So it begins! The registration for TeamsFest is open and we are now on the countdown to the event on Wednesday October 7th. All speakers have confirmed. We have our moderators. We have our schedule
If you haven't already heard, or attended a TeamsFest event, TeamsFest is a 100% free, 100% community driven conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams. It aims to bring together exceptional technical talent and thought leaders to democratise Teams knowledge, encourage participation in the Teams community and give those who are struggling financially an opportunity to attend a first class Teams conference
But it's also a labour of love since I get to organise it with my friends. I have gotten to know Adam, Vesku and Chris over the last few years. We talk everyday - about Microsoft, about work, about life and about being fathers. It has only been possible to achieve what we have done together. Some time ago, I wrote a guest blog on why I love the Microsoft Tech Community and this still holds true today two years after I started participating. I strongly believe that our greatest opportunities and possibilities are realised through our relationships with others
This is what is at the heart of TeamsFest and our fellowship
We invite you to come and actively participate in a day full of learning about Microsoft Teams from the best line up of speakers and subject matter experts in the world. How to deploy it, how to drive it's adoption. Come and learn how to make Microsoft Teams into a full phone system for your users, how to extend Teams with pro-developed apps or the Power Platform to tailor Teams and bring all your tools together. Come and learn how you can secure Teams and leverage its new functionalities to support Firstline Workers
Considering the amount of innovation we have seen in Teams over the past year, I also want to take the opportunity to outline how we are innovating to make TeamsFest even better given feedback from our last event
- We have extended the session tracks to 8, introducing two new tracks in Deployment & Firstline and one dedicated to the Power Platform
- The number of sessions has risen to 85, up from 50 last time around
- We have introduced registration so you can receive a booking for the event with join links in your calendar immediately. We will still do direct join links on the home page however we appreciate you need to have this booked in as early as possible
- For the speakers, we have introduced Sessionize making the process easier and because of this, we have the event hub which can be used to plan your day and browse sessions either on your desktop, the web, or your mobile
- We now have dedicated moderators on each track who will be managing the sessions and ensuring the best experience for speakers and attendees
I want to also highlight that with TeamsFest, we are always looking to make it as inclusive and diverse as possible. We have more sessions by women than ever before, with around 25% of sessions and 3 of the 4 closing sessions by female speakers. We are also delighted that this is our first event with speakers from India and Pakistan. We aim to increase this even further next time around and we would welcome speaker submissions from Africa
Finally, TeamsFest is all about high impact sessions, insights, sessions on new features or features which really show the Power of Teams which aren't often thought about. You'll find sessions on how to deploy Teams in VDI, on how Teams works with Project Cortex, on how it integrates with Dynamics 365. You'll find sessions on NDI, the new Tasks App, Bookings and Shifts. You'll find sessions on how to secure Teams with BYOD, or how to surface bots from either the Bot Framework composer in Azure or Power Virtual Agents. We have session's on STEM, on Project Oakdale and on those real fundamentals such as SharePoint, OneDrive and Powershell. Every session has been picked because it met one or more of these conditions. It was also important to us that everyone who attends doesn't have the same conference. With so many sessions on offer, we wanted to keep things fresh so everyone who attends can have a unique experience. There will be some agonising decisions when building a schedule - but rest assured all sessions will be posted on our YouTube channel a few weeks after the event
I want to thank you personally for taking the time to read this blog. I hope you have the best day. You can help us by sharing the registration amongst your co-workers, friends or those you know who have an interest or passion for Teams
Community events are just are that
A day for all of us
Register now for TeamsFest: https://euroteamsug.com/registration
TeamsFest Home Page: https://microsoft365pro.co.uk/teamsfest
TeamsFest Event Hub: https://euroteamsug.com/eventhub
Follow us on Twitter
Chris Hoard: https://twitter.com/Microsoft365Pro
Adam Deltinger: https://twitter.com/Deltanr1
Vesku Nopanen: https://twitter.com/Vesanopanen
Chris Webb: https://twitter.com/ChrisWebbTech
