Wow, time really does fly! In 2013 I wrote a small piece on the history of Sweden SharePoint User Group, or SSUG (Find it here: http://zimmergren.net/business/sweden-sharepoint-user-group-6-years-and-counting-were-growing).
Since we founded the group back in 2007, we have been engaging the SharePoint crowd in Sweden with in-person meetings and networking meetups. With this post I just want to post some updates on what’s happening in SharePoint Sweden and what the recent survey we conducted has resulted in.
What’s new with SSUG in 2015?
8 Years!
We are celebrating eight years. We have put in a lot of hours, sweat and hard work in managing and organizing the SSUG and making sure it delivers great speakers, sessions and meetups throughout the years. We are committed on keeping this up moving forward!
New ambassadors in Göteborg
In Göteborg I have signed up two helpers/ambassadors for the local events in that region. They are Patrik Björklund and Daniel Pettersson.
When we arrange new meetings in the Gothenburg region, these two awesome fellows will be helping out with the logistics and events.
Welcome aboard guys!
Finding us online
As always we can be found here:
Event Brite: www.ssug.se
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SharePointSweden
E-mail list signup (so you get invited to the next event): http://tz.nu/SSUGAttendees
SSUG Web/Online Events
Based on the recent survey we did (see more about that in the next section), a lot of people would love to engage more with SSUG online. Foremost by attending online events such as sessions hosted over the web online instead of on-site. This was important for a lot of people because obviously not everyone lives in Malmö, Göteborg or Stockholm. Also, not everyone might be in Sweden! By considering hosting online events for SSUG, I realize we’ll be able to fulfil the wishes of those people as well.
Currently it’s in the planning phase, but as soon as there’s more information on this we’ll send an e-mail to everyone on our mailinglist (sign up in the bottom of this post if you haven’t already).
We asked, you replied, and we listened
A while ago we sent out a survey to everyone on our e-mail list. The survey was about SSUG, our regions and how we should engage the events in the future. I asked, you replied and we listened. Here’s the outcome of the survey, in general.
Takeaway results
1. What region do you visit for SSUG Events?
|-----------|-----|
| Malmö | 30% |
| Stockholm | 60% |
| Göteborg | 10% |
We have a pretty good geographical spread since the launch of SSUG in Skåne (or as it should now be called, the Greater Copenhagen Area), and since the introduction of SSUG in Göteborg we’ll be able to balance the spread even better :-)
2. Would you like to see SSUG host Live Events and/or Recorded Presentations?
|-------------------------------|-----|
| Absolutely | 68% |
| I rather visit on-site events | 32% |
It’s obvious that a lot of people want to see online presentations and events as well, which is something we’re definitely looking at right now. The heavy focus will still be on the in-person on-site events where we get a chance to network properly. For people who cannot show up for these events, the live events will hopefully fill the void :-)
How often would you want to attend an SSUG event?
|------------------------------------------------------|-----|
| Quarterly (every third month) | 45% |
| Bi-monthly (every second month) | 15% |
| Monthly | 5% |
| Doesn’t matter, I’m just happy they occur at all :-) | 35% |
We used to run quarterly meetings, which is what we want to aim for moving forward too.
Some times it happens more frequently, sometimes more infrequently – but it all happens on a voluntary basis which we all know means we’ll have to fight to find time to do these things on our own free time.
What types of sessions are you mostly interested in? (multi-choice)
|--------------------------|-----|
| Development | 62% |
| Admin / IT-Pro | 62% |
| End User / Power User | 50% |
| Business Case / Use Case | 75% |
No surprise here that the technically heavy sessions for Developers and IT-Pro’s are popular. But it is a bit surprising to see such an increased interest in attending business case and use case sessions. This is definitely something we’ll be taking with us moving forward and organize events where we can dig into customer cases and use cases for SharePoint and Office 365.
5. Would you want to attend events targeting ONLY a specific audience, where we don’t mix audiences?
|--------------------------------------------------------------|-----|
| No. I want to learn from other audiences too! | 55% |
| Yes. Sometimes a focused geek-meet would be fun! | 40% |
| Yes. I never want to listen to anything but my own audience! | 5% |
This was a pretty good and predictable result to be honest. Mixing is the best way to learn more about things that may not be your focus area, or things you haven’t had the time to dig into yet. However having focused geek-meets where we’ll focus the entire event on a specific topic or technology would be fun to do sometimes too. We’ll have a mix of mixes.
6. Miscellaneous comments
While we received a ton of great comments, here’s a few which really inspires me to keep up the work. Being appreciated for the free work you do always helps inspire new events :-)
A few comments about launching SSUG in Norrland.
*Zimmergren comment: Looking into this.
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We would love pure end-user/customer meetings without consultants to discuss which consultanties are competent to deliver which solutions.
*Zimmergren comment: Looking into this. We would need to find a suitable venue and structure, since everyone involved with organizing SSUG is currently a consultant.
*
More events and information about Migrations, Upgrades and Transformation to Add-in model
*Zimmergren comment: You got it!
*
SSUG events without sessions/speakers, just mingle and networking/afterwork events
*Zimmergren comment: I’ve already considered this, and I think we can cook something up in terms of AW and pub nights.
*
Long time since we had a meeting in Malmö now, Tobias. Stop being lazy :)
Zimmergren comment: A direct hit :-) As discussed we’ll keep things up in Malmö too, as much as time allows for it!
Speakers and Sponsors
From the survey we also collected potential speakers and sponsors. We’ll reach out to everyone about upcoming speaking and sponsorship opportunities.