I am totally honored to be on the list of Top 25 Online SharePoint Influencers again for 2012 at #8 spot after being #1 in 2011, but I must admit I think there are plenty of people missing I'd have in here. So before you read this as a egotistical rant…”OMG I can’t believe I’m at #1 this year”…please don’t, I’m interested in enterprise social and online influence measurement aspect. Being an SharePoint MVP and evangelist at AvePoint, I’m always interested in how I can be more effective in this role and reach more people.
What can we learn from this?
Well, everyone is always asking about the “return on investment” of social within organizations…this is an external leader board that shows the key influencers in the SharePoint community. This leaderboard shows who is helping to influence the SharePoint community as a whole with what they do online. A lot of organizations would love to have that kind of measurement internally for both recognition and also focus.
Note that leaderboards do not exist in SharePoint 2013 out of the box in this way. A similar leaderboard exists in Yammer, based on number of likes, replies and longest discussions. Although it only ranks you based on activity in Yammer. A system that could rank an enterprise based on Yammer, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, etc. would truly help you find the influencers in your own organization.
How it’s measured
I’m not even sure how harmon.ie are measuring this. Klout is seen as one of the experts in this field and it is their sole focus. My Klout score (70) is actually higher than Mark’s (69) currently. Although we do seem to keep switching…Mark did Twitter DM me when he was higher once as a joke! Clearly Mark is more influential as he has had a creepy long beard and I can’t even grow stubble.
Check out Klout’s opinion on SharePoint online influencers here. Note Shane Young and Kanwal Kwipple are high on that and not even present on harmon.ie. HINT: there is a “see more” where you can see more than 5.
I like klout in the sense that you can award klout points to people you think deserve it. Check out top K+…you’ll see Joel, Gian-Franco Salvato (not in Harmon.ie list), Andrew Connell, Todd Klindt and Michael Gannotti are in top 5.
Who’s missing?
There are way too many dimensions of measuring "Top SharePoint community people 'online'". I can list at least 5 without thinking that I would put on here based on what I get from their contributions online: Spencer Harbars, Dan Holme, Richard Harbridge, Chris McNulty, Waldek Mastkaryz. You could split it into IT Pro, Business, Developer...blah and go even further with this.
I’m pretty sure this doesn’t take into account mailing list contributions, Yammer community contributions, MSDN Forum contributions or SharePoint stack overflow contributions which are all valid online influencing things. It seems to be very influenced by your twitter activity quite heavily.
It would be interesting to see how you could measure offline influencers, e.g. those who attend conferences that aren’t online social whores like myself..there are plenty of people who rarely are seen on social networks but do great things at conferences offline or speak at user groups regularly or help out at SharePoint Saturdays on their weekends! And no…I’m not saying bring back conversation about SharePoint Knights 
Who cares?
To be honest, in terms of recognition I think this widely benefits harmon.ie for shouting it out than individuals and then relying on those on the list to promote for self-promotion. Although I was ranked #1 last year…short of everyone taking the piss out of me for being number 1 SharePoint loser, there wasn’t much benefit …other than telling my bosses at AvePoint that clearly I was doing my evangelist job well…and still am.
Interesting to see that most of the people on the list are in a career where they directly profit from having part of their role to be an evangelist in the community. There are not too many people who are “hobbyists” who don’t profit from their contributions e.g. work for a company directly and not for a service integrator or vendor.
What can I get out of it?
Well for a start, if you’re on Twitter you can follow all these people:
- Joel Oleson (@joeloleson, http://www.sharepointjoel.com/default.aspx), the first dedicated SharePoint administrator who has been working with SharePoint for nearly 12 years; a SharePoint content and collaboration solutions manager at LDS Church; former Microsoft senior technical product manager who designed both intranet and extranet SharePoint deployments for IT professionals; was a member of the team who architected the first rollout of Microsoft's own global search, intranet, team sites. Oleson moved up from the #2 spot in 2011.
- Mark Miller (@eusp, http://www.nothingbutsharepoint.com/sites/eusp/Pages/default.aspx), founder and editor of the EndUserSharePoint.com community dedicated to providing support for SharePoint end users; helps organizations gain global visibility through use of social media, online community building and relationship development; international traveler; frequent speaker at SharePoint events, conferences and webcasts worldwide on building digital communities and future of productivity .
- Andrew Connell (@andrewconnell, http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog), a SharePoint developer and instructor who is co-founder, instructor and speaker at SharePoint education and training company Critical Path Training. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Office SharePoint Server.
- Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura, http://www.wonderlaura.com), a Microsoft MVP and senior SharePoint specialist at Rackspace Hosting, she has eight years of experience in making the most of SharePoint’s out-of-the-box capabilities and works with SharePoint Designer workflows, InfoPath and Data View Web Parts. Latest books: Using Microsoft InfoPath 2010 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step and Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint.
- John Mancini (@jmancini77, http://www.digitallandfill.org/), president of AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) International, a non-profit association focused on the document and content management technologies that are key enablers of process change at leading companies.
- Todd Klindt (@toddklindt, http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/default.aspx), a professional computer consultant for more than 15 years, specializing in SharePoint for the last eight years, he currently works at Rackspace, authored Professional SharePoint 2010 Administration and is an MVP for Windows SharePoint Services.
- Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux, http://sp.meetdux.com/default.aspx), SharePoint MVP at Microsoft, event chair at SharePoint Saturday and managing partner at Innovative-e, Inc., a Microsoft Gold-certified business technology consulting and services company specializing in SharePoint implementations. Author of SharePoint for Project Management and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
- Jeremy Thake (@jthake, http://wss.made4the.net/default.aspx), a SharePoint evangelist since 2006 and SharePoint MVP who currently serves as enterprise architect at AvePoint, which provides SharePoint governance solutions for SharePoint. His previous SharePoint engagements have included supporting Microsoft sales teams with SharePoint questions as a virtual technical specialist.
- Mike Herrity (@mikeherrity, http://sharepointineducation.com), assistant headteacher at Twynham School in Christchurch, Dorset. Has been working with SharePoint to support learning since 2000.
- Michael Gannoti (@gannoti, http://michaelgannotti.com/general/new-blogging-chapter-begins/), as a technical architect for Microsoft, he helps large organizations architect and implement solutions in the Business Productivity space. Frequently these sessions focus around social media.
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Anyway, virtual high fives to all that made the list! Congrats to Joel Oleson for taking #1 spot from me. For those who know me personally, some things have happened that have meant I’ve had to dial it back over the last year…I needed my weekends back from SharePoint Saturdays and late night coding for my own personal time. God only knows how people can keep up that community work rate with a wife and kids! So hats off to you!