The Fall Roadshow Begins Now

In anticipation of a busy fall travel schedule, I escaped for an extended weekend a week ago and drove with my two younger boys down to Utah, where we picked up my older son and daughter, and then drove together south to Zion National Park. The photo is of my kids at the beginning of our hike up to the top of Angels Landing, which is the towering rock at center left. It’s an impressive hike – strenuous, but not technical, with cable to help you navigate the narrow ridge of the last mile or so of your ascent….with 1,000 foot drops on either side of the trail. But what an incredible view from the top, and a great adventure with my kids before embarking on work travels.

Since moving into my new role as CMO of Beezy, I’ve been working on quite a few things that will slowly launch over the coming months. If you’re interested in learning more about how Beezy extends the collaboration experience inside of SharePoint, whether online or on prem, drop me a line – or you can request a demo at info@beezy.net. But the move also allows me to get back out on the road a bit more, and the next couple months will be jam-packed. I figured I’d add a quick post to the blog and let folks know where to find me. So here goes:

SharePointFest Seattle (www.sharepointfest.com), August 18-20

• Yammer Administration and Power User Workshop
  Join this half-day workshop to learn everything you need to know about administering the Yammer platform, as well and hints and tips for getting the most out of the platform. Christian is the co-author of the forthcoming ‘Yammer Revealed’ (Apress) and shared similar content on the Microsoft Virtual Academy earlier this year. A great way to ensure your Yammer deployment is successful.
• Good, Better, Best: Strategies for Social Adoption in SharePoint
  The world is witnessing the dawn of the social organization, with rapidly evolving solutions that impact team dynamics, collaboration, and real-time communication. For many managers, it can difficult keeping up with all of the features and roadmaps. New options within SharePoint, Office365 and Yammer are exciting, but many teams struggle to develop a social strategy that aligns with their business needs. This session will walk through the levels of SharePoint and Yammer integration available today as well as other features, such as Delve and Office Graph, providing some real-world examples and guidance to help attendees make more informed choices and develop the right social strategy for their organizations.
• Out-of-the-box Analytics and Auditing, SP2013 On-Prem and Online
  The purpose of this session is to provide an overview of the analytics and auditing capabilities for SharePoint 2013 on premises, and point out the differences in SharePoint Online via Office365. The intent is to help organizations make informed decisions about what it will take to transition to SharePoint in the cloud, ensuring that core metrics and auditing requirements are being met before, during, and after the transition to the cloud.

Digital Workplace Conference (http://www.nzdwc.co.nz/), Auckland, August 31-September 1

• Life Inside the Paperless Office
  We’ve talked about the future of the “paperless office” for years, but what is really possible? And how much of that vision can be accomplished out-of-the-box versus expensive third-party tools and consultants? In this session led by Office 365 MVP Christian Buckley, we’ll take a look at several common business scenarios and show you just how much you can accomplish without breaking the bank, including insights into Microsoft’s NextGen Portals roadmap – showing you different ways to make your business digitally-ready.
• Monitoring and Measuring SharePoint to Guarantee Your ROI
  Whether on-premises or online, the business value of SharePoint can be hard to articulate to your management team if you are not taking the time to monitor and measure. In this session, led by Office 365 MVP Christian Buckley, we discuss what is available out-of-the-box in SharePoint and in Office 365, how Microsoft uses telemetry and analytics to improve the platform, and options available for extending your own telemetry and analytics capabilities. Finally, we’ll discuss putting that data to good use, helping you to better understand your return on investment in these tools.

Modern Workplace Summit (http://mwssummit.com/), Oslo, September 8-9

• Increase Adoption and Engagement through Social Collaboration
• 5 Ways Office 365 Can’t Defend Your Data, and What to Do About It

Congres SharePoint (http://congressharepoint.nl/), Utrecht, September 22

• Keynote: Organizational Impacts of Moving SharePoint to the Cloud
  Many organizations opt for a cloud-based version of SharePoint without having developed a real vision of what this choice for them really means and what consequences it entails. Without this knowledge and this awareness can switch to a cloud-based version to extract more painful and more costly than necessary. In this keynote late Christian Buckley see what organizations need to make practical choices when considering a move to the cloud version. Such knowledge may be particularly useful if your organization a transition to Office 365 and SharePoint Online in particular considering.
• Managing SharePoint from Office 365
  In this breakout session late Christian Buckley how to carry out the management of SharePoint Online, from the management facility of Office 365. Buckley will show at what point the management of this online facility is different from the management of the on-premises version of SharePoint. This session is not a technical presentation but rather a planning session to prepare for organizations in the changing approach to management and thus to mitigate potential gaps in knowledge or skills of self-organization in time.

SharePoint Saturday Barcelona (http://www.spsevents.org/city/Barcelona/barcelona2015), September 26

• Keynote: The Evolution of Collaboration

Collab365 (http://www.collab365.events/), online, October 7-8

• Five Ways to Ensure 100% Adoption of Office 365
  While Office365 continues to grow at a rapid rate, adoption beyond Exchange can be slow without a strategy in place. We’ll touch on many of the productivity feat
  ures (Groups, Delve, Yammer, co-editing, etc) but the focus of the session will equally cover the management/ongoing educational aspects of a successful deployment. You will learn a "go to market" strategy for a successful Office 365 deployment, productivity features that will enhance adoption, strategies for keeping end users engaged, and how to track usage and activity so you can measure your success.
• I will also be participating as a track chair, introducing and moderating a number of sessions during this 24-hour online conference.

Unity Connect Amsterdam (http://www.unityconnect.com/amsterdam), October 12-14

• Still locking down the details (including my travel) but I will be attending, speaking, and sponsoring.

Engage Conference (http://sharepointinstitute.com/sharepoint-conference/), Raleigh, October 20-21

• Keynote — Navigating the Evolving Social Capabilities in SharePoint and Office 365
  As Microsoft focuses on delivering cloud-first, mobile-first solutions, many organizations are struggling to keep up with the various announcements and releases surrounding the social capability in SharePoint, and Office 365 as a whole. In this session, we’ll walk through each of the social tools within SharePoint online and on-prem, highlighting how they work together and solve key productivity problems, and help you to understand how they fit into your own social collaboration plans.
• Managing SharePoint On Prem vs Online: Compare and Contrast
  The purpose of this session is to outline the major administrative differences between SharePoint on prem and SharePoint Online, comparing reporting, auditing, and information governance differences between the platforms. The intent is to help organizations make informed decisions about what it will take to transition to SharePoint in the cloud, either through a hybrid model or moving entirely to the cloud. In addition to showing administrative capabilities of both platforms, the session will walk through some management considerations for hybrid planning.

Between all this travel fun, I’ll be making a couple stops: I’ll spend one of my weekends exploring Reykjavik Iceland and the surrounding area (I’ve been to the airport numerous times, but this will be my first time venturing out). And I’ll also be spending a week in Barcelona, with SPS right smack in the middle of my visit, where I’ll be working with the Beezy product and development teams, which are based there. Of course, I’ll be home just in time to help put the final touches on our 6th SharePoint Saturday Redmond event, being held once again on the Microsoft campus in the conference center, and free to all attendees. We’re expecting over 400 attendees this year as we continue to grow – and with another round of fantastic speakers from Microsoft and the community. This one is not to be missed! November is equally busy, with the MVP Summit, also on campus, followed by the European SharePoint Conference in Stockholm. I’ll be leading a full-day workshop and a regular session. But I’m also very excited that Beezy has been selected as a finalist for Best Office 365 Solution! More on that soon…