Geek and SharePoint MVP, I have been around the globe helping people reach their goals by simplifying SharePoint. As a Certified Trainer for well over 7 years, I have become very comfortable training and sharing my experiences. In 2014, I was ecstatic to have been recognized as one of the Top 25 SharePoint Influencers in North America. Working at Sharegate, a simple Migration and Management Tool for SharePoint, my focus is first in helping making SharePoint accessible to all.

Benjamin Niaulin

In all honesty, I am just a geek who found his passion in SharePoint. The platform is vast and allows me to switch from one thing to another so I can’t get bored with it. I have been learning SharePoint since 2007 was released and still learning today as it shifts into the next generation. Keep in touch on Twitter @bniaulin

Top 5 Twitter

@waldekm: Waldek Mastykarz is in my opinion one of the of the very few that actually consistently write valuable technical content for SharePoint. If you are using SharePoint as an Intranet or plan to use Search to surface content, you’ll be happy you are following him.

@mkashman: Mark Kashman works at Microsoft in the SharePoint Team. I think it’s obvious why I would recommend following him, as it’s important to stay up to date in changes coming to SharePoint. However, I often learn new things because he is constantly sharing us more than he has to.

@nmoneypenny: Naomi Moneypenny is an astrophysicist… and all James Bond jokes aside, she is extremely knowledgeable on everything related to social in the enterprise. But it’s more than that she specializes in machine learning. And this is a concept you will be hearing a lot of in the coming year when Delve gets released. Naomi is definitely someone you want in your network.

@shareptjasper: Jasper Oosterveld is probably the nicest guy in SharePoint and is always ready to help. We often focus on the IT/Dev side of SharePoint, but there is a lot of room for business and end users to learn more and that is exactly what he does.

@ToddKlindt: I’ve only recently got to know Todd Klindt but had been following him for a while. If you are looking for more information on the ITPro side of things or what was included in the last cumulative update, then he is the guy to follow.

eBook found beneficial

Featured Video

“Wow is he really going to talk about his own video”… Yeah I know… To be honest though, I haven’t viewed that many videos. This however, I think would be helpful to anyone looking to learn more on building a Search-Driven Site with SharePoint 2013. I go over the misunderstood feature called the Product Catalog and step by step show how to build Contoso Electronics as well as explain that the feature can be used in an intranet regardless of products.
http://en.share-gate.com/blog/recording-understand-sharepoint-product-catalog

Top articles

This series has been very helpful to me; it’s where I learned about the product catalog in the first place. http://blogs.technet.com/b/tothesharepoint/archive/2013/02/14/how-to-set-up-a-product-centric-web-site-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx

I hesitated for a while to add Elio Struyf in my top 5 twitter accounts, he is leading the way in terms of Display Template knowledge. And I truly think there is a lot to be done with them as you can make your content look like anything. http://www.eliostruyf.com/table-layout-display-template-with-managed-property-sorting/
And while we are talking about Display Templates:
– Image Slider
– Animated Menu

Cool Tool

Another shameless plug, but I truly believe this is an awesome tool. Sharegate for Migration and Management of your SharePoint has a really cool new interface. I can connect one or multiple SharePoint farms and start querying for things inside of it and edit the results. I often find it useful to manage security, like copy all the permissions from one user to give to a new one. Very helpful.
Another one I often use when building things with search is the Search Query Tool on Codeplex.

MVP Highlighted content

I often wished I could go to a place and quickly find the content I am looking fore to help me get started on a topic. And as time has passed, way too quickly if you ask me, I realized I had written quite a bit of content and recorded a few videos. I decided to put them in one article as a sort of table of contents. From series on learning SharePoint to how to migrate or understand search, I hope at lease one can help someone out. Learn more about SharePoint.
But before you start with the serious stuff, enjoy some funny videos from my colleagues and I.

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