As the IT industry is changing and moving to cloud based services and Office 365, there is a new type of learning for IT Pro and developers around cloud services and the first place you will see this is at the SharePoint Conference 2014.
Over the last 20 years Microsoft have committed to releasing a new version of most of their products every 3 years, adding more features, service and something new to learn. Supported by Microsoft Learning and training suppliers this has helped with publishing book, release of documentation and conferences where the new technology is introduced by a round of cheers and caps from the audience. With the last 4 SharePoint Conferences being every 18 months apart we have seen them as a major conference (where we expect to see the new release) to a minor conference where we see more about how users are implementing the new version, best practise and speaking to customer who have already moved to the new platform.
I realised a few months ago attending a Microsoft conference that this SharePoint Conference isn’t what the trend says and isn’t a minor conference because you won’t see something new!
Office 365 brings the SharePoint Conference to a new level! We know from the Office 365 blog that the cloud service is being updated every 90 days but we are seeing features added more frequently than that with updates to Exchange and SharePoint either side of Christmas.
So where is the best place to hear about these updates? Well of course it is the SharePoint Conference, where else are you going to hear directly from Microsoft on their roadmap for all services in Office 365, what updates are and what their thinking is and roadmap moving forward for those features.
To me this makes me want the SharePoint Conference more often as these updates are happening every few months and adding value to the services we offer through Office 365.
If you aren’t attending #SPC14 this time round, hopefully this will help to encourage you to come all the SharePoint Conferences in the future and for those who are attending – look forward to seeing you there.