SharePoint 2013 is coming…

There’s a storm coming, and it’s going to be exhilarating and overwhelming. You and I are about to be engulfed with hundreds of thousands of thoughts and ideas in the form of posts, articles, tweets, and events. People and companies are going to race to be the first one to share, the first one to advertise they know their stuff.

All because of SharePoint 2013.

It’s already started, there is a ton of information out there based solely on “conjecture, leaks and red herrings“. There’s also a lot of good information out there, gleaned from what has been published by Microsoft; not secret back room conversations with anonymous people. Check out Bjørn Furuknap’s blog, he seems to be leading the way.

As soon as SharePoint 2013 is released, expect a down pour of knee-jerk reactions about what’s new, features, how to’s, upgrading, pros, cons, opinions, yaddi yadda. The few lucky people currently under NDA will offer the better information, I hope. The rest of us, seeing it for the first time, will make more assumptions on what we see rather than researching and finding the facts.

I’m looking forward to reading it all, even the stuff that isn’t accurate. I also plan to get my hands on SharePoint 2013 as soon as it’s released, and I’m sure many others are as well. I have a few virtual servers ready for installation and upgrade.

This where I pause and question my value to the SharePoint community. Am I bringing value if I simply regurgitate the obvious?

There will be plenty of blogs highlighting the new calendar feature and new security features, and everything else. This will be good information and it should be shared, but I don’t think I want to be the 100th blog to share the same. exact. information.

It’s a marathon not a sprint.

I’m going to try* to refrain from joining in the initial wave of information that’s brewing. I believe there’s more value to wait for the hype and excitement to drop, give myself time to use it and really learn it, then start offering real, common sense, business applicable information, support and advice.

Instead of sharing every little thing I find, I’d rather wait a few weeks, get my hands dirty and understand (not simply know, but really understand) what’s new in SharePoint. Then take this knowledge and combine it with what I know now and offer real solutions for my customers. Business shouldn’t upgrade just “because it’s the new version”. It’s my job to understand and recommend technology.

My blogging will continue as is, including SharePoint 2010 and 2013. I will continue on with how to bend SharePoint to your will, fixing some not so obvious stuff and how to have a great SharePoint of your own.

Or should I just succumb to the excitement of SharePoint 2013 and spew out everything little nugget I find?

What do you think?

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(This is a pseudo response to Bjørn Furuknap’s post “Attention aspiring Sharepoint Bloggers: Shut Up!” of which I completely agree, now more than ever!)

 

* I say try because I’m human, and I may get overwhelmed in the awesomeness of the new version, and might not be able to restrain myself. I’ll do my best!