Community Insights on Microsoft Ignite 2016

There is a global migration to Atlanta underway, with Microsoft’s largest annual event – Ignite – set to officially begin on Monday. Most of my team, from various points around the globe, are already on the ground, and a couple more of us landing this weekend. Personally, I’ll be there mid-day Sunday, where a list of tasks awaits in prep for Day 1 of the event. If you have not yet seen the wave of social messages from the Beezy team, just wait – there will be more…

CollabTalk tweetjam Sep 2016Looking at the agenda for the week, I thought it would be interesting to share opinions of the week, with all of the press releases and product announcements to be made, to get the pulse of those who are attending – as well as those who are watching things unfold from afar.

So on Friday, September 30th at 9am EDT we will once again convene as a community to discuss “Takeaways from Microsoft Ignite 2016” right there from the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. I need to figure out where to host things – I’m thinking from the speaker’s lounge, which should have a decent wi-fi connection. So for the panelists below who may also be attending and speaking, feel free to join me there just before 9am.

No matter where you are located, you can follow along on Twitter using the #CollabTalk hashtag, or via the official #CollabTalk tweetjam page on Twubs.com/CollabTalk

Joining me on these sessions are a wide variety of experts and community members from around the world, including many MVPs, engineers, project and product managers, and so forth.

If you’ve never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Twubs, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow up questions, share relevant links, retweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session may be tweaked between now and next Friday, but will essentially include:

  1. What was the biggest news out of Ignite this year?
  2. Was there anything not discussed that you expected Microsoft to talk about?
  3. Did you pay attention to partner and vendor announcements, and if so, what caught your attention?
  4. Based on what you learned this week, what will be the impact to your business?
  5. What sessions or topics will you be watching on Channel 9 in the coming weeks, and why?
  6. Between the Future of SharePoint event in May and now, what are Microsoft’s top 3 hits – and top 3 misses?
  7. For someone who was not able to attend, what should they focus on first from the news and content out of Ignite?

Undoubtedly, there will be side-questions, side-conversations, and wise-cracking throughout. The dialog is usually thought-provoking but also fun. Participating on this panel are a number of MVPs and experts on SharePoint and Office 365. The tweetjam is open to the public, so please join in the discussion!

  • Eli Robillard (@erobillard), SharePoint MVP, musician, fly-fisher, collaboration technology guy
  • Laura Rogers (@WonderLaura), SharePoint MVP, consultant, and owner of IW mentor
  • Naomi Moneypenny (@nmoneypenny), Office365 MVP and cto at ManyWorlds
  • Jeff Fried (@jefffried), cto and vp of engineering at BA Insight
  • Jeffrey Schwartz (@jeffreyschwartz), editor of Redmond Magazine and editor-at-large for Redmond Channel Partner magazine
  • John White (@diverdown1964), SharePoint MVP and cto at UnlimitedViz Inc.
  • Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), Office Servers and Services MVP, founder of PixelMill
  • Randy Drisgill (@drisgill), SharePoint MVP and branding and design expert at Rackspace
  • Chris Johnson (@LoungeFlyZ), co-founder and cto at Hyperfish
  • Ryan Schouten (@ShrPntKnight) senior SharePoint architect and evangelist at ZAACT
  • Robert Toro (@SharePointToro), SharePoint practice director at Slalom
  • Brian Culver (@SPbrianculver), SharePoint MCM and founder, president of Expert Point SolutionEric Riz (@rizinsights), SharePoint MVP and ceo of Empty Cubicle 
  • Scot Hillier (@scothillier), SharePoint MVP and independent consultant
  • Stacy Deere-Strole (@sldeere), owner of Focal Point Solutions
  • David Fletcher (@ooglebob), enterprise sales director for Beezy
  • Michal Pisarek (@michalpisarek), SharePoint MVP and founder of Bonzai Intranet
  • Noah Sparks (@noahsparks), community igniter and strategy manager at Carpool Digital
  • Tobias Zimmergren (@zimmergren), SharePoint MVP and technical product owner for cloud offerings at Rencore
  • Toby McGrail (@ctcfit), senior SharePoint technology architect for Hewlett Packard Enterprise
  • and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), Office Server and Services MVP and cmo for Beezy

I’m sure we’ll have quite a few more folks joining the discussion – and as always plenty of lurkers, too. Really looking forward to wrapping up my week at Ignite by hearing from others…always a great way to hear about things you missed in the
barrage of announcements.

Hope you can join us online!

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 sits on the board of TekkiGurus, is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits, and provides channel and marketing services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the quarterly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.