Lighting a Fire Under Ignite
As many of you probably saw yesterday, Microsoft announced about half of the sessions for the upcoming mega-event, Ignite (http://ignite.microsoft.com/), to take place May 4-8th in Chicago. As part of the initial push, they’ve released a few promotional videos (like this one with Bill Baer and Michael Connolly), which, I am sure, someone is going to take the time to comb through, inferring and imagining everything that is said and, more importantly, what is NOT said as proof of whatever conclusion they’ve already made about the state of the Microsoft world. Looking forward to that.
But aside from the side show entertainment, it is a first look at some of the topics to be covered. Surf over to the Sessions tab and you’ll find Microsoft’s best event website yet, with an easy to navigate selection of topics, organized by audience, topic, format, and level. It’s a little something for everyone. Of course, speakers and timing are not yet available, but at least you’ll get a sense of what is in store, and I assume Microsoft if monitoring feedback for decisions on final topics. At the last SharePoint conference in Vegas, my title and abstract got hijacked in the last couple weeks leading up to the event, causing me to make a few adjustments to my session – but I knew going in that it could happen, and overall I filled a hole on the content roadmap that Microsoft wanted to be sure was covered. Fine by me.
As for content – again, remember that only half the catalogue is up – there are already 85 sessions that cover Office 365, 44 that cover SharePoint, and within those some topics that are sure to be jam-packed, such as
- “The Evolution of SharePoint (vNext On-Premises Overview and Roadmap)” which is what most of the crowd wants to hear about
- “Hybrid Business Connectivity Services with SharePoint Online” which I’m hoping will help answer some of the needs of organizations who want the latest BI capability but who have concerns about, or restrictions that limit their ability to move important data to the cloud
- “Meet Office 365 Compliance Center: Your One Stop Shop for Everything Compliance” to demonstrate the much-needed improvements around compliance, auditing, reporting, and so forth
This time around I am thrilled to be part of the featured speakers, and will be participating in a few things (in addition to the formal agenda, GTconsult has a few things up our sleeves) during the week.
If you have not yet registered for Ignite, I hope you consider going. The show is going to be massive, and with the availability of Windows 10, and the next version of SharePoint on-prem being imminent, its going to be the place to be. When SharePoint 2013 was released in conjunction with Office and Windows et al, it was discussed within the community that that would be the last time we’d see this “uber release” cycle from Microsoft, having entered this world of online first and iterative development. But I have to tell you, the alignment of all of the major MS shows into a single conference and with the releases that are coming, it sure feels like another uber-release. Is it just me?
