It's all in the brand…

Most of the time, I try to keep posts related to either a SharePoint topic or an event or something that I’ve been pondering with regard to architecture, infrastructure or administration. This weekend however was a real treat to have Heather Waterman, one of the SharePoint Branding subject matter experts, pay a visit to the Washington DC metropolitan area.
For those of you that don’t know Heather, she’s been in the SharePoint field for several years and has designed and implemented several complex and alluring site layouts. She’s developed and designed themes and layouts that are sold commercially to give SharePoint that not so SharePoint out of the box look that we all work to keep our implementations not look like. But there’s definitely another side to Heather that we don’t always see.
So during Heather’s visit, I was fortunate enough to get to spend some time and pick her mind about several SharePoint things to include branding, end user interactions, usability, information workers, upcoming conferences, as well as how we can work better to foster the community.
But over a pint of Guinness at the Dubliner in DC I was fortunate to receive some advice and life lessons that I’ll definitely take to heart. Amazing how the community looks after it’s own through trials that we all face.
Heather was hoping to take a tour of the National Capitol while up here, but unfortunately things fell through. So instead, I decided to do the next best thing and introduce her to the President while here in DC. Now granted, it wasn’t the sitting current day president, but hey, meeting President Jefferson, who was very cordial mind you especially on such short notice. After our fine Irish dinner or corned beef and cabbage and Guinness we wandered around to Madame Tussaud’s in DC where TJ lives in a wax representation. It’s quite an interesting museum with several pop stars and American leaders, but I’m not quite certain that it measures up all the way to the wax museum in London.
Overall a fun time in DC, for any of you that make your way to Northern Virginia or DC, pop me a tweet @usher.