Chris Conte Deploys Sharepoint in the Military

About Show #303

Richard talks to Chris Conte about his experiences deploying SharePoint into the military. Chris talks about his early days in the Navy as a yeoman, first learning the potential of personal computers to make the work of handling the huge amount of data the military produces easier. The conversation digs into how SharePoint governance is as much a challenge for the military as industry, and how strong metadata infrastructure has made data more findable, understandable and useable. Chris also talks about the concept of 'Responsibility to Share' as opposed to 'Need to Know' - a deep change for the military, but also a huge one to apply to the enterprise. Are you sharing the data you need to share with the people who need to know it? Can SharePoint help?

Mr. Conte is a native of Tampa, Florida who grew up with a passion for computers and the creative arts. Chris ‘wrote’ his first program by copying code from magazines in the 80’s to create fun games stored on cassette tape drives. He eventually parlayed that experience into learning about Basic, Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), VB.NET, C# and a variety of client scripting languages and frameworks.

Mr. Conte is a highly decorated sailor who served in the United States Navy. His military career highlight is being named U.S. Central Command’s Service Member of the Year (1997). Chris continued the fight against our nation’s enemies by re-emerging as Defense Contractor, specializing in mission-critical web application development to support our nation’s Combatant Commands and Military Intelligence Communities.

Chris is extremely proud to have been recently selected to work as a Premier Field Engineer (PFE) for Microsoft, specializing in SharePoint. He is passionate about helping people learn how to collaborate and manage knowledge in the enterprise. Chris is a certified Professional SharePoint Developer and holds a Master of Information Systems Management (MISM) from Keller Graduate School with distinction. He married way above his pay grade to the lovely and intelligent Rose Conte. They have been blessed by God with two wonderful children, Christian and Victoria Rose. When not geeking out Chris enjoys watching fantasy movies like the Lord of the Rings and playing the acoustic guitar.