I spent some time over the last few days reviewing the sessions at the upcoming Crow Canyon Software is a Gold Sponsor and has been an active promoter of this Conference for a year now. It is great to see it coming together and we look forward to meeting the many people attending and participating in this major SharePoint event.
The Conference has a number of new and trending topics, along with the perennial favorites, in the over 200 sessions and workshops taking place. Let’s take a look. (You can see the full list of sessions here.)
One big addition is a “Diversity & Inclusion” track with has 14 sessions on topics such as “Motherhood in Tech” and “Myths about business ownership and a woman’s perspective on the tech industry”. While the SharePoint world has tended to have proportionally more women involved than in other tech fields, discussions and talks on this issue will certainly encourage more participation and involvement.
Also in that track is a session called “Take a Chance and Hire that Fine Arts Major”. Crow Canyon actually has an Art History major and a Linguistics major on staff – and both are working out quite well. So, parents, your child pursuing a Philosophy or Arts degree may find a job after all!
Another big concern this spring is complying with GDPR, the new European data regulations coming into effect May 25, and there are several sessions on that, including “Don’t Gamble on Your GDPR Compliance”.
Specifically in the SharePoint/Office 365 world, the trending topics, other than the above, seem to be the following, with several sessions on each of these:
– SharePoint Framework
– Communications Sites
– OneDrive
– Digital Workplaces / Intranets
– Microsoft Graph
– Teams and Yammer
– Multi-Geo Scenarios
– And generally, how to use SharePoint for business automation
Note: on that last subject, I am giving a session “Building a Request Management System in SharePoint & Office 365” on Tuesday, May 22. I will cover the design elements – UI/UX, Workflows, Reporting – more than the hard-core programming of a request management system.
And let’s not forget a sneak preview by Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, “SharePoint Server 2019: A First Look”, with this in the description: “Be the first to see and learn about SharePoint Server 2019. SharePoint Server 2019 is the next stop on the on-premises journey for SharePoint.”
The perennial topics, updated for 2018, with Cloud, Mobile, and Hybrid elements taking more prominence, include:
User Adoption, Migration, Governance, Search, Backups, Compliance, Collaboration, Performance, Analytics, Integration with other systems, PowerShell, and Administration.
Overall, we are expecting an exciting and informative conference. If you are coming to Vegas, stop by our booth #217, which is next to Microsoft’s. If not, we will keep you informed of the news and trends – in this blog, on Twitter, by email, etc. – that will affect you and your business as we continue our journey in the SharePoint and Office 365 worlds.
