September 2019 Content Wrap-Up

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Microsoft Teams Summit 2019

At the end of another incredibly busy month, with a major event right down the middle. Once again, my focus has been more around the podcast and vlog versus writing for myself, with a number of articles and other content pieces for clients, some of which is linked below, for a change. The big event was something new: the Microsoft Teams Summit (#TeamsSummit) held at Lincoln Square in Bellevue, Washington. Organized by Karuana Gatimu (@karuana), Laurie Pottmeyer (@lauriepottmeyer), and the Microsoft Teams product and engineering organizations, this invite-only, 125-attendee event was an idea that came out of the annual MVP Summit back in March, as I understand it, when a few MVPs suggested the idea of a Teams-focused event where we could do a deep-dive into technical topics and provide detailed feedback to the Microsoft product teams. That’s kind of the point of the MVP Summit, but with just about every Microsoft product and service represented in that week-long event, it doesn’t leave much room for every topic. This Teams-centric event gave us the deep-dive and granular focus that we wanted….and the event is being repeated in Amsterdam for another 125 participants. An amazing event, and I am excited to share some of what we learned later this fall when the announcements are made (LOTS of news coming out of Ignite in November).

Looking forward, I put together a blog post that outlines all of my travel and online event plans, as of this writing, including sessions at Microsoft Ignite in Orlando in November, the European SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Conference in Prague in December, and the ARMA Conference in Nashville (my first time visiting TN!) later this month….as well as the monthly tweetjams and productivity tips webinars. Check out my plans below:

Me with Microsoft's Karuana Gatimu at the #TeamsSummitMicrosoft Teams Summit – Bellevue

Since the entire event was under NDA, I can’t share any of my takeaways….yet. As the announcements are made at Ignite and ESPC, I’ll go back through my notes and share as much detail as I am able. But, on the drive home (yes, I drove from Salt Lake City to Seattle and back — 900 miles each way) I did manage to stop by one of my favorite spots: Snoqualmie Falls. I lived north of the falls for just over 12 years, and I miss this place. It’s also featured in the intro to the TV show Twin Peaks.

  • Visiting Snoqualmie Falls while in the Seattle area for #TeamsSummit [Facebook]

The @CollabTalk Podcast

I *finally* caught up with the backlog of blog posts associated with previously recorded podcasts and vlogs from the #MVPbuzzChat interview series, and am now staying on top of this effort, publishing the blog posts alongside the YouTube vlogs and Soundcloud podcasts (which are now also available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify). Additionally, for Episode 10 of the CollabTalk Podcast, I spoke with Ruven Gotz (@ruveng), Director and Workplace eXperience Lead – US West for Avanade, on the evolution of how organizations are approaching adoption and engagement of technology — specifically, collaboration technology. It had been quite a while since I had been able to connect with Ruven, who I used to see all the time at various SharePoint-related conferences and events around the US and world, and enjoyed our interview…..and then I was able to hang out with him at SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles this past weekend, which I’ll talk about in a moment…

Speakers room at #SPSLA 2019Productivity Tips and #SPSLA

The Office 365 Productivity Tips webinar series with Thomas Duff (@duffbert) continues to roll on,  providing all of us with a veritable cornucopia of productivity tips….and when Tom or I are speaking/presenting on our own, we are able to pick out our favorites and share a “Best Of” list, as I did with SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles (#SPSLA) this past weekend. For those who follow the SPS events (visit http://spsevents.org to find upcoming events worldwide) you may be aware that Karuana and I launched SPSLA back in September 2010, and it was great to get back to SoCal and visit with this great community.

  • Office 365 Productivity Tips “September Scrimmage” [buckleyPLANET | YouTube | SlideShare]
  • Top 20 Tips for Office 365 Productivity — SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles Edition [SlideShare]
  • Mass selfie “event” at #SPSLA [Facebook]

Other Content

The other major event happening this past month was the Collab365 SharePoint Summit, which still has an amazing offer for ebooks and session recordings. My deck from the event is not available, but I’m wrapping up the ebook tonight, which you can get as part of the link above. Also on this list are a blog post I wrote with an opinion of the apples versus oranges comparison of Slack and Teams, and a recording of a webinar with tyGraph’s John White (@diverdown1964) on Power BI and SharePoint.

  • Collab365 SharePoint Virtual Summit promo video [Facebook]
  • Microsoft Teams is an Apple, Slack is an Orange [buckleyPLANET]
  • New Video Upload : Deep Dive into Power BI with SharePoint [buckleyPLANET | YouTube]

Speakers dinner at #SPSLA 2019Quoted

Fellow MVP Richard Hay (@OneObs), a content producer for Penton Media, reached out to me for some insights on what is happening with the Office 365 and Microsoft 365 brands, and I shared my opinion for his article on ITProToday in that while there is no formal guidance, there is an organic move away from O365 toward M365 branding:

  • The Line Between Microsoft Subscriptions Is Becoming Blurred [ITProToday]

Client content

And finally, I wanted to share some of the client content I have helped write and/or edit as a fractional-CMO for both Extranet User Manager and revealit.io

Coming up next for october…more podcasts and vlogs, more webinars, two (possibly three) ebooks, an a keynote address at the ARMA Conference. Oh, and I’ll have a birthday and get to see my 6-week old grandson for the first time while visiting my daughter and her husband in Minneapolis. That will be the highlight of my month, with the rest as gravy 🙂

 

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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.