Long-Prep for European SharePoint Conference 2014

Sitting here in Madrid, Spain following a great dinner – hosted by the Beezy team for several of the speakers and organizers of tomorrow’s Iberian SharePoint Conference – and a day of travels without much sleep just to get here, I thought I’d take a moment to promote the European SharePoint Conference coming up next spring in Barcelona, Spain on May 5th through 8th, 2014. In case you missed it, the #ESPC14 schedule is now available, and I can formally announce that I will once again  keynote Europe’s largest SharePoint event!

This trip to Madrid is my first time to this beautiful country, and I’m looking forward to do some walking around in the city before flying to Germany on Sunday for a week of customer, partner, and user group activities. With my thoughts on Spain, I was happy to see that the schedule was published for next year’s event in Barcelona. Very excited to see my co-presenter from last year’s event, Dan Holme, as the keynote helm on the first day of the event, with my keynote following on Day 2. This year I’ve invited my good friend Mark Kashman from the SharePoint Product Marketing Team in Redmond, to join me on stage to share some real-world perspectives on social.

Here are my sessions, in order of appearance:

Tuesday, May 6th, 3:15pm —
8 Things to Consider as SharePoint Moves to the Cloud

Presentation Description
Over the next 3 to 5 years, Microsoft estimates that 50% or more of the existing SharePoint customer base will maintain a hybrid environment. As companies make this transition, do you understand the true cost and governance impacts of moving to the cloud?In this session, attendees will get an overview of the many different paths from SharePoint on premises to the cloud — with an outline of the costs, risks, and considerations so that companies can properly prepare for the move. While the session will cover some technical aspects of SharePoint’s architecture, the goal is to provide business owners and administrators alike with a firm understanding of the hidden costs of implementing and maintaining a hybrid SharePoint environment, or a pure cloud SharePoint environment.

Presentation Benefit
An overview of the many business considerations around moving SharePoint from on premises to the cloud. The goal is to help the attendee understand the cost benefits, as well as some of the hidden costs and management headaches, of moving to the cloud. Attendees will also get a wake up around what it takes to implement and maintain a hybrid SharePoint environment.

You will Learn:

Understand the major platform parity gaps between on prem, cloud, and hybrid

Understand the governance and administrative gaps between versions

Best practices that will help mitigate the inherent risks of making this transition

 

Wednesday, May 7th, Morning Keynote at 9am —
What It Takes to Make Social Successful

Successful social deployments take more than a software deployment or subscription. Social collaboration has more to do with the cultural change these technologies bring to the enterprise than the features you deploy — so its important to begin your social journey with a firm understanding of what it takes to deploy, configure, and manage social across the enterprise.

The goal of this presentation is to share both the Microsoft and community perspectives on what it takes to build out an enterprise social collaboration solution on premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, and clarify community questions about what it really takes to make social successful with Yammer and SharePoint 2013.

Presentation Benefit: The goal of this presentation is to discuss, quite openly, the realities of social — and the key differences between on premise, cloud, and hybrid environments so that attendees understand current Microsoft messaging, and what it really takes to deploy, configure, and manage social across the enterprise.

You Will Learn:

• Understanding of the key value props of social in Yammer versus SharePoint
• Understanding of key differences between on premises, cloud, and hybrid installations of these platforms
• Guidance on what it takes to implement social at an enterprise level

Wednesday, May 7th, 2:00pm —
How to Track, Measure, and Get Business Value Out of Social Influence

Social influence, and its value within the enterprise, is becoming an increasingly importance topic. Social and document collaboration platforms have been slowly integrating new features (Yammer is partnering with Klout, for example) to allow organizations to better understand the impact of influence on building complex networks and driving engagement.

This session will include a panel of social collaboration experts, as well as audience participation. The goal of the session is to discuss real-world deployment scenarios, and different perspectives on the need for social influence within the enterprise, and limitations of current platforms and methodologies to capture this data.

Presentation Benefit

It will be a deep dive into the topic of social influence, and its growing importance within the enterprise to track and measure engagement and complex networks.

There are limited tools to track social influence in SharePoint or Yammer today, but this is a growing segment of the social conversation. I’ll explain what it is, discuss some of the leading platforms today to track and define social influence (Klout, Kred, PeerIndex) and talk about what can be done in SP and Yammer (Yammer has an integration with Klout, for example) and what this means for the enterprise.

Attendees will get a more academic insight into the topic, rather than practical knowledge, as it is still a very young technology category, and very bleeding-edge in the social space. But the session will welcome questions and audience participation.

You Will Learn:

• A better understanding of social influence and its role in developing complex networks
• Understanding of what SharePoint and Yammer offer natively or through integration to provide social influence data
• Understanding of the big data potential of social influence data

I am excited to once again participate in this event, and hope to see you there!