[This post was originally published (by me) on the SharePoint365 blog, as part of the series “How I got into SharePoint” (http://sp365.co.uk)%5D

How long have you been using SharePoint?: 4 years

What’s your current role: In Flux 🙂 … see below.

Your Story: My sister and I owned and operated a small custom precast concrete manufacturing business since about 1990. I had somehow happened upon a local SharePoint or .NET user group meeting in late 2006, saw a demo of SharePoint workflows, and thought, “Wow! I can think of so many ways that could help my business!”. So when it came time in the Spring of 2007 for us to get a new server, I made sure SharePoint was on my must-have list. After our IT contractor installed the server with MOSS 2007 on it, I pretty much had to figure out how to use it by myself, while also running the financial and administrative aspects of the business. I learned everything I could find time for from online tutorials, the Pittsburgh user group, and all the SharePoint folks I started following on Twitter.

By July 2007, I was able to roll out a rudimentary SharePoint site where all of our (12) users could access information about the projects our company was working on. I’ve described in previous posts on this site the sorts of things we ended up doing in SharePoint.

What’s next for you: In June of 2011, we lost our 57-year-old family business as a result of the too-deep-too-long recession and some additional factors beyond our control, which was extremely traumatic. BUT! …never one to stay down too long, I decided in July that SandyU 2.0 will focus on SharePoint, since it’s something I really came to love and find great value in 🙂 … hence my posts on this blog, and working to get more involved in the SharePoint community, including organizing a SharePoint Saturday in Pittsburgh next Spring (which I’ll expect you all to attend). I’m currently interested in pursuing short-term projects where I can use my skills in meshing the business-owner/user and IT/technical perspectives. I’ve also recently started a SharePoint review/edit service, for those of you who write or speak about SharePoint…

[Nov 16 2011 edit: I just learned that my proposal was approved to develop and teach an Intro to SharePoint course for an online education company… excited about that!]