SharePoint, it was fun…a LOT of fun
I will never forget when I was working at a company called HNC Software, that ended up getting bought out by FICO, and I first laid my eyes on SharePoint. My manager was a guy named Tony Pitpit, he was always a visionary and had a pulse on the industry. I was busy writing some .NET and HTML code for the company website when he calls me and says “Sal, get in here! You have to see this!” Microsoft was giving a demo of SharePoint Ver. 1 and that was the first time I saw a webpart. A webpart is basically a smaller webpage within a larger one that can do its own independent processing. I knew this was going to be big because I saw the productivity in it, no longer did you have to bounce around many different pages, you could do many transactions all in one page via webparts. And, Microsoft was backing this technology, so it was here to stay. And the rest was history!!
I went on to work for many companies who used SharePoint and the greatest part of this story are the amazing people I met along the way. The SharePoint community is a very tight, generous and an extremely intelligent group of people. SharePoint is a collaboration platform, you can build an intranet with it, manage documents, set retention policies, it has search integrated into it, the list goes on and on. That sort of collaboration tool-set sets a mandate for us SharePoint administrators to collaborate with our customers and co-workers. The role of a SharePoint Administrator seems to attract the same types of individuals, which is why when I meet another, no matter what part of the world I am in, I know that I am going to meet someone cool and interesting!
Me and Danica Patrick, former pro race car driver at a SharePoint conference.
Fast forward to my current role here at Microsoft as a SharePoint Premier Field Engineer, thanks to my buddy Vance Frankiewicz who recruited me 8 years ago. My new role will be as a Power Platform Premier Field Engineer supporting Power Apps and Power Automate. I will never drift too far away from SharePoint especially because the Power Platform, uses it as one of its data sources. Besides, I could never completely abandon SharePoint, it would just be too painful.
I have shared some pictures of the great times I’ve had over the years. From the countless SharePints << “no that is not a misspelling, a true SharePoint warrior knows this word”, SharePoint Saturdays, SharePoint conferences, Ignites I have been too, to the many books and blogs I have read, I am grateful for all of the people, moments and accomplishments I have experienced. Let’s hope the Power Platform journey is just as fun!