About

So who am I?  Some days I wonder…

I’m Thomas Duff, also known as Duffbert.  I’ve been working in IT since a long time ago, and I’ve been focusing on collaborative software since 1996 when I decided I didn’t really want to go into management.  I got started working with an interesting software package known as Lotus Notes, attended my first Lotusphere in 1997, and my life changed forever.  Fast forward a few years, and I’ve spoken at conferences, written quite a bit of material on my main blog (Duffbert’s Random Musings), and even co-authored a couple of books along the way (IBM Lotus Sametime 8 Essentials: A User’s Guide and IBM Sametime 8.5.2 Administration Guide) .

But this blog isn’t about Notes… it’s about SharePoint, right?  Yup…

A few years back, the company I work for decided to move away from Notes and  onto Exchange and SharePoint.  Fortunately, my background in collaborative software works well in both areas, and now it’s a matter of learning how to make the Microsoft stack of software deliver useful applications to my customers.  Same concepts, different technology…  Since I tend to write to remember and share information, I decided it was about time to fire up a SharePoint-focused blog and start typing.

I’m not an expert, nor a consultant, nor someone who has all the answers.  In fact, it seems like I spend a lot of time saying “I don’t know.”  But I try to make sure it’s followed by “Let me find out.”  The information you find here is just me sharing what I saw, found out, or stumbled across.  I’ll try to answer questions if I can and/or have time, but just keep in mind this blog is *not* my day job.

One other side note… I spent many years doing the “<mySoftware> is great, <theOtherSoftware> is evil” routine.  I’m past than now.   Whether it’s a case of getting older or wiser, I don’t know.  Actually, the “older” part is true.  “Wiser” is up for grabs.  Regardless, I’ve moved to a “software is software” position.  Both Notes and SharePoint (as that’s where the battle usually was) have great points and ugly warts.  Some things are better (and easier) done in one than the other, and some things are better done in neither.   But at the end of the day, it’s still about taking whatever tools are at hand and building solutions for customers.

Because of where I want to go on this blog, I will use a very short leash if a topic or thread starts to turn into a “x sucks, y rocks” argument.  You may be right, and I may well agree with you.  But this won’t be the place for it to play out.

If you have any questions or comments about this blog or the content, feel free to contact me via email using my duffbert gmail account (I think you should be able to figure out the format from that).  I’m also @duffbert on Twitter, so feel free to follow me there also.  Just be aware that I use Twitter for many things, and not all of them (some might say *any* of them) are technical.