I realized that I haven’t blogged since I came back from Microsoft Ignite 2016, so I figured I had better catch up.
In case you missed it, here’s a quick timeline of the Q4 events relevant to Microsoft technology professionals in Chicago.
- Microsoft Ignite was at the end of September. Next year it will be in Orlando. See my previous post for all that I did at Ignite. Additionally, Microsoft just posted a new YouTube Channel about the Microsoft Tech Community and I am in some of the videos! See the announcement here.
- On October 20th, I conducted a half day seminar called Boosting Organizational Productivity with Office 365. The presentations were:
- Larry Kuhn (Microsoft) : Reinventing Productivity for the Digital Transformation
- Chris N Johnson (MVP): Closing Teamwork Gaps Before they Sink your Project
- Steve Smith (Lake County Government): Driving End UserAdoption with IT Fairs
- Chris N Johnson (MVP): Business Process Automation Solutions in Office 365
- John Biggenwald: The Tech is Easy; People are Hard
- At the beginning of November, Microsoft held its annual MVP Summit in Redmond. We Office Server and Services MVPs got some great insight into the O365 product roadmap for 2017.
- The following week, I spoke at the Advanced Learning Institute’s Intranet and Digital Workplace Summit in Chicago. Slides from my presentation, Productivity in your Pocket, are on Slideshare. My fellow MVP Chris N Johnson co-presented with me, providing a bunch of great demos. The next ALI Intranet and Digital Workplace Summit will be May 22, 2017.
- The Office 365 Adoption User Group actually met twice in December. Once for our regular meeting and once for a special panel discussion at SharePoint Fest.
- At our regular meeting, we were honored to have Microsoft’s Midwest CTO, Paul Edlund, speak about cybersecurity.
- At SharePoint Fest, I moderated the discussion panel. Panelists were Jethro Segers, Tamara Bredemus, Treb Gatte, Michelle Caldwell, and (via Skype for Business) Naomi Moneypenny. All panelists were speakers at SharePointFest. Most were MVPs.
- I also spoke at SharePoint Fest Chicago. Jack Fruh and I did a full day workshop on PowerShell and I presented a session on driving adoption of Office 365. PowerShell workshop slides are here and the driving adoption with novelty and mobility slides are here.
Looking ahead to 2017, it’s already shaping up to be an eventful year – another year full of events that is. As I write this, the Chicago Microsoft Tech Summit is already history. I attended that, helping out that the Microsoft Tech Community booth and promoting the Office 365 Adoption User Group (Chicagoland Chapter) whose first 2017 meeting is Feb 2, 2017. If you are not local and want to attend, there is a dial-in number!
–Michael