InnerWorkings announced a major addition to its Learning Platform today with the release of self-paced SharePoint 2010 training for professional developers and software teams.

Working in partnership with the USPJ Academy, InnerWorkings is offering world class SharePoint learning solutions to its customers. USPJA boasts a team of industry renowned SharePoint experts whose approach emphasizes the real-world aspects of learning SharePoint — a perfect fit with the InnerWorkings methodology.

InnerWorkings confirmed the immediate release of three SharePoint courses to its Learning Platform, covering the following topics:

• Beginning SharePoint Development
• SharePoint Data View Web Part Basics
• SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow

Additional SharePoint courses are in development and will be released on a quarterly basis. All of the SharePoint courses include video-based instruction from USPJA experts, hand-picked e-books, and a virtual lab environment to practice important configuration tasks. In addition, a Live Guide feature connects developers and in-house SharePoint experts to facilitate ongoing support and grading of assignments.

“With over 100M users and $1B in revenue for Microsoft, SharePoint is the understated giant of Microsoft’s enterprise collaboration strategy”, said Francis McKeagney, InnerWorkings CEO. “As a server-based technology, SharePoint presents significant challenges to organizations wishing to provide deep, hands-on training to their software teams. We are really excited that our new offering addresses this issue in a rigorous and compelling way. The virtual lab capability, in particular, allows for deep learning in both generic and customizable setups. We are delighted to partner with USPJA to deliver such a comprehensive enterprise learning solution for SharePoint development teams. USPJA’s knowledge and expertise has made this offering possible.”

“The market for SharePoint developers has never been hotter”, said Bjørn Furuknap, USPJA CEO. “We’ve always been extremely confident in the depth and quality of our SharePoint learning solutions, but this partnership with InnerWorkings brings tremendous scale and reach to our efforts. Coupling the technical strength of our training with the online learning expertise and global audience of InnerWorkings is a winning combination. We are delighted to partner with InnerWorkings to offer our combined SharePoint learning services to a huge audience of SharePoint developers and teams hungry to succeed in their chosen area of domain expertise.”

About InnerWorkings
At InnerWorkings, our mission is to help our customers build great software organizations. We believe that it is possible to create a successful, efficient, and cost-effective software organization and sustain it over multiple projects. How do we do this? By providing software executives with an integrated platform to improve learning, collaboration, and software processes across your development teams. The company’s R&D facility is based in Dublin, Ireland and InnerWorkings maintains its corporate headquarters in San Francisco, California. For more information about InnerWorkings and its services, visit www.innerworkings.com.

One year ago, on May 17, 2010, USPJ Academy opened its doors for the very first time. SharePoint Magazine is now part of the USPJA family, so we want to celebrate too!

Of course, we don’t expect you to send us gifts for the birthday party, we celebrate by giving gifts to you instead.

In fact, we’re giving away more than 100 subscriptions to SharePoint Magazine in our 7-Day Egg Hunt! For those of you with a calculator, you’ll quickly figure out that we’re giving away more than $8,500.00 worth of gifts. How’s that for a birthday party?

Yeah, we know it isn’t Easter, but we think an egg hunt will be fun anyway.

Here’s how the egg hunt will happen.

Every day for the next 7 days, somewhere in the SharePoint Magazine network, we will post one coupon code that can be used 15 times by different users to get a 100% discount on a SharePoint Magazine PDF subscription. The first 15 people every day to use this code for that day thus get a free electronic subscription to SharePoint Magazine.

That’s the first part.

The second part is for those who find all the coupon codes we post. If you gather all the codes, you can enter those on the Egg Hunt 2011 competition page, and you’ll be entered into a drawing for three print subscriptions of SharePoint Magazine, to be drawn randomly after the event. If your name comes up in the drawing, you get a print subscription of SharePoint Magazine, or a one year extension of your current subscription if you are a subscriber already.

For those three winners, we will even throw in a copy of the very exclusive limited edition and now out-of-print Phoenix Edition of SharePoint Magazine, the first ever issue to come out in print!

Please note that we can only ship to international destinations already listed on the print subscription signup page.

Every day, we will also post a hint about where the next day’s coupon code will appear so that you don’t need to search our entire network to find the code. However, we won’t reveal when we post the code, so you’ll need to be alert if you want to get on board and get your hands on one of the 15 free subscriptions each day.

If the code expires before you are able to use it, don’t worry. Follow the leads and hints we give every day, and you’ll have a new chance the next day!

The first code of the egg hunt is right here. If you are among the first 15 people to use it, you can get a free PDF subscription to SharePoint Magazine right now:

Today’s code is: 480A062B70

Oh, and I almost forgot, the hint. Did you know we have a mailing list? You can subscribe to the list to get updates for SharePoint Magazine, including announcements about upcoming issues, cut-off dates, some absolutely great offers, and who knows, perhaps something you’d like to pick up tomorrow?

Let the hunt begin!

Small print: No purchase required. No cash option. Daily code usable on day of publication only. Grand prize is only available for some international destinations. Random drawing happens using random.org from a list of all entries with the correct codes. Names of grand prize winners and resident country will be published after the event. For questions and support, please email publishingstaff@uspja.com.

Now it is time for the community, meaning you, to decide which of these entries and authors deserves the grand prize.

The Entries

We have now posted each of the finalist entries as featured articles on SharePoint Magazine. The finalists are, in no particular order:

Mikael Svenson’s “Three Main Reasons Why You Should Upgrade to FAST for SharePoint”

Josh McCarty’s “Best Practices for SharePoint Groups”

Andrew Vevers’ “A Guide to Leaving Lotus Notes and Moving to Microsoft SharePoint”

Please read each of these entries and decide which author you think deserves to win.

How to Vote

The SharePoint community has always been great at utilizing social features. As such, we’ve decided to utilize a social feature, namely Facebook, to run the vote. It’s as simple as this:

At the top and bottom of each finalist article is a ‘Like this’ button. For the article, or articles, you think deserves to win, click that button to cast your vote. You can vote for either a single or for multiple articles, but we only count one vote per person per article.

At the end of June 3, 2011, Central European time zone, we count the number of Likes for each article, and the article that has most often been liked will be the winner.

Sounds like a plan? Good, then get to it and help decide which author most deserves the grand prize!

USPJ Academy, the world’s first SharePoint college (http://uspja.com/), announced today that it is making its self-paced SharePoint training courses available for single purchase.

The need for skilled SharePoint professionals is growing at a rapid rate. Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer predicted a need for one million SharePoint professionals by 2013, and the training industry faces serious challenges in providing enough quality training capacity.

USPJ Academy takes this challenge on and has already launched its college level SharePoint education through its online academy, and more than a hundred students from all over the world have attended over the past 12 months.

Now USPJA is also making parts of that training available to students who are not paying full Academy tuition through a new self-paced training offering. The self-paced training options that USPJA has now made available is based on the same high-value content that regular students at the school have used for a year.

Authored by industry leaders and adhering to the rigorous accreditation standards required by the Distance Education Training Council, the courses allow students to learn SharePoint at their own pace and at a rate that is unparalleled in the industry.

“The majority of current market offerings cost hundreds of dollars for a few days of training and force employees to take valuable time off work” says USPJA acting Dean Bjørn Furuknap. “This is unacceptable for many employees and organizations and we provide a better alternative”.

With the new USPJA offering, users can get access to full course content for $97 per course and can decide themselves at what pace they want to go through that training.

Matt Bramer, one of the USPJA students who got a new SharePoint job after just a few months at the academy, says this about the self-paced training he has taken: “Being able to learn when I want, how I want, and at a comfortable pace, is a win-win all around. The USPJA crew has never ceased to amaze me with the curriculum, talent, and exceptional service”

The self-paced training also includes access to USPJA’s virtual lab environment, where users can perform assignments, do exercises, and otherwise experiment with SharePoint without having to install local software. “The USPJA Labs save our users hours every week by allowing them to quickly test and explore features that would require a complete lab rebuild if done locally” says Furuknap.

USPJA self-paced training options are available from this page:
http://www.uspja.com/studying-at-uspja/self-paced-sharepoint-training/

Many authors, however, never have the chance to be noticed by a large audience. Their blogs, containing valuable knowledge for both seasoned professionals and beginning SharePointers never make it into the spotlight.

We want to inspire those authors to contribute great new content to the community and help them get the attention they deserve for their great work.

We’re proud to announce our first Aspiring Authors competition. In this competition, we ask you, as an existing or aspiring author, to submit your article to us for competition entry. Then, our expert jury will pick the best three articles as finalists in the competition.

The articles from these three finalists will go through the normal editing and quality control we have at SharePoint Magazine and will then be published in the magazine, both online and in print.

Finally, after all three finalist articles are published, we ask the community to vote for their favorite article. The winner, by popular vote, will win the grand prize, while the other two finalists will receive runner-up prizes.

The prizes are career boosters, including full tuition scholarships at USPJ Academy, publishing contracts for further articles in SharePoint Magazine, and, for the grand prize winner, inclusion in our upcoming Author Mentoring program, a program designed to hone your authoring skills and give you a great start to a professional authoring career.

What do you have to do to win these great prizes? The first step is to head over to the competition page to read all the rules. Then, check out the article content guidelines, and finally submit your article for consideration.

Jump-start your path to fame. Your big chance is just an article away!

Prizes sponsored by USPJ Academy.

We’re going to change that. We’re proud to announce to the community that we’re finally going to make SharePoint Magazine available in print as well. If this goes as planned, you will shortly be able to pick up a SharePoint Magazine from your local newsstand, just like many of the other IT professions have done for many years.

You may be surprised in this day and age that people still request, as frequently as they do, a paper edition of the magazine. However, we are in the business of providing knowledge to you in whatever way you want to consume that knowledge. If you want to read our articles on paper, then we’ll give you our articles on paper. In fact, the content of the paper magazine will be more or less then same as the web articles.

The first step of this project is subscriptions to SharePoint Magazine print edition. Those subscriptions are available now with some special offers available up until we release the first issue.

We will release the first issue of SharePoint Magazine in print on April 01. At that time, or just before, you will be able to hold in your hands the limited first edition of SharePoint Magazine, also known as the Phoenix Edition. We’re only printing this first issue in a few hundred copies, and with tens of thousands of readers each month, you know they’ll be gone quick.

The first issue will only be available with a subscription!

You can secure your copy of the limited first issue right now by signing up for a 12-month subscription to SharePoint Magazine for just $147 for a full year. Included in that subscription, you will get:

• 12 issues each year (10 regular issues plus two special issues), delivered to your door
• 64 pages of SharePoint goodness in each issue
• 28% discount compared to retail price (retail $204.00)
• Exclusive content available only in the print version and not available online
• Full access to PDF versions of all the issues, including any back issues
• US shipping included
• Special prices on back issues
• For a limited time: 1 extra month, pay for 12 months but get issues for 13 months!
• For a limited time: Use discount code 560CCB1F0F to get an additional 10% off the subscription price!

Print edition subscriptions will initially be available in the US only, but we’re working actively to reach out to our international audience as well.

SharePoint Magazine print edition is possible thanks to these generous sponsors:

If you are already a member of SharePoint Magazine, you can add or renew your subscription on the Membership Page.

The grand prize is an SPTechCon experience, including a full conference pass, hotel stay, and a one-on-one session with one of the attending USPJ Academy faculty members. In addition, there are a few other surprises that we’ll mention in a post-event interview with the winner.

So, who won? The grand prize winner is Stuart Blank!

Congratulations from the staff, and we look forward to meeting you in San Francisco.

In addition to the grand prize winner, five other winners receive a 13-issue USP Journal bundle, valued at $149.50. These winners are

• Raul
• Brian
• Michelle
• Andres
• Sudhir

All the runner-up winners have received their prizes already.

Congratulations to all winners! Watch the magazine for new competitions in the near future.

The prizes are donated by USPJ Academy

A new training provider promises to change the way online training works for SharePoint professionals. Using state-of-the-art technology and best-of-breed platforms to teach their students, USPJ Academy (http://uspja.com/) has already attracted students from all over the world and received rave reviews.

USPJ Academy today opened up public enrollment for college level SharePoint training through its website. Serious SharePoint professionals can now take their knowledge and training to a new level and learn from world-renowned industry experts.

“We want to change the way online SharePoint training works” says acting dean of USPJA Bjørn Furuknap. “Our platform, content, and learning model adapts to the individual student’s needs and allows students to learn on their own terms”

To accomplish this goal, USPJA allows students to train and learn in a variety of ways. Whether students want collaborative training in classes, self-paced courses, lectures from SharePoint superstars, or just want to hang out in the virtual library, everyone can study the way that makes sense to them.

Early access students agree with Furuknap. “The quality of the content and the caliber and experience of the faculty is top-notch” says David Ruyle who began his studies at the academy in June of 2010. “It is great to be collaborating online with a diverse set of individuals from around the world”

USPJA offers a single all-inclusive tuition model with one monthly price (US$497) rather than charging per course or exam. This allows students to pick training based on their needs rather than financial situation. Students may also study full time without paying more, or, as most current students do, study while working in SharePoint organizations around the globe.

USPJA is working on getting accreditation with the US Department of Education through the Distance Education and Training Council, but the process takes at least two years.

For more information, visit http://uspja.com/.

Get a Better SharePoint Magazine…and Thousands of Dollars in Prizes!

The grand prize of this competition is an SP TechCon San Francisco experience. You’ll get a full conference pass; a hotel stay at the conference hotel; a hour-long, personal one-on-one training session with a USPJ Academy faculty member; and a 13-issue USP Journal bundle.

The total value of this prize is minimum $2,540.

What do you have to do? Easy! We want your help to build the best SharePoint community we can, so tell us what you would most like to see from SharePoint Magazine. Post a suggestion for a feature, an article, a series, an author, or anything you can think of, in our suggestions forum.

On January 10, 2011, we draw one entry from the suggestions forum at random, and the winner will get the full prize as described below.

In addition, we will draw five runner-up winners who will each get a 13-issue bundle of USP Journal issues.

Here’s a breakdown of what you can win, simply by helping us and the community get a better SharePoint Magazine:

• Full conference SPTechCon pass: $1,595
• Four-night stay at Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport: $596
• One-on-one training session: $200
• 13-issue USP Journal bundle: $149,50

Total Value: US$2,540

Oh, but we’re not done yet. We want you to help us promote this competition, so the more entries we get, the higher the prize value will be.

If we receive more than 200 suggestions, we add a second one-on-one training session, valued at $200.

If we reach 500 suggestions, we add an XBox Kinect 250GB bundle, valued at approximately $500.

Finally, if we reach 1,000 entries…and you’re not going to believe this…we are going to include a full six-month scholarship at USPJ Academy. That’s an amazing $2,982 value and a sure way to boost your SharePoint knowledge beyond anything you’ve imagined.

If we reach 1,000 entries, the grand prize has a total value of $6,122!

All you have to do is log in to the forums (or sign up if you haven’t already) and give us your best suggestion for what you would like to see.

What if you can’t come up with an original suggestion? Don’t worry, just find the entry you like the most and post a comment to that thread in support of that entry. This doesn’t affect the suggestion you support, but it does enter you in the sweepstakes.

So, what are you waiting for? Head over to the forums, and give us your best ideas right now. You could be in for the grand prize valued at a minimum of $2,540 and up to more than $6,000!

Use the Share buttons below to help share the competition, and the prize will increase!

Default disclaimer and legal stuff

Competition is open to all who are 18 years or older as of January 1, 2011 and who is not affiliated with USPJA Publishing LLC or Understanding SharePoint LLC. To enter, go to forums and add a suggestion or comment in the Suggestions forum of SharePoint Magazine (http://sharepointmagazine.net/forum/threads/185-Suggestions). Users must be registered with a valid email address. All entries must be submitted by January 10, 2011, 11:00 PM EST. One entry per person. Duplicate entries will be discarded before drawing. Winners will be notified by email within five days after drawing. Entries are subject to the default terms of forum usage. Ineligible entries will be discarded from drawing.

Grand prize is (1) a full conference ticket to SPTechCon, (2) a four-night hotel stay at Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel in a default conference room, single occupancy, (3) a one-hour personal training session with one of the attending USPJ Academy faculty members, and (4) a 13-issue USP Journal bundle. Additional prizes for the grand prize as described on the competition page. Five runner-up prizes are 13-issue USP Journal bundles. SharePoint Magazine is not responsible for the delivery of these prizes.

Winners will be drawn at random from all eligible entries on or about January 10, 2011. Winners agree that (except where prohibited) SharePoint Magazine will announce the name and city and country of residence of the winner on the SharePoint Magazine pages and in any publication without further compensation. Any disputes will be settled individually. SharePoint Magazine will not be liable for any damages beyond the cost of entry or $1, whichever is smaller. Grand Prize winner will be responsible for transportation to and from the event.

We’ve been quiet for a long time, but now we’re back, stronger than ever. As you may have heard, SharePoint Magazine has joined forces with USPJ Academy and is now part of USPJA Publishing.

That means we’ll have a dedicated and highly motivated team to bring SharePoint Magazine to new heights in the future. In addition, we’ll have access to a world-class faculty to help us create the most compelling, interesting, and instructive articles on SharePoint.

What does this mean for you as a reader? Well, here is a list of some of the great new features you may come to love.

New Authors and Content

First of all, and immediately apparent, we’re reviving the magazine so you’ll get fresh articles on a regular basis, covering all aspects of SharePoint for all skill levels. We’ll be bringing in new authors as well, which means you’ll find an even broader scope of topics but also deeper articles within those topics.

If you are an aspiring author and want to give back to this great community, you should read up on our author information. We are always looking for good writers and well-founded opinions, so lend us your voice, and we will bring it to our audience.

Columns

We’re also introducing columns, a feature in which a small number of authors (or even one) write regular articles in a given field. These columns aren’t necessarily technical or even strictly SharePoint specific. For example, the first column, Dean’s Corner, is a column focused on learning and training benefits, authored initially by the Dean of USPJ Academy (which is me, apparent from the obvious disclaimer on these articles).

Conversations

Conversations is a think-tank for SharePoint, where a panel of hand-picked industry experts voice their opinion on matters of great importance to the SharePoint community. Each of these members will be invited to respond to topics within their chosen fields of expertise, and you can join the discussion in the forums afterward.

Forums

Speaking of forums, you’ll notice that we’ve put all commenting functionality for articles into a new forum. This forum is yours, as part of the community, and you’ll be able to comment and discuss articles, comment on the conversations, and learn from your fellow community members. Your host in the forums is our community manager, Arno Nel.

Reorganization

We have reorganized all the content to make it easier for you to find what you want. Better categorization and taxonomy will make it easier to find content. All articles are now in a single category tree, divided into our main focus areas: Developers, Administrators, and Business Users.

Further, you’ll find series that organize multiple articles in a given theme or topic. You’ll find these series in the top navigation as well, and they will be clearly marked as such inside the articles.

Articles will also follow stricter guidelines so that you’ll get exactly the right amount of content in each article without leaving things out or including too much.

Editorial Team and Author Training

To help our authors, we have a new team of editors who will work on the articles to ensure the quality of the content. There are three editors working on each and every article to ensure top quality. This editorial team comprises some incredibly skilled people who combined have more than 25 years of writing and editing experience.

All authors also go through a training program to help them better understand the editorial workflow at SPM and to offer tips and guidance to improve their writing. Even better, we will be working with selected authors to help them increase their skills even further through a new author mentoring program. Authors selected for this program will receive training and guidance from experienced authors and editors to help them increase the quality of their content.

Does that mean we’ll take content only from established writers? No! In fact, we’re already planning competitions and opportunities for aspiring authors looking to share their knowledge. If you want to get involved with writing for us, check out our author request form.

Competitions

We’ll be running regular competitions that allow you to win some absolutely great prizes. The first competition, to be launched in a couple of days, features an SPTechCon San Francisco experience with a grand prize valued at more than $2,500, including an SPTechCon ticket, a hotel stay at the conference hotel, a one-on-one training session with one of the USPJ Academy faculty, and a 13-issue bundle of USP Journal issues!

More of these competitions have already been planned, and you can look forward to some magnificent prizes and opportunities.

But Wait, There’s More…

These are just some of the changes coming to SharePoint Magazine now. However, we have already planned several new features and are working to implement them as soon as possible. It is important to us, though, that you let us know what you think, and a great place to do so is in the forums.

Also, keep in mind that because we are just reviving the magazine, we’re not going to start a race to get as much content as possible as soon as possible. We’re working diligently to update old content and to publish new content, but we do so at a pace that allows us to maintain our quality focus.

Oh, and if you would like to be kept up-to-date on when we’re launching these new features, make sure you sign up for the mailing list; follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; and of course, watch the web page.

Hang On, There’s Something Wrong With…

Found an error you say? You dare insinuate that we aren’t perfect?

Well, I’ve been in IT long enough to realize that there’s no perfect launch and that there are always going to be issues. This is an ongoing process, and we appreciate your feedback if you have any troubles. If you find issues, feel free to let us know, either in the forum or by email to pubeditor@uspja.com.

Also, if you have suggestions for new features or topic ideas, let us know.

Again, I’d like to welcome you all back and look forward to providing you some great content.

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