There are all kinds of “communities” we can opt to be a part of – social, professional, athletic, etc. - and it is always fun for me to find people who are active in multiple communities and share similar interests. Andrew Connell, this month’s Connections interviewee, is one of those people.
A nine-time recipient of Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award (2005-2013), Andrew’s background in content management solutions and Web development spans back to his time as a student at the University of Florida in the late 1990’s managing class websites.
He is active in the developer community and also an avid runner – two of my own personal passions.
This month, we chatted about ASP.NET and SharePoint, cool past projects, Legos, and what running has to do with any of that. Have I mentioned I love this part of my job?!?
SF: Over the years, Andrew, you have spent a lot of time in the .NET developer and SharePoint developer communities. What differences, if any, do you see between the two?
AC: Both the .NET developer and SharePoint community share a ton of similarities. However one thing I found with SharePoint is there is a much deeper & tighter integration between people who are from different countries & continents. This is true also in the .NET developer community, but I find it much more frequent and deeper with SharePoint. Some of my best work friends are people I only get to see a few times a year.
SF: The time I’ve spent with the SharePoint community I’ve noticed that as well. It’s been a long time since I was an outsider in the .NET space, but I can tell you as a “newbie” to the SharePoint world, everyone was uber friendly and very welcoming. For other newcomers to the SharePoint space, do you have any tips for ASP.NET people getting into SharePoint?
AC: With SharePoint 2013 Microsoft introduced something called the SharePoint App Model. This effectively pushes developers to work either fully client side or server side but off the box. Your apps talk to SharePoint via REST services or a client API (client-side object model, aka: CSOM) and authenticate via OAuth. As such, ASP.NET developers can leverage the formerly taboo MVC sites in SharePoint by hosting them external. Also, developers with strong skills in client side development, including the trending single page apps technique, are well suited.
SF: That’s great advice. Really helpful, for sure. You’re obviously really dialed in to the SharePoint space - what technology trends are you watching most closely?
AC: No surprise here... cloud. Cloud is huge in the SharePoint world. The latest version of Office 365 has a hosted version of SharePoint in the cloud. This could yield a huge new untapped customer base of small and medium sized businesses who didn’t consider SharePoint in the past due to the high entry cost.
SF: Wow. I hadn’t thought of that. That’s very exciting for the space and for
your business. With extensive experience
in both training – online, instructor led, and through conferences - and
consulting, what do you like the most about each?
AC: The best part about training is that once you finish a class, you’ve nothing left to support… people just go forth and apply what they’ve learned. Another thing I like about it is that you get to spend time in just about every area of the product so you get a good all-up overview. As for consulting, I like it for the reasons training gets old as you get to dive deep into a specific subject area and you also get to spend more time on the real world application of a product.
SF: Very cool. Makes a lot of sense. With all of the clients you’ve worked with, you must have a favorite project…
AC: Years ago I used to work for an intelligence agency with the US DoD where I was responsible for consolidating a few different resources to one location. One of the challenges was that one of the targets we were consolidating was located in a datacenter who’s external pipe was fully saturated. The site we were consolidating wasn’t allowed to be down for more than 8 hours at any time. Unfortunately, the time to backup, transfer and restore the site was going to take 30+ hours due to the poor connection. In the end they ended up backing up the site to tapes, gave it to an Air Force pilot who flew it to the base where I was working. I met the pilot on the flight line and was the first person he spoke to upon climbing down from his fighter jet. The site was down for about 6.5 hours and the pilot got a few more training hours in, as well as a nice weekend in northeast Florida on the beach. It was very crazy though meeting an Air Force pilot while his plane was still hot to receive a box of tapes.
SF: That must have been an incredible experience! And to go from a potential of 30 hours down to just 6.5 is amazing!! Wow.
Switching gears just a little, I know you are into Legos. What is the coolest thing you’ve built with Legos?
AC: A few years ago my family got me the Lego Mindstorms set where you can build things and program/control them with your laptop via Bluetooth. I built a shooterbot that could drive around and shoot marbles at people. My wife hated it as my son and I would shoot her ankles when she was making dinner. I think I got grilled cheese that night.
SF: LOL! That’s awesome. How fun!
AC: It really was. But the coolest thing I’ve seen built is a collection of things by this guy on YouTube (his screen name is akiyuky). He’s built sorters, a Rubix cube solver, etc.
SF: I’ll definitely have to check that
out! Tell, me, what is something people
would be surprised to learn about you?
AC: There is a statue of an ancestor of mine, Daniel O’Connell, in Dublin, Ireland as he was known as The Great Liberator.
SF: That’s pretty cool! Not many people can say that!
Now, you and I share a passion for running. Have you learned anything as you’ve trained for races that has helped you in business/software development?
AC: Pacing & practice. While these are things you always hear from people in everything you do, it wasn’t until I started running that the importance and application started to pay off. The thing I like best about running is that I find that for the rest of the day after a morning run, I have laser focus and I’m not easily distracted.
SF: That is definitely true. I know I usually find clarity on a run. It has taken me a while to get the pacing part of my training down, but you are absolutely right – it bleeds into everything you do.
Well, thank you, Andrew. Always a pleasure to chat with you!