SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Implementers Course

Microsoft has posted the SharePoint Enterprise Content Management Implementers Course on TechNet. The course consists of a set of self-paced videos, student guides and hands-on labs to help you understand, implement and optimize ECM solutions with SharePoint 2010. If you are new to ECM, are considering SharePoint as an ECM solution for your organization, or just need to familiarize yourself with the ECM features in 2010, I highly recommend this as a good starting point.

The course was put together by Rob Bogue and the content authored by folks in the community – Ben Robb, Darrin Bishop, Steve Curran, Rob and, of course, your favorite Cowboy. We put a lot of work into making this a resource that not only gives beginners the knowledge they need to get started but also provides some depth for people already familiar with the topic. For those that have never done this kind of thing before, it’s no simple task – authoring training content is much harder than it looks. Unlike presentations created for and delivered by yourself, this type of content is usually delivered by someone else, often as a video. In addition to creating the slide deck, you have to provide engaging visuals, speaker notes, a full-on student manual, step-by-step demos and structured labs. Humor has to be excluded as you never know who might be delivering or viewing the material. And everything you write goes through umpteen stages of review and revisions. It’s exhausting.

Tip o’ the hat to Rob Bogue for pulling this all together and making it happen. He spent countless hours managing the deliverables, coordinating with Microsoft, wrangling authors to get their stuff done (and redone, and redone again) and still found time to record all the videos himself. And kudos to my fellow authors for burning the late night oil and cranking out the content (and believe me, the vast majority of the content was written well past midnight and into the wee hours).

I hope you enjoy the final product – if you do, please tell Microsoft. Heck, tell ’em even if you don’t like it – just download the darn thing so it at least looks like you care, m’kay?