SharePoint Magazine chats with Paul Culmsee

Tell us about your career history.

My first IT job was part-time in 1989 assembling IBM XT PC’s so I am officially old. I remember seeing a 30MB hard disk (about the size of a brick) and thinking, wow how will you fill that’!  I also knew life before this world of Windows that we now live in.

After graduating university, I left home to work for a mining company in tech support in 1991, before returning to Perth working in various roles moving from support to sysadmin to infrastructure manager. Got my MCSE in NT4 in 1998 and subsequently Win2k. Also in 1998 put in the PCDOCS document management system for a mid-sized company of 600 staff. In 2000 I working for an ISP so was heavily into Cisco (CCNP) and discovered the joys of the Debian linux distro. Also during this time I decided it was time I learned to code so I wrote a freeware program called EZ-Rent for Australian property investors. Later I worked for a company that owned a security and web hosting business so I certified CISSP and got to perform fun things like pen-testing network and systems.

That’s a pretty wide ranging background – how did it lead you to SharePoint?

The first version of SharePoint 2001 I skipped because I thought it was laughable, but you have to remember I put in PCDOCS (now Hummingbird) a couple of years prior. SharePoint 2003 I did work on extensively for an organisation that managed to throw away the file server. Additionally I had to manage SharePoint for the hosting organisation who I mentioned before.

When I first saw the 2007 version, I instantly know it was going to be mega-huge, and I instantly knew that it was going to monumentally screwed up for many implementations. So being opportunistic, greedy and somewhat ahead of the curve, I decided to specialise in it.

So you admit it was opportunistic – would you call yourself a SharePoint fan?

I felt that my skills and background combined nicely for such a product. I can code, I have 19 years of infrastructure across various disciplines and in being a SharePoint “specialist”, I have had to call on pretty much everything I learned across my career. I would not call myself a fan though, because after this long in IT, you either end up very bitter and twisted or really pragmatic. I like to think I am not completely bitter and twisted just yet.

Besides, my blog (cleverworkarounds.com) is powered by wordpress and my web site is joomla. My attitude to technology Arno is very much like yours in this regard.

Have you had to learn any new skills to produce good SharePoint outcomes?

God yes! I originally thought that I had the right sort of skills base to be a SharePoint specialist. But over and above being an IT generalist I have had to read all sorts of obscure crap to learn all sorts of ’soft’ skills. In fact its those soft skills, like training and facilitation that has been more valuable than my old tech/dev stomping ground. So you could argue that now by focussing on SharePoint, I’m even more of a generalist than before!

You’ll be speaking at the SharePoint Best Practices conference San Diego in Feb 09. What sort of topic areas will you be covering?

Well my interest area these days is in SharePoint head-space – tech stuff has been my bread and butter for so long but it just doesn’t push my buttons the way it used to. So I am deliberately not speaking on technical matters. I have two presentations that I think are quite timely. One delving into SharePoint return on investment and the other I am going to be talking about my secret sauce – the one single skill that I spent a lot of effort this year learning that has made the difference in all my SharePoint gigs around the place.

I’ll also be on an expert panel with some people I have huge respect for so looking forward to that.

Secret sauce – care to give us a hint?

Ah – that would be telling! Best to go to the conference to find out!

Fair enough – who are you currently employed by?

I’m self employed. In fact 5 colleagues and I formed an advisory/implementation consultancy called Seven Sigma Business Solutions. www.sevensigma.com.au. SharePoint features heavily of course, but we also have skills in other areas that we consult on as well like enterprise network monitoring, security, training and facilitation..

“Seven Sigma” – is that some sort of reference to Six Sigma process improvement?

Pretty much. Six Sigma for those that don’t know is a statistical term that represents 3.5 defects per million repetitions of a process. It’s basically a goal to strive to in relation to improving performance and reducing wastage.

The name “seven sigma” is really a reflection of my warped sense of humour. It is bit of a joke on the whole methodology fanboy thing and appealed to me for 2 main reasons.

1. If 6 sigma is 3.5 defects per million then 7 sigma will be something like 1 defect per ten billion, so I figured, why stop at 6?
2. Tech geeks do not get the joke and they normally delight on in-jokes.

What do you think is the best thing about SharePoint?

The fact that it is a flexible platform that allows you to use it for various different solutions

And the worst thing?

The fact that it is a flexible platform that allows you to use it for various different solutions

Seriously though, I think it is the fact that it is simply too easy to do the “wrong” thing with SharePoint. Most new products have this sort of phase in their life cycle as people come to grips with them and the early adopters crash and burn while the smart hang back and learn from those experiences. SharePoint’s has been in a particularly long phase like this and I think will continue for some time yet.

People comment that you have an interesting writing style – you use a lot of humour and some interesting pop-culture references

Yeah – Brittany Spears cops it a bit, and I like using the metal band Opeth too. Most of all though, I like to use IT stereotypes which is always fun. I mean come on – we all know that web developers are rampantly metrosexual and hard core systems engineers have that certain “tech guy” body odour

Let’s face it, a lot of the SharePoint topics are actually pretty boring. The same goes with a lot of academic stuff that I read. I just try and keep it interesting for the reader so it’s not too monotonous. Plus since I tend to write waffly and wordy posts, I need something to keep people from falling asleep! For what its worth I still haven’t yet had a cease and desist from Matt Groening’s legal team

Speaking of the Simpsons, when will the “Tribute to the leave form” series of articles be finished?

Probably never! I think by the time I am done there will be 12+ articles for that one! What was I thinking!!