Recognizing the need to get back into the habit of sharing details on some of the upcoming events at which I’ll be presenting, I thought I’d publish a quick post on my travel plans for the next month. If you are thinking about attending one or more of them, there are some discounts if you use my name. If you’re already planning to attend, please say hello!

North American Collaboration Summit

March 1st through 3rd in Branson MO. (www.CollabSummit.org) 

I’ll be flying out of Salt Lake City and heading to Branson, Missouri for my first visit to the city — and while I have twice sponsored the SharePointalooza event in Branson from which NACS has grown out of, this will be the first time that the stars align and I am able to attend. On March 1st, I’ll tag-team with Owen Allen (@owenallen) on an all-day workshop, and then have a regular session on the 3rd. Register for the main event (March 2-3) using my last name (BUCKLEY) and receive 50% off the $65 ticket price.

(Workshop) Improving Organizational Productivity and Engagement with Microsoft Teams

In the modern enterprise, it’s not a question of “which tool to use when” but rather “how do we better support our people and the tools they need to get their work done?” For many organizations, Microsoft Teams is becoming the primary interface into the Office 365 universal toolkit. What this means for End Users: get the features you want and need to meet your specific project requirements. What this means for IT Managers: support all of the different tools and collaboration styles in a more manageable, scalable, and compliant way.

In this all-day workshop, led by 7-time Office Servers & Services MVP Christian Buckley, you’ll get a complete overview of Microsoft Teams functionality, learn a number of productivity enhancers that will help your organization see value on Day 1 – and walk away with an on boarding strategy to ensure your long-term Teams success.

Topics included within this interactive workshop include:

• Mapping collaboration styles and technologies to your organizational culture
• Identifying pilot opportunities and success criteria
• How best to leverage your existing infrastructure (namely SharePoint)
• Initial deployment and, administration and governance best practices
• Developing a customer success management (CSM) strategy

Registration for this all-day workshop is $275. Sign up here.

Navigating the Inner and Outer Loops: Effective Office 365 Communications

Within Office 365, we have multiple methods for collaboration and communication – and yet with the rate of innovation coming from Microsoft these days, many organizations are struggling to understand which tools and capabilities to use, and when to use them. The fact is: different teams work in different ways. Within the modern digital workplace, there are many different “modalities” of collaboration — and the companies that understand and meet the evolving needs of their end users will have a competitive advantage.

In this session, we’ll discuss the latest Microsoft messaging around “Inner Loops” and “Outer Loops,” as well as the broader concept of “conversation as a service” and how Outlook Groups, Yammer, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint all fit together — and show you how to get the most out of all of them. Led by 7-time Office Servers & Services MVP Christian Buckley, this session discusses real-world scenarios and management considerations of the three primary collaboration modalities: document and process-centric (SharePoint), email-centric (Exchange and Groups), and social-centric (Yammer, Skype for Business).

Registration for the main event is only $65, or $32.50 if you use the code BUCKLEY when you register. Sign up here.

Following NACS, myself and most of the other MVP speakers will be flying to Seattle to attend the Microsoft MVP Summit for a week. This will be my 8th Summit, and it’s definitely a highlight of the year! Looking forward to seeing many of my global MVP friends, getting a deep-dive into what is coming from the product teams, and meeting up with several partners in region. It’s always exhausting, but incredibly valuable attending these events! But more on that in another post…

SharePointFest DC

March 26th through 30th in Washington DC. (www.SharePointFest.com/DC) 

Looking forward to being back in the DC area! I had planned on being in Virginia in early January, keynoting the now-rescheduled SPS Virginia Beach event that got snowed out, but glad that the SPFest DC event fit within my schedule. David and team put on a fantastic event, and it seems to be growing every year — which is a great indicator of the strength of the technology and continued interest from attendees and sponsors. There are two days of workshops, followed by 3 days of the main event, in which I’ll be participating. You can register for the event here and save $100 using the code BuckleyDC100.

I’ll be presenting two sessions:

Why US Federal, State and Local Struggle with Cloud Adoption – SPT 104

Government agencies have been accelerating their move to the Microsoft cloud and Office 365 to comply with cloud first mandates, modernize their IT infrastructure, and provide improved citizen (and employee) services. Progress, however, has been met with security, cost, deployment, and policy concerns.

Join this session based on independent research conducted in late 2017 and learn about the Top 10 cloud adoption concerns within the public sector, and how to mitigate the risks surrounding each — from the initial discovery process and migration planning, to collaboration and governance best practices.

Top 20 Productivity Tips for Microsoft Office and Office 365 – BV 303

You know the basics of SharePoint and Office 365, and consider yourself somewhat literate in the Office suite — but you could always use a few more productivity hints and tips, right? This session will more than deliver, providing 20 tips that will add immediate value to your team collaboration and personal productivity efforts.

SharePoint Conference North America

May 21st through 23rd in Las Vegas, Nevada. (www.SharePointNA.com) 

And here is the mother-lode of SharePoint events this year: the SharePoint Conference North America (@SPConf or #SPC18), taking place once again in Las Vegas. What began as an externally-managed event has expanded into a major event with huge Microsoft influence, combining the company’s 3rd annual SharePoint Virtual Summit with #SPCNA to create what will most undoubtedly become the largest SharePoint-focused event in the world (title currently held by the European SharePoint Conference, which will be held in Copenhagen in November). I’m also involved with the promotional activities around this event, hosting a #CollabTalk tweetjam this week to talk about “The Road to #SPC18 and Las Vegas” which everyone can join this Wednesday, February 21st at 9am Pacific. Find out more here.

I’ll once again present two main sessions, but will be hosting daily tweetjams during the event from the community hub (sponsorships available!). You can register for the event here.

My planned sessions:

How to Better Leverage SharePoint Through Microsoft Teams

While Office 365 adoption continues to grow, some organizations are struggling to understand how to move past the traditional SharePoint and intranet-centric view of the world, and truly leverage all of the latest and greatest technology Microsoft has to offer. For example, Microsoft Teams is a new way to focus on collaboration and communication, giving project teams and individuals the flexible features they need to get work done, while providing administrators with the security and governance controls required by the business.

Attendees will get an overview of Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams, and learn how they interact with SharePoint. We’ll provision a new Group, discuss what happens behind the scenes as multiple workloads are established, and then walk through the productivity and extensibility features of Microsoft Teams when used with SharePoint that will undoubtedly have an immediate effect on your employee adoption and engagement.

While this session is geared towards organizations who use SharePoint today and want to understand how they can leverage both SharePoint AND Microsoft Teams, everyone is encouraged to attend!

Navigating the Inner and Outer Loops: Effective Office 365 Communications

Same session as above, but with updates from the MVP Summit (what can be shared outside of NDAs) and pending Microsoft announcements.

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In addition to these events, I will likely be attending a few other events in between, possibly traveling to Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Australia before heading to Las Vegas. Add to that my monthly productivity webinars with Tom Duff (@duffbert), monthly tweetjams, and other online activities, and it’s going to be one busy spring! Already looking forward to the trip I’ll be taking in June with my youngest son Josh, before he leaves home this summer to serve an LDS mission. We’re thinking Barcelona and Reykjavik. Can’t wait!