About being part of an international experts’ community in Microsoft technologies

This year’s European Sharepoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference in Prague gathered some of the most influential leaders and technical experts in the dedicated Microsoft community.

About being part of an international experts’ community in Microsoft technologies

This year’s European Sharepoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference in Prague gathered some of the most influential leaders and technical experts in the dedicated Microsoft community. We couldn’t miss such an opportunity to be part of the conversation and connect with over 2000 peers, 120 speakers and some of our long-term partners and collaborators.

Our Digital Workplace and Managed Services experts we’re eager to mingle with like-minded people, sharing the same passions and curiosities regarding Microsoft technologies and platforms.

Iuliana Grava, Operations Lead, Managed Services

“I came to ESPC19 with the hope of learning more about the products we work with straight from the source, as well as find out what is next for this line of business that we're in.

My expectations were met and surpassed, because I was able to gain technical knowledge as well as powerful insights about the culture of other companies such as Microsoft and what their strategies for empowering everyone in the workplace are.”

Alice Rosa, Sharepoint & Office 365 Consultant, Digital Workplace

“Working for more than 8 years with SharePoint and Office365, I was looking forward to attending my first ESPC. I was filled with excitement about meeting a lot of passionate people, learning from them and sharing our experiences working on Microsoft technologies.

I was expecting to hear the latest news about the Microsoft 365 suite and how we can leverage the new features to be more productive in bringing value to our customers, to learn best practices and gather knowledge to share with my colleagues back home.”

Our team really took the chance to dive deep into the Sharepoint, Office 365 & Azure topics, such as:

  • SharePoint Framework, Teams, Security, AI, Graph, Azure AD, Power BI, Flow, Cosmos DB, Windows 10, APIs, IoT, Microsoft 365, Governance and Integration, to highlight just a few.

ESPC 2019 also brought the latest news from Microsoft Ignite, delivered directly by Microsoft leaders and Product Team members, such as: Jeff Teper, Scott Hanselman, Miri Rodriguez, Vesa Juvonen and Alex Simons.

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Top 3 ideas our experts came home with

Alice:

  1. ESPC enforced one of my core beliefs: focus on what brings business value to our customers.

  2. Microsoft 365 ecosystem is changing fast, attending such a conference helps us stay in touch with the community.

  3. There are a lot of products on top of Office 365 that are quite similar, identifying a core differentiator is of utmost importance in order to thrive in the market.

You can read more about Alice's experience at ESPC here.

Iuliana:

  1. The importance of digital literacy cannot be denied, it got me thinking that we could also invest some time and resources in training everyone on how to use the Microsoft 365 suite offered to its full potential.

  2. Collaboration in the workplace has evolved a lot and it is constantly improving the way teams work and empowering each employee to be more productive, especially through the Teams application, which is the most important app from Microsoft right now (it will integrate all other Microsoft 365 apps and become the hub for teamwork and productivity).

  3. AI and machine learning are gaining traction fast, Microsoft is integrating them into all of its apps and they are changing the way we work, helping us streamline business processes so that we can have more free time to create and innovate. This is the future of IT.

Among the speakers that gave our colleagues something to think about

Jeff Teper, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Office, OneDrive and SharePoint, with his keynote on Intelligent Workplace with Microsoft 365.

Tracy van der Schyff, MVP, The Guid Stuff, who talked about enabling others to serve themselves better, expand their possibilities by increasing their capacity to learn.

Karuna Gatimu, business architect and productivity expert working in the Microsoft Teams product group.

Jussi Roin, Microsoft Regional Director, MCM, MVP, who held a session about building Proof of Concepts and solutions using Azure Serverless.

Morgan Simonsen, MVP, NBIM Norway, had a session about “The Great Azure Networking Tour 2019”, talking about a different way to setup your infrastructure from a networking & security point pf view.

Chris O'Brien, MVP, Head of Development at Content and Code, who emphasized useful skills and techniques for delivering solutions in Office 365 that should be in every experienced coder’s toolbox.

Laura Kokkarinen gave a really on-point summary of the capabilities of Site Design and Site Scripts, and how we can use these to create consistent experiences for our users.

Scott Hanselman, Partner Program Manager, gave a presentation about how the last advancements in technology empower us. As the only constant in this world is change, we should be happy that it makes us more productive. With all the power that Microsoft is giving us, we don’t need to focus on plumbing, but rather on bringing business value to our customers.

And the ESPC atmosphere was…

  • very motivating. We got the chance to talk to a lot of the sponsors, some of which we work with directly, as well as new, potential partners. Also, the organization was flawless, no waiting times although there were over 2000 attendees.”

  • amazing. You have diversity, great speakers, good workshops, great food and parties.”

  • awesome. You could feel that everyone was happy to be there, from the vendors at the sponsor booths to speakers and attendees. The organizers were very fast to adapt to any change in the schedule or room size in terms of the number of attendees. The speakers were carefully chosen to meet all expectations: from deep technical dives for developers to business-focused sessions for strategic decision-makers.”

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Being involved in a collaborative community of experts that enable digital evolution at an international level is something to be proud of. Just like Sabine Bendiek, Managing Director Microsoft Germany, stated at the Microsoft Business Summit in Frankfurt, it is only through collaboration and openness that we can all be part of the digital change and trigger a more efficient approach to bringing value in business.