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I’m thrilled and humbled to have had the opportunity to be a guest blogger over on Microsoft’s Humans of IT (HoIT) blog. My post is about balancing all our obligations, embracing imperfection, and leaving room for joy in our endeavors.
You can read the post here.
Shoutout to Shona, Ally, Oniel, and William for the opportunity and helping to make the post the best it can be.
If you’d like to apply to be the next HoIT guest blogger, you can do so at aka.ms/guestbloggers.
In keeping with a tradition I started last year, I’m sharing the top 10 posts of 2019. Blogging is one of my favorite ways to share with the community (and, admittedly, document things I might forget otherwise). It’s been a pleasure and privilege to have this platform – thank you for reading.
The following includes the ‘Top 10’ most popular posts by views published in 2019:
Interested in more? Check out the archives for all previous posts:
And if my blog has been useful to you this past year, join the mailing list for weekly updates when there’s new content and consider donating to help defray the cost of keeping the site up.
Thanks to a tweet by Tim Milan of Omaha, I heard today that Microsoft Delve blogs are to be deleted in a few months.
Ding Dong #Microsoft Delve is Dead!
— Tim Milan🏳️🌈 (@tmilan) November 22, 2019
•December 18th, 2019, tenants will not have the ability to create new Delve blogs.
•January 18th, 2020 the ability to create new posts will be disabled.
•Beginning April 17th, 2020, existing Delve blogs will be deleted#Microsoft
Milan’s news came from Office 365 Premier Support in response to a ticket he’d submitted. The email is as follows:
Delve was first announced alongside the Office Graph in 2014 at SharePoint Conference. Even though it’s only been out for a little over five years, the retirement of Delve in general has been a topic of speculation for nearly two years now (and perhaps longer for others). Some have wondered whether to invest time learning and promoting the app anymore, and perhaps this news will help guide those decisions.
The following points are taken from the email body seen above.
If you read this post and asked yourself, “What’s a Delve blog?” don’t worry about it. It was a convenient feature that allowed your average user to create and maintain a blog they could share in the organization.
If you read this post and realized you have hundreds of user and group blogs out there to manage and just a few months to figure it out, you have some choices to consider.
The email shown earlier in this post suggests creating communication sites and adding News, Yammer, and Stream web parts for engagement but this isn’t a good plan for all blogs as not all users can create sites for themselves. Even those that can create sites may find site creation and management a bit too complex or too large of a scope compared to running a simple blog.
You could consider creating WordPress or Blogger sites and migrating your posts there. Unfortunately, there is no RSS feed for Delve blogs to export. You’d be manually copying and pasting (or recreating) posts.
You might consider disabling Delve if you’d like to prevent users from beginning something that’ll be removed soon. You can do this through the SharePoint admin center for all users (see directions here). Keep in mind this disables more than just blog creation – read the description before proceeding.
No matter what you choose, there’s no easy way forward. I would suggest getting your users involved in saving (print to PDF or copy/paste) posts of importance so that they can be posted as documents elsewhere, or recreated at a later time in another space.
Ready, set, change management!
I recently started exploring using green screen for videos. I’m not the greatest by any means and I still have a lot to learn, but I love how it transforms the quality of my videos and makes them more personal. Here’s an example of a recent attempt:
If you’re interested in giving it a go, here’s how you can set up your own green screen “studio” and what I used for mine:
Then for software I use XSplit Broadcaster (I bought the lifetime license, because I’m all about those one-time expenses as opposed to subscription/variable models). Currently, they’re offering 55% off the lifetime license. I use it for more than green screens, as it allows for live YouTube broadcasting and scene switching as well.
XSplit has two chroma key options. Regular and legacy:
XSplit allows you to record locally, so I set up a scene with my “green screen” camera layer on top of the background (PowerPoint monitor screen capture) and add any other layers and begin recording. I could also live-stream like this if I wished.
Next I’ll be working on finding the right balance of chroma key settings and lighting to make my green screen recordings as clear and fluid as possible. I might also look into getting more lights, but your own needs will depend on your room and available natural lighting.
Good luck in your own adventures!
Thank you to LMH Health, my colleagues and community change-makers, for welcoming me to your organization and believing in what we can achieve collectively. I’m fueled by your energy.
Thank you to the six SharePoint Saturday organizing committees who provided me with the opportunity this past year to share my passion with your communities.
Thank you to Brenda Hough at Emporia State University for inviting me to speak at my alma mater about my journey.
Thank you to Max Fritz, Mack Sigman, Melissa Hubbard, April Dunnam, Tara Saylor, Starla Jones, Mike Broadwell, Jason Dozier, Yang Yang, Sharon Weaver, Rebekah Ellingson, Chris Heeter and Alicia Backlund for sharing your time with the Lawrence SharePoint User Group and providing premium content for our attendees and viewers. And thank you to the attendees – we do it for you, and are inspired by your desire to continue learning, sharing, and growing.
Finally, thank you to all of my readers, viewers, friends, and advocates. May this new year provide you with rich opportunities, hope, healing, and love.
Thank you, friends, for making 2018 my best blogging year yet. I enjoy sharing what I learn along the way, and am glad to know it’s being found useful.
The following includes the ‘Top 10’ most popular posts by views published in 2018:
Want more? Check out the archives for all previous posts:
