November 2016 Content Wrap-Up

by · Published · Updated

Beezy winning at ESPC16

The Beezy team at the European SharePoint Conference in Vienna, Austria taking home the award for Most Innovative Cloud Solution for 2016

Ok, November was kind of a big deal. If you recall, at the end of last month I was in Redmond, Washington hanging out with friends and family between hosting my 7th and final SharePoint Saturday Redmond (as organizer, that is), and then I worked remotely for a week until the annual Microsoft MVP Summit at the beginning of this month. What a great week with friends and fellow MVPs, and getting face time with the product and engineering teams at Microsoft. I have to say that it is the single best perk of being an MVP, in my opinion. An amazing combination ShareQuilt at MSof networking, technology, and shenanigans. And in case you missed the tweets, with the help of MCM and former MVP Tom Resing (@resing) who is now with Microsoft, Mark Kashman (@mkashman), and Jeff Teper (@jeffteper)…and his assistant Ilene Krewson, the #ShareQuilt that had been crafted out of many of my SharePoint Saturday and other tradeshow shirts, and then was signed by many MVPs from around the world, was added to the Microsoft art collection. It now hangs in the atrium of Building 34, and is part of SharePoint history. Thanks again Tom, Mark, Jeff and Ilene for making that happen! So cool.

CxXumYhUkAA5mdeDeparting Redmond a day early (unfortunately), I drove home to Salt Lake City…only to jump on an airplane and travel to Vienna, Austria for the European SharePoint Conference. This year, my company Beezy was a Platinum sponsor, and in addition to regular sessions, I also led the Day 2 keynote with my good friend and fellow MVP Benjamin Niaulin (@bniaulin).  You know…the guy from YouTube. Our session on the main stage was a lot of fun, and we covered an important topic — ensuring the technology you select fits with your corporate culture. Below you can find articles and blog posts, as well as our session slides. But I also captured some video before we took the stage — and as we took the stage, which was streamed live to Facebook. Kind of fun to see, if you’ve never been on stage in front of 1200+ people.

Speaking of streaming, my intent at this event was to capture high-quality audio and video of 5 different panel sessions. However, as I experienced at Ignite in Atlanta, the video gods were not with me. I ended up live streaming, also to Facebook, three of the panel discussions. But thankfully, my audio equipment investments saved that portion of the recordings for all five, and my forthcoming podcast efforts will have some great material to kick things off. You can find links to the Facebook recordings below, which I plan to move to YouTube later this month.

The highlight of the event, of course, was Beezy taking home our second ESPC award in two years — the Most Innovative Cloud Solution. We worked hard on that customer delivery, and I spent a lot of time creating the content for our submission — and doing what I could to garner support for the award. We’re very proud of that win, which is the picture at the top.

Coming home from Vienna (exhausted), I also hosted a Beezy webinar on governance for social collaboration, and am preparing this month for a webinar on running a successful collaboration pilot. Some big things planned for January – including a repeat performance with Benjamin of our ESPC16 keynote topic. If you missed the event in Vienna, then you won’t want to miss this webcast, happening in late January 2017. For the rest of December, i am not planning any travel — just working from home, doing some production work on video and audio recordings, and preparing for a blockbuster January.

Oh, and Nov 30th was my 26th wedding anniversary. Enjoyed a nice, quiet night out to dinner with my wife at the Roof in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in downtown Salt Lake City, with an amazing view just above Temple Square. We had a great evening.

Now, if you would like to know what I was doing at the European SharePoint Conference all week, take a gander at the materials below. You find videos, slides, blog posts, and press releases detailing everything that happened. Happy reading!

We had a couple other major announcements in November worth mentioning:

  • Beezy Partners with Communardo to Bring Digital Workplace Solutions to Enterprise Customers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria (PRWeb) http://bit.ly/2gFNiUB
  • ZF Friedrichshafen Selects Beezy to Build Next-Generation Intranet (PRWeb) http://bit.ly/2gOufYR

Live content is quickly becoming a "thing" at events large and small. Live streaming is a great media format — informal, easy, and it allows people to get engaged. Below are the three panel sessions I recorded with some of the experts speaking at ESPC16
, as well as podcasts that I recorded with Gene Vangampelaere (@vangampelaere) and Paul Keijzers (@KbWorks) from the expo hall floor.

  • Panel discussion: "How social improves the ROI of collaboration" with Elaine van Bergen, Symon Garfield, Michelle Caldwell at #ESPC16 (Facebook) http://bit.ly/2gSsQiz
  • Panel discussion: "Finding the right cultural fit for collaboration" with Erica Toelle, Benjamin Niaulin, John White at #ESPC16 (Facebook) http://bit.ly/2gOqbrE
  • Panel discussion: "What it takes to create a great UX" with Symon Garfield, Eric Overfield, Chris McNulty, and Maximo Castagno at #ESPC16 (Facebook) http://bit.ly/2gekUbH
  • The Modern Workplace podcast at ESPC16 with Paul Keijzers (SoundCloud) http://bit.ly/2gMrQQE
  • ESPC Podcast episode 4: Bypassing IT with Gene Vangampelaere (SPums.be) http://bit.ly/2h0PxVY

One of the topics I covered at ESPC16 and which I plan to write much about in the coming months is the business value of understanding network science.

Collaboration maturity and planning is also one of those topics that I always seem to find myself talking about, usually driven by a customer or partner conversation. I am a big fan of organizational self-assessments when it comes to governance maturity, ensuring that what you are tracking makes sense and is driving business value.

Hey, I also talked about governance last month! Wow. Didn’t see that one coming…

And yes, CollabTalk is expanding in January. The topic for November was bringing intelligence to the enterprise, and we had fantastic turnout for the tweetjam — and some amazing data via TyGraph and John White. At the bottom of this list is the summary from last month’s event — and hopefully you can all join this month, which is historically our biggest tweetjam where we cover "predictions" for next year. Don’t miss it!

And finally, I wanted to mention a couple mentions that I received. First, from my good friend and fellow IAMCP Seattle-conspirator, Jeff Shuey (@jshuey) who posted to LinkedIn about my tweetjamming activities. And then there’s that weekly CMO list, which somehow, through its algorithms, decided I was the 3rd most influential CMO in the world. And I’ve been sitting there at 3rd place on this weekly list for a month. Interesting.

Well, I hope you found one or two useful tidbits from this monthly summary. Be sure to follow me on Twitter at @buckleyplanet, and also add my new profile @CollabTalk which will kick into high-gear in January. Thanks for reading!

Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is a startup advisor and investor, and an independent consultant providing fractional marketing and channel development services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, weekly #ProjectFailureFiles series, monthly Guardians of M365 Governance (#GoM365gov) series, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.