With so much news, content, and networking happening all week at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando, why not add to the schedule some additional content and interaction for people who are not attending in-person? The CollabTalk TweetJam is a monthly community event, covering a broad range of products and topics — and is open to anyone to participate. Each one-hour session includes a set of questions, a panel of experts to help seed the conversation, a Twitter hashtag (#CollabTalk) to help tie it all together, and some amazing stats via PowerBI thanks to an ongoing sponsorship from the team at tyGraph (@tyGraphTweets).

Why Participate in a TweetJam?

Twitter as a conversational platform may be difficult for some to consume, but there is no better way to create instant-community around a topic, and make that discussion visible to anyone around the world. Panelists and participants have different reasons for joining in, but the benefits are clear:

• Talk directly with experts and influencers on the topic
• Share your own insights and interests (and content links!)
• Extend your personal and professional network
• Validate your ideas, or the product and services roadmap of your company
• Expand your thinking, hearing different perspectives in one power-packed hour

The #CollabTalk TweetJam has been running since January 2012, and continues to expand — with most topics touching on various aspects of the Microsoft ecosystem and beyond, and with more MVPs, experts, and influencers wanting to participate and be heard.

Moving from Monthly to Daily for Microsoft Ignite 2017

At the Orlando event, we’ll be supporting some of the major announcements, focusing on a different topic each day along with the daily Ignite themes. Something new — in addition to the tweet-storm, we’ll be live streaming from the Community Hub inside the Orange County Convention Center, and welcome anyone attending to come on by and join us from 12:30 to 1:30pm Eastern each day.

You’ll find me up front orchestrating the tweetjam, with Darrell Webster (@DarrellaaS), Alistair Pugin (@AlistairPugin), and other members of the @REgarding365 team live streaming the discussions with anyone from the community who joins us in the hub. Please join us!

Topics for the week will be as follows:

• Monday — Data Takeover, with “The Future of Intelligent Search & Discovery”
• Tuesday — Cloud Takeover, with “Cyber-Security within the Microsoft Cloud”
• Wednesday — Office Takeover, with “Productivity Automation with Office and Office 365”
• Thursday — Windows Takeover, with “Modernizing to Windows-as-a-Service”
• Friday — Event Wrap-Up with “Takeaways from Ignite 2017”

Please feel free to join us online or in-person for one of them — or all of them, if the topics sound interesting to you. Whether you participate with us in-person, join in the discussion online, or sit quietly and observe the discussion, there’s always value in participating in a CollabTalk tweetjam!

How can I join the discussion?

We have a dedicated CollabTalk TweetJam page at http://twubs.com/CollabTalk that lets you focus on the discussion, and provides some simple controls to slow down the tweet stream from time-to-time, allowing you to read through the comments at your own speed, then jump back into the real-time view. But since it’s Twitter, you can participate via browser through the Twitter page and #CollabTalk hashtag, or by using your favorite tools (Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, HubSpot, etc). Just remember to block out the time, from 12:30pm to 1:30pm ET.

If you are an expert in one of these areas and would like to be included as a panelist, you can sign up for one (or more) of the tweetjam panels here, and opt-in to be notified of future panels, as well.

Can my company sponsor a tweetjam?

Yes! In fact, two of the Ignite sessions already have sponsors, which will be mentioned next week when the individual panels and questions are published. Sponsoring a tweetjam gives you instant-visibility, as each one-hour event reached anywhere from 250,000 to 400,000 profiles, and averages 4 to 6 million social impressions! Not bad for an hour-long event! If you’re interested in more details and pricing about sponsoring one of these events, or a future tweetjam topic, please contact me.

See you at Ignite!