Great Little Technology Conferences (for Office 365)

Searching for Good Office 365 Information

People ask me all the time about what conferences they should attend to stay up to date or learn about new developments in Office 365. Microsoft Ignite (November 4-8) is the obvious choice because it’s run by Microsoft, staffed by an incredible array of internal and external speakers, and offers great facilities (well, Ignite 2015 and the baloney served to attendees wasn’t so good). The downside of Ignite is its size. That, and the fact that many sessions are marketing pitches to announce technology that won’t be available in real-life tenants for six to nine months afterwards, makes many stay at home and watch recordings of the Ignite sessions afterwards. There’s a lot of sense in this approach.

TEC (The Experts Conference) Rides Again

The nice thing about a small technical conference is that you can get up close and personal with speakers. Which brings me to TEC (The Experts Conference), resurrected for 2019 after seven years by the fine people at Quest Software (who have been through their own journey in that time). TEC takes place in Charleston, NC on August 27-28, 2019.

TEC is very focused on technical best practices, or stuff that works in the field. This was always the case when TEC focused on Active Directory and everything related to AD, and I suspect the same will happen for the 2019 event. In any case, I’m on the schedule (first time in Charleston, SC) to speak about “How to Manage Microsoft Teams Successfully.”

If you’d like to attend TEC, you can get a 50% discount by using the code 50%OFFTEC!*!

ShiftHappens

Another small conference I’ll be speaking at is ShiftHappens, organized by AvePoint in Washington DC (June 12-13). I accepted the challenge of AvePoint’s avuncular CMO, Dux Raymond Sy, to come along and talk about keeping up to date with Office 365 and all the associated technologies. It should be a blast with people like Mary Jo Foley, Brad Sams, and Paul Thurrott speaking (a real collection from Petri.com).

Two in Europe

Before I get to go to the U.S., I’ll be speaking at the European Collaboration Summit in Wiesbaden, Germany on May 28 to cover the ever-popular topic of “Will Teams take over from Email?” Next up is Oslo for Experts Live Norway on May 29, where I get to talk about Office 365 data governance and compliance (use code Save300 to get a discount. There’s no rest for the wicked.

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Going to speak at conferences usually results in learning lots of new stuff. I also get ideas for articles and things we should cover in the Office 365 for IT Pros eBook. All goodness!