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SharePoint Community Survey Results

A few weeks ago I posted SharePoint Users Groups and Community 2.0: Reflections and Projections. I shared my perspective on the state of technical users’ groups and SharePoint in particular, and asked folks to please take a short survey to help me get a sense for where everyone’s thoughts were about the technical community. The results are in so I wanted to share what I heard.

Importance

The first question was the importance of the community. Not surprisingly, folks thought community was fairly important:

Events

Of the highly engaged audience, there were many (38%) who had attended two or fewer events in the last year. At the other end of the spectrum, 36% had attended more than six events.

Help Your SharePoint User

More interesting than how many they attended was the number of those that were attending less than they used to (57%). Again, this is telling in a highly engaged audience.

Desires

When asked about the balance between on-ground and virtual communities, most folks (51%) felt like a balanced approach was best. More telling is that if you include slightly more or less (so roughly the same) nearly everyone answered that they wanted it – “it” meaning a mixture of both types. No one indicated a desire for all virtual events – though clearly we’re moving in that direction.

However, the most interesting results (to me) were the results when I asked folks what they wanted more of. Half- and full-day events on one or more topics topped the list, with over 60% for each of the two options. Webinars and Face-to-Face meetings (one-hour format) were next, with both receiving 50%. There was strong support for just getting together at a restaurant as well.

Overall, what folks want from the community is Show and Tell (92%). Other folks are looking for social interactions and development discussions (over 55% each). It’s really interesting to see what people want out of communities. Some of it is training but a lot of it is really that community connection.

Next Steps

I don’t know what the next steps are for our group in Indiana – but I do know that my perception of what people want has changed.

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