Being a Professional

I was reminded about what I’d had been calling “a professional” by David Heinemeier Hansson at 37Signals.  He posted “Your Life’s Work” on their Signal vs. Noise blog. It was a terrific piece that, to me, really spoke to a “disposition” that professionals should possess.  I especially liked this quote: “[if] you’re not committed to your life’s work in a company and with people you could endure for decades, are you making progress …”  In essence, you have to be truly interested in the work that you do and care about the outcome – not just today, but tomorrow and beyond.  If not, as David puts it, you’d have to question whether you’d making any career progress. 

For Consejo, this concept (of a professional) is at the heart of who we want to hire and I’m glad we’re not alone.

Year in Review

As we close out 2010, I wanted to reflect a bit on the past 12 months.

First and foremost, I want to thank all of our clients (new and existing) and our partners for a terrific year!  We have had the opportunity to work with some fantastic folks on a number of very cool projects.  We were fortunate to be involved in both SharePoint 2010 and 2007 projects, custom ASP.NET projects, work with our newest software partner EPiServer, continue our research work with the Real Story Group and spin up a fairly busy migration practice around Microsoft Business Productivity Online.  In fact, working on the variety of projects with a diverse set of partners and clients is one of the reasons consulting is such an interesting business.  For 2010, here is a sampling of the projects and firm types Consejo worked on and with:

• A zoo on a custom-written management web site
• A global media company on extensions to SharePoint Solutions ExCM
• A scientific equipment manufacturer, a container manufacturer and a SaaS software vendor evaluating and assessing their SharePoint implementations
• The Real Story Group, researching and writing about SharePoint
• A hospital system on both the development of an intranet and a clinician portal on SharePoint 2010
• With our partner Earley and Associates, we worked with a multi-national construction company on a global intranet design, taxonomy development and metadata definition
• With our partner Alternative Productions, we created a dynamic flash component for a sales training company and integrated it into their EPiServer-powered public web site
• A global horticulture company on an internal, custom-written management web site; our partner Graphic Insight developed the visual design and we worked with developers from i.c. stars
• Continued to support a major league baseball team’s SharePoint 2007-base intranet we implemented for them in 2008
• Providing SharePoint support services for a food services company
• Working with our partner Strategic SaaS to migrate clients to Microsoft’s Business Productivity Suite Online (and soon Office365!)

In addition to client work, we also had the opportunity to speak at various events.  2010 was a busy year for conferences and we spoke at many events this year, including:

• Hardlines Technology Forum in Schaumburg, IL
• Midwest SharePoint 2010 Conference in Milwaukee, WI
• SharePoint Summit 2010 in Montreal, Canada
• Enterprise 2.0 in Santa Clara, CA
• The J Boye Conference in Aarhus, Denmark
• SharePoint Symposium in Washington, DC (co-located with KMWorld)

In all, our experiences with our clients, discussions with firms interviewed in our research and interactions with attendees at conferences have provided us with a wide-ranging 2010. 

I would like to close this post by personally thanking all of our consultants, our clients and our partners (including the conference organizers of the various events) for a wonderful year.  I wish you all a prosperous 2011 and look forward to continuing our work!

Happy new year!