This is a cross-post from the J Street Technology – Blog.

Engaging in Conversation

By way of introduction, I am Toby Getsch, a Program Manager and SharePoint MCTS here at J Street.  I’m excited to engage in some conversation and start leveraging blogging and social networking more – all while trying to promote and bring awareness to the SharePoint practice and other great services.

To get started, we’ve done a few things to open up the dialogue.  We’ve turned on comments here on this blog and will be monitoring them to make sure your input and feedback and conversation is heard and you know that it is valued.  On each blog post we’ve enabled both Facebook and Twitter buttons for you to share/tweet about the post.  We’ve added J Street Techand CartGenie Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.  (@JStreetTech and @CartGenie)  We’ve integrated some more social links in various other places.  And, we’ve also enabled a mobile browsing format so you can use your favorite mobile device and still have a great viewing experience.

Any time an organization makes some changes like this, there can be a variety of results.  One thing we’re aware of is that it increases your access to us.  We have to take that in with everything else going on, and also try to engage in it.  Please know that we’re working hard to provide excellent service.  To that end, we’d like to request that you continue to use the regular channels for support requests.  Those are linked here and available at JStreetTech.com.

In short, we are definitely listening!  And, now we want to spread the J Street love in more places.

Thanks for your time.
~Toby

Stay tuned!  And, let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see me write about.

Panoramic Mountain Vista near Leavenworth, WA

[Click on the image to view the full panoramic image.]

While I only claim to be an amateur photographer,  I also like to learn a little bit more about taking certain types of pictures, but only a little bit of that learning at a time.  So, short articles like, “Shooting Panoramas by Jay Dickman” are great to spend a few minutes on and they can really make for some better pics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm8NdNy4wOM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTptrY8zBfI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpfBBrxKAhI

Here is a screen shot of the normal view.

Click on the grey Reader button in the address bar.

Here is the screen shot of the Reader view.

Sweat the small stuff: Rory Sutherland on TED.com

It doesn’t require leadership to think about solutions like this.  However, I do think good leaders do have tendencies to think like this.  That’s nothing scientific.  And, it doesn’t mean that if a leader does not think like this they are bad.  I just like to think of good qualities and strive towards those.

There are many paths to select from, and you may struggle to find the one that works for you. However, the one that keeps coming back to solve your problems and make your life better and absorb your disorganized state of being… that’s the one that you’re likely to end up sticking with. Hello SharePoint 2010!

V1 was cool. (SharePoint Team Services)

V2 was improved. (Windows SharePoint Services)

V3 was brag-worthy. (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server)

V4 has both mass appeal and cult following, both common and dramatic entrance and both depth of story line and pointed action moments. It’s like totally, astoundingly awesome! (Microsoft SharePoint 2010)

Shameless Plug: I work as a Program Manager and SharePoint MCTS at J Street Technology.  We do SharePoint.

SharePoint 2010 reaches RTM!

Today we reached an exciting engineering milestone- the release-to-manufacturing (RTM) for Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, Visio 2010 and Project 2010!

RTM is the final engineering milestone and a major achievement for all of the internal teams who worked so hard to get to this point. As tirelessly as our engineering teams worked, we would never have reached this milestone without incredibly active participation from our customers and partners. More than 5,000 organizations and partners have worked with us on rapid deployment and testing of the products, and the feedback that we’ve received from all these programs has shaped a fantastic set of products that I’m sure our customers will love.

Our Volume License customers with active Software Assurance (SA) on these products will be one of the first to receive the 2010 set of products. They will be able to download the product in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Dutch via the Volume Licensing Service Center starting April 27. Other languages will be available on a rolling timeline. Customers without SA will be able to purchase the new products through Volume Licensing from Microsoft partners starting May 1.

Earlier this year we announced that we will officially launch SharePoint 2010 to our business customers on May 12 with a virtual launch. Our virtual launch will allow people from around the globe to participate in our launch by going to http://www.the2010event.com. Stephen Elop, President of Microsoft’s Business Division, will deliver a keynote as part of the virtual launch, and the virtual launch site will showcase product demos, customer and partner testimonials, and interviews with product managers and executives, and we hope this will give you another great way to explore, learn, and get excited about the 2010 releases.

On behalf of the SharePoint team, I want to thank all of the customers and partners who have helped us reach this milestone. We look forward to continue learning from you and all the great things you will do with our products!

-Jeff Teper

Corporate Vice President, SharePoint Server, Microsoft

I work at J Street Technology, Inc. and we do SharePoint.

http://www.JStreetTech.com/SharePoint

“J Street Technology, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, is pleased to announce SharePoint capabilities, allowing us to help small, medium, and large organizations leverage the SharePoint platform to improve business productivity and efficiency.

Heading up this initiative is Toby Getsch, a Program Manager and SharePoint MCTS with extensive experience deploying, installing, and configuring SharePoint for numerous organizations across a wide range of industries. Toby’s experience with SharePoint dates back to the early 2000’s and he has continued working with all sizes of organizations, from small businesses to large multi-national corporations.

Adding to his SharePoint-specific experience is more than a decade of IT leadership, consulting, advising, and project work. With a particular passion for planning the right strategy and execution, his experience with various engagements fits very well with J Street’s growing SharePoint expertise.”

I’m really excited about this opportunity and I can’t wait to rock and roll!  (Yes, I’m talking about SharePoint and rock and roll!  They do go together.)

What is SharePoint?  Check out this video.

What is Rock and Roll?  Check out this video.

And, if you don’t see some of my idea of fun and humor in this post, that’s ok.  SharePoint has excellent security trimming so that only the right people see the right things, even in search results.