I’m James Callaghan, a dad and an experienced SharePoint & Office 365 Consultant working for Microsoft in London and Manchester.
The idea behind this site is to provide me with a place to write about and share my day-to-day experiences of working as a consultant with SharePoint, Office 365 and other technologies alongside the odd recipe or two, sharing my photography and my fun with home automation plus all life’s other adventures.
This is (ahem) “Where SharePoint & Office 365 meets James”…
About James Callaghan
I am a Senior Consultant working for Microsoft with many interests and hobbies, aside from working with SharePoint & Office 365. It is hard to stop being an evangelist for such a great company when you enjoy it so much! However, I must as I’m a father to my beautiful daughter Florence. There’s cycling, squash, horse riding, reading, and travelling – to name a few!
On the quiet, I’m a bit of a would-be amateur chef. I love to spend lots of time relaxing in the kitchen cooking all kinds of weird, wonderful and ultimately delicious food. Try searching for my “SharePoint Brownies“.
I really enjoy photography, but by no means am I nor will I ever be an expert. I’ll leave that to my friend Steve Burton @ SmartPicsUK. Over the years, I’ve snapped thousands of pictures on phones, DSLRs, action cameras to my Drone. The result is that I have a few hundred or so fantastic and beautiful photos and stunning landscape photos that I share on my portfolio on 500px.
Right now, I’m working on a few projects: Automating my hot tub; my automated home; building Azure stack on an Intel Hayes Canyon.
Charity & Volunteering
Growing up, I have been an avid supporter of the RNLI. For more than twenty years, my brother has volunteered for the RNLI for which he is a long-serving Helm of Southwold Lifeboat. This, which makes me very proud. I should not forget to mention a charity that I’ve personally supported for many years. I joined a Cambridgeshire St John Ambulance division back in 2010 where I became a First Aider and a Cycle Responder. Sadly after moving away from Cambridgeshire and increased work commitments, I reluctantly stopped volunteering, but the charity remains close to my heart.
Experience & Background
It would be a shame not to include a little self-promotion. Through the focused and committed delivery and consulting work I have done for Microsoft, I have acquired a vast and deep knowledge within the Modern Workplace and Business Productivity space. I have a reliable and proven experience of working with SharePoint for over 14-years now alongside Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Office 365, PowerShell, Microsoft Azure and Cyber Security.
My customers have been across many industry verticals such as financial, legal and retail, but my principal and committed vertical remains to be the UK public sector. I’ve designed and implemented large scale highly available SharePoint deployments, including the underlying technologies both on-premises and in the cloud, including hybrid environments for public and private sector customers.
I’ve watched the product mature and develop from the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 version I first touched to the incredible product it is today (SharePoint 2019 and SharePoint Online). My skills and experience have taken me across the world, and I get great pleasure from my job.
Sharing & Community
I love the Microsoft community. It is full of exceptional, hard-working and committed people who what to learn and give something back. It is this community that drives me to continue hosting my blog but more importantly writing and sharing unique content with you all. I try to attend the odd SharePoint User Group meeting and have spoken at some key global conferences. I enjoy answering questions and ask them too on Stack Exchange, GitHub, and thoroughly love engaging and contributing to conversations on Twitter. If you spot me someday – do come and say hi if you get the chance!
That’s me in a nutshell, and I hope you enjoy this site.
#SharingIsCaring