Upcoming Events and Sessions in Q1

Its been great being home for a couple weeks following the Christmas holiday, but its time to once again climb aboard a plane and head out onto the road. As I occasionally do, I thought it would be good to share some dates and topics for my next few shows. Of course, this is not the extent of my travels – only the events at which I’ll be speaking. Somewhere amidst all the travel and hotels and office visits, I’ll be meeting with customers and partners, and occasionally getting some work done. Believe me, the travel is never as glamorous as it sounds. Since I don’t sleep on flights, I guess I’ll be getting a lot of content done.

SharePoint User Group DC (#SUGDC)
Thursday, January 9th at 6:30pm in Tysons Corner 
http://www.sugdc.org/
Although the site has not been updated, I’ll be speaking on the topic of What It Takes to Make Social Successful” and discuss both the technical and cultural changes that may be necessary to bring social collaboration into your organization. Metalogix is a regular sponsor of this user group, and I hope to see some familiar faces while I am in town.

SharePoint Saturday Virginia Beach (#SPSVB)
Saturday, January 11th all day long  at VB Advanced Technology Center
http://spsevents.org/city/va-beach/Pages/SPSVB2014.aspx
This weekend will be the 6th annual SharePoint Saturday event in Virginia Beach – which is where it all started, folks. I may still have a 5th anniversary t-shirt sitting around, and if I can find it, will bring it along. I have two sessions, both in the theater in the morning. At 9am, I’ll be presenting “How to Kill Innovation in SharePoint in 5 Easy Steps” and then at 10:30am will present “How Social and the Cloud Impact Your Governance Strategy.” Both should be very entertaining, but with 50 sessions to choose from (wow!) there is a lot to choose from. We’ll have a large showing from Team Metalogix, and are one of the event’s gold sponsors.

SharePoint Saturday Stockholm (#SPSSTHLM)
Saturday, January 25th all day long at the World Trade Center
http://www.spsstockholm.com/2014/
I’m excited to visit beautiful Stockholm for the second time, and I believe this is the same venue that I attended last time, so at least I know where everything is! For this event, Metalogix is the platinum sponsor, so you can rest assured we’ll be there en force. I’ll be presenting my session “How to Kill Innovation in SharePoint in 5 Easy Steps” at 11:20am, and am looking forward to seeing Wictor, Paul, Jethro, and the newly-minted MVP Jussi Mori, among others. Looking forward to this great event!

Global Customer Forum
Tuesday, February 18th at the Microsoft Boston MTC
No details yet on this event, other than I’ll be presenting, and that it is an invitation-only event sponsored by Metalogix and a couple regional partners. I’ll share more details as I have them, but I believe I’ll be speaking about the shifts in the SharePoint space toward hybrid and cloud. And I’m sure I’ll say the word “governance” about 100 times, because that is what I do.

IT Pro Camp Washington DC
Saturday, February 22nd all day at the Microsoft Chevy Chase MTC
http://itprocamp.com/washdc/ 
While my session will be geared more toward those IT Pros who want more of a business perspective, rest assured that there will be some actual IT Pro meat in my session entitled “8 Things to consider as SharePoint Moves to the Cloud.” The genesis of this session was actually from a couple presentations given my Microsoft people at the Seattle chapter of IAMCP, and I’m excited to break in this new material at this event, which is a new one for me.

SharePoint Conference (#SPC14)
March 2nd through 6th at the Venetian in Las Vegas
http://www.sharepointconference.com/
It’s time once again for SharePoint’s “big show” in Las Vegas, and this is an event you do not want to miss. I’ll be presenting a session called “SharePoint on-premises, in the cloud, and everything in between” (link to my abstract) in which I will walk through the many different paths that SharePoint has into the cloud. It’s an IT business decision-maker session geared toward those who want to know how they can make the most of their on prem investments as they slowly (or quickly) transition into the cloud. You can follow the chatter about this session on Twitter at #SPC293, or by following me at @buckleyplanet

For some, you might be thinking “man, that’s a lot of travel in Q1,” while others may be thinking “boy, that sure is a quiet schedule compared to past years.” From a mileage standpoint, it is much quieter than the past 3 years – but I have a TON of content to produce within this period, and most of my sessions and demos are brand new. Plus I am leading a major new initiative at Metalogix, working with partners and influencers, all of which has me keeping busy.

Focusing on this week, I’m looking forward to getting back to DC and spending time with my Federal team, and then heading down to Virginia Beach to spend time with the community. See you out there!

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 the Director of North American Partner Management for leading ISV Rencore (https://rencore.com/), leads content strategy for TekkiGurus, and is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits. He hosts the monthly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.