SharePoint – helping me become a ‘kept man’

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a running joke with my darling wife that one day she will be so successful that she will be able to ‘keep’ me. I’d not have to work and instead, spend my days doing whatever kept men do to stay kept. I’m not actually sure what they do, but I’m sure it involves a jet ski! At the very least, being a kept man *surely* means you get to have breakfast in bed every morning and a foot rub? I could get used to that!

*ducks for cover*

Anyway, my darling wife said to me one day “So what is this SharePoint thing you have been going on about lately?”. She’s been in her chosen profession (light years away from IT) for all of her working life and looking for a change of scene. Although computer literate, the closest thing we have ever come to ‘talking shop’, is when she used to test me when I was studying for a certification by reading sample exam questions.

So I showed her the collaborative side of SharePoint. We created a few lists with custom columns, version control, infopath and SPD workflows. She liked what she saw and said something along the lines of “oh we could sure use this at work”.

I’d just upgraded my notebook to a new model, but somehow she got the upgraded one and I was stuck with the old crappy one. Not quite sure how that happened, but hey, I’m on a quest to become kept here, if it costs me the fancier notebook, then so be it!

So I put a SharePoint VM on her notebook, and we played out some scenarios.

Fast forward a few days. She has:

• created a variety of related lists to hold various nuggets of information
• created document libraries, that looks up the aforementioned lists
• created and published various forms via infopath with lookups to the above lists 
• created all of the views required for the above
• created web part pages containing dashboards of connected lists/libraries
• coded several SPD workflows to reduce the amount of data entry required and automatically fill information to lists

and as an added bonus:

• Demonstrated her work to all her colleagues and friends (and her way of explaining the product is much better than mine)
• Doesn’t mind me “talking shop” once in a while and participates in people/process conversations
• I take her notebook to demonstrations and use her work for the demo as it is better than mine! (particularly her infopath skills)

Sensing the opportunity for moving a step forward in my quest to become kept, I said to her, “you know, you are now very, very employable”, but alas, she dismissed the suggestion, believing that everyone out there in corporate land knows this stuff. Therefore (for now), she is still in her part-time job.

Damn!  Round 1 lost, but I’m not done yet! The quest to become kept will go on!

At least there is one consolation to this little story. When I am doing pre-sales work I can say “it’s so easy my wife does it, and she’s not in IT at all”, and I’m telling the god honest truth! I’ve had a couple of clients say to me, “does she want a job”?, but she doesn’t believe it! 🙂

So If you, like me, share the dream to become a kept man, go and show your wife SharePoint! You never know your luck…