It was a very cold day at Pottersgate Paints as Percy Pottersgate refused to turn the heating on until 1st November. Sidney actually thought it felt warmer in the Server Room sitting under the cold air conditioner blower than it did in his office. Sidney was just in the middle of creating a survey on SharePoint to get feedback on how the Pilot had gone when an email from Hannah Harper arrived in his Inbox.
As had been a common theme in recent emails, from Hannah Harper, there were lots of mentions of Louis Le Gover (the new European Sales Manager) and how wonderful he was. Sidney knew that Monsieur Le Gover had taken out his beloved Hannah three times and he did not want to hear another word about what a gentleman he was. Sidney even did a ‘Replace All’ on the message so instead of saying ‘Louis’ it said ‘clown’, well that was the polite version. Sidney was very smitten with Hannah Harper and they had shared a sort of kiss on their last date so he knew he needed to do something pretty special to win her heart.
Another email arrived in Sidney’s Inbox and he hissed inwardly as he noticed it was from his love-rival Louis Le Gover. Sidney considered challenging Le Gover to a dual. Louis could have a small sword and Sidney would have an armoured tank. The email stated that again the European Sales Manager was unable to access the IT Helpdesk Form on SharePoint. Sidney was about to send a sarcastic email back saying that the IT Department only accepted IT Helpdesk requests that were submitted from the SharePoint system but instead decided to ring Le Gover. Sidney had been thinking that maybe he should get to know Louis better and then he could tell the French clown that he and the pretty Hannah Harper were an item. As long, of course, that Hannah Harper never found out. So Sidney re-activated Louis Le Gover’s domain account which he had ‘accidentally’ disabled that morning and rang Le Gover’s extension number.
Louis Le Gover answered the phone in an annoying fake Salesman kind of voice and pretended to be delighted that Sidney had called. Although it soon became apparent he didn’t actually know who Sidney was. Sidney managed to mention that he was a very ‘very’ close friend of Hannah Harper from Accounts. This didn’t quite have the desired result as it gave the opportunity of letting Le Gover describe in detail how attractive he found Miss Harper and how well they were getting on. Sidney’s mood was not helped when Louis said that he had two tickets for the ballet at Birmingham on Saturday and was going to ask Hannah if she would accompany him.
After the phone call Sidney knew he had to have a plan to stop Hannah going to the ballet with Le Gover. He needed to offer her an alternative date first, but what would rival the ballet?
Seconds after Sidney put the phone down it rang and the timing of the call from the SharePoint Consultant at Action SharePoint could not have been better. Sidney had been impressed with the frequent calls from Action SharePoint to check if he had any issues with the Pottersgate Paints SharePoint Project. They really seemed to be going beyond the call of duty to make sure the Pottersgate Paint's SharePoint was a success. But the timing of this call was perfect as they told Sidney about an event that was happening in Birmingham all day on Saturday. It was the first SharePoint Saturday in the UK and was open to anyone. Sidney’s mind was working overtime. Firstly, he wanted to find out even more about SharePoint and secondly he could invite Hannah Harper to escort him and get in ahead of Le Gover’s ballet invite.
Things couldn’t have gone better for Sidney and on Saturday morning he was driving Hannah Harper to the Metropolitan Hotel, next to the NEC, for the first ever SharePoint Saturday in the UK. Better still Pottersgate Paints were paying the mileage for his weekend date. Excitedly Sidney drove to the barrier of the Car Park to the hotel showing Hannah how well he knew the area. They parked up and walked side by side to the reception. Sidney showed his masterful side and asked the man at reception where the SharePoint Saturday event was. To Sidney’s annoyance not only did the receptionist insist there was no such SharePoint event there but also had a French accent. It was as Sidney was showing the man his ticket that he realised that they were actually in the Crown Plaza Hotel and not the Metropolitan. So after embarrassingly admitting his mistake and asking the French receptionist to validate his parking ticket the two returned to the car.
One round about further on Sidney and Hannah joined the rest of the people at SharePoint Saturday. Sidney was delighted to see many familiar faces there. It wasn’t that he had met them before but that he had seen their pictures as they were his Facebook friends. Straightaway he recognised Mark Miller, the founder and editor of SharePoint End User, from Australia. He was even wearing his trademark hat. The names of people presenting also were familiar to Sidney. Two of the Shop Owners from SharePoint Village were presenting Veronique Palmer and Sam Dolan. In fact it was difficult to decide which presentation to attend. Sidney being a gentleman let Hannah decide and she chose the one by Sam Dolan, from design company Pink Petrol, on changing themes in SharePoint 2010. Sidney was glad she hadn’t suggested attending different sessions and later admitted it was only because it involved the colour ‘pink’ that she chose Sam’s presentation. The two enjoyed a good day and Sidney wrote down a list of questions to ask the Action SharePoint chap on Monday. He added a note at the bottom of his list though to remind him to ask Louis Le Gover if he enjoyed the ballet.
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