks for the invite to return next year. BTW –the real flower leis upon arrival were a nice touch.

Movember Coming to an End

Well, it’s the final week of Movember and I’m only $23 out of 2nd place on my Metalogix team. If you can space a few bucks for a good cause (men's health), please visit my page and make a donation.

You can contribute to my Movember effort here: http://mobro.co/cawood

“During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in Canada and around the world. With their “Mo’s”, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men's health, specifically prostate cancer.”

At the end of the month, I’ll be posting the “after” photo showing my Tom Selleck-esque look.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday Honolulu

I’m pleased to be presenting at SharePoint Saturday Honolulu, Dec 2, 2011. I’ve been fortunate to present at a number of SharePoint Saturday events—from small ones all the way up to SharePoint Saturday the Conference in DC.

I’ll be doing a presentation about the SharePoint 2010 SP1 supportability changes. I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I’m looking forward to seeing the islands as well.

Yes, SharePoint Saturday Honolulu is on Friday.

I’m Speaking at Microsoft TechDays in Vancouver

This year, I’ll be presenting a session about migration file shares to Microsoft SharePoint at Microsoft TechDays 2011 in Vancouver.

I’ve attended TechDays Halifax in the past, but this will be my first session at the conference.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 Wrap-up

This year’s sold out Microsoft SharePoint Conference (#SPC11) was so busy for me that it caught me a little off guard. You know those blog posts about preparing for conferences that list things such as stocking up on business cards and organizing meetings ahead of time, well I ran out of cards and completely ran out of time to talk to all the people I had meant to chat with. That same craziness explains why this post is just a tad late.

This year’s conference was October 3-6 in Anaheim, CA at the Anaheim Convention Center. Right next to Disneyland, you could argue that this is the happiest convention center on Earth.

The show was a smashing success for Metalogix—one of the reasons it was so busy for me. We had our most popular booth ever, talked our throats dry about SharePoint and Office 365, hosted multiple parties and met with countless partners and customers. We also had a pretty popular Metalogix prize giveaway.

The Anaheim convention center is a great venue

A swarm of people at the Metalogix booth

After the exhibit hall closed, I managed a shot without people blocking the Metalogix booth

Microsoft rented Disneyland for the attendee party. The last time I went to Disneyland was in 2005 for the E3 conference. I was happy to be able to ride Splash Mountain this time around as it went down for maintenance while I was in line last time. And, no, I didn’t get wet; others from Metalogix came out soaked, but I basically got sprayed once.

The @NBSharePoint “I’m just here for SharePint” shirt (I’m holding Minnie Mouse ears for my daughter)

At this year’s show, I presented a session with Steve Marsh about considerations for creating SharePoint farms with terabytes of data. Our session was literally the last one in the guide. It was fun closing the conference, but I have to admit that I prefer to speak early and then have the rest of the event to meet with people; until I actually speak, I can’t help but tweak my presentation, so it’s always on my mind.

The rooms were darkly lit, so not a great speaker photo op

Metalogix also had great representation in other sessions. For example, the session about the Microsoft Search First Initiative, co-presented by our partners Microsoft and Arcovis.

I’ll finish with one more shot of the venue. Doesn’t this image just yell, “SharePoint in the cloud?”

All in all, SPC11 was a great event and I’m really psyched about the Microsoft SharePoint Conference (#SPC12) in Las Vegas in 2012.

SharePoint Conference Attendance Is Down–Is that a problem?

There are many, many, SharePoint conferences around the world. But the biggest one remains the Microsoft SharePoint Conference (SPC). It happens about every 18 months or so and it’s the official event for all things SharePoint. This year’s conference is October 3-6 in Anaheim, CA and many of the attendees are thrilled that Microsoft has rented Disneyland for the attendee party.

One interesting statistic about this year’s conference (#SPC11) is that registration is rumoured to be lower than the last show. The last SharePoint conference, SPC 2009, boasted an impressive 7,400 attendees at a time when the economy was still reeling from the crash. At that show, there was a buzz (and I was contributing to it) about how SharePoint was so healthy that there was no sign of the recession in the SharePoint space. By comparison, the 2007 conference had 3,800 attendees.

[Update: I’m told that registration has been solid right down to the wire and we should all stay tuned to see what the real number is when the show starts on Monday.]

[Update to the update: It has just been announced (the Friday before the show) that the conference has sold out. The actual attendee number hasn’t been announced yet.]

So, the rumoured lower attendance this year begs the question, “Is this a sign of a slow down in the SharePoint community?” and by extension, a problem that Microsoft needs to worry about? My position is that there is no issue and my rationale is threefold: the SharePoint business is healthy, this is the worst time in the SharePoint release cycle for a conference, and the SharePoint community is healthy.

The SharePoint business is healthy

SharePoint was the fastest Microsoft product in history to reach $1 Billion in revenue. That’s quite an accomplishment and it might be tempting for the SharePoint group to rest on their laurels. Well, that’s not the way Microsoft works. Product group employees typically change jobs every two years or so. That’s not to say that the whole team that shipped Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) has moved on to other projects, but most of them are likely in different roles and that means this is their first release with their current responsibilities. That’s one of the techniques at Microsoft for keeping employees engaged.

In a recent survey conducted by Metalogix Software and ESG, “which surveyed 3,129 IT professionals, 64 percent of North American and Western European organizations are currently using SharePoint, while an additional 12 percent intend to within the next 24 months. This overwhelmingly confirms that SharePoint is now considered to be a top business application – 80 percent ranked it among their top 10 business applications- a significant update since the March 2009 survey.”

Of course, there’s another key factor in the outlook for SharePoint. In short, Office 365 changes the landscape of SharePoint market potential. Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud offering that includes SharePoint 2010. For many companies out there, the attraction to the economics of the cloud will have them taking a long hard look at the silver lining of the Office 365 cloud (yes, that’s a mangled metaphor I know, sorry). Also, as I recently discussed in a couple of Metalogix hybrid cloud webinars, there are many scenarios that organizations are looking at which involve both SharePoint Online (e.g., Office 365) and SharePoint on-premises.

This is the worst time in the release cycle for a conference

We’re basically in the middle of the SharePoint release cycle. It’s a terrible time for a conference since the Beta of the next version is not out yet and the current release has been out for some time. This makes the conference a tougher sell for many people who have to justify the time and expense to their managers.

The SharePoint community is healthy

If you have any doubts at all about the SharePoint community, just call up Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux)—or any of the organizers for that matter—and ask how SharePoint Saturday the Conference went in DC this year. It was roughly twice the size of the same event last year and, at the time, that was the largest SharePoint Saturday event ever.

The SharePoint community is stronger than ever and it’s showing no signs of slowing. There are dozens of SharePoint experts around the world taking time out of their lives to travel to SharePoint conferences and deliver educational sessions. In fact, organizers of these events are receiving hundreds more session proposals than they can accommodate. The vibrant SharePoint community is envied by many and things are humming along just fine.

- signing a book at SPSTC in DC

And now, my shameless plug: I’ll be doing a book signing at the Metalogix booth (we’re giving away copies of How to Do Everything: SharePoint 2010) and I’ll be co-presenting a session with Dr. Steve Marsh, on Thursday, October 6, at noon. The session is entitled, “At Last - Size Doesn’t Matter! Considerations for building a SharePoint ECM platform to accommodate TBs of Content” and will focus on three different customer scenarios that demonstrate how to free your SharePoint content.

- the Metalogix billboard on Interstate 105 in Anaheim