SharePoint Saturday Ensenada 2019

I want to send out a huge thank you to the SharePoint Saturday Ensenada team for letting me talk about practical uses of the Power Platform. As a first-time event, I was impressed with the turn-out and the engagement from the attendees on all topics. I have never seen so many happy faces diving in to learn all about SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and the Power Platform.

Attendees talking with the great sponsors of SPS Ensenada, Crow Canyon Software and iTProve Corporation

My presentation for this inaugural event was The Power is in Everyone’s Hands – Practical use of PowerApps, Flow and PowerBI where I talked about practical uses of the Power Platform for "No-Code" Applications. This is one of my favorite hands-on sessions as I show many demos and interact with the attendees as much as I can. For SPS Ensenada, the interact was incredible and I was having a lot of fun, even when folks stumped with a few questions. I had to use my friend, Wes Miller's favorite phrase, "It depends", way too much.

Ever since SharePoint 2010, there was a push to provide a way for Business and Power Users to create their own "application" to help their business processes and goals. At that time, SharePoint Designer became the tool of choice. Those users could create amazing business process management systems with SharePoint Lists, Libraries, Workflow Manager, and InfoPath. As companies are moving to Office 365, they are wondering how to move these developed platforms. The answer is now Power Platform with PowerBI, PowerApps, and Microsoft Flow. I showed how I use Power Platform to do some basic management of data from Twitter to Azure Storage Tables to SharePoint Lists to PowerApps. The possibilities are nearly endless with the Power Platform. The best part in the end about the Power Platform? If you hit the limits of the capabilities, there are ways for IT teams to take what you have done and move to larger systems like Azure Logic Apps, Web Apps, and SQL Server BI.

To help you get through some of the rough times and questions about the Power Platform, feel free to leave a comment and I can respond. If you want to ask me a question privately, use my contact form on the site.

I can't thank the organizing committee enough for letting me come down and present on the Power Platform. As this was the inaugural event for Ensenada and Baja California, I felt privileged to help kick of this event and look forward to next year where I hope to return and talk more with the great attendees. Lastly, I do want to thank David and Nichole Leveille of Crush Networks for the great SharePint afterwards. While almost every SharePoint event has these networking and social gatherings, this one kept going and going with great conversations, laughing, and good spirits. Plus, being right on the oceanside with an premium view of the Pacific Ocean and the sunset that evening did not hurt either.

The crowd enjoying themselves at the SPS Ensenada SharePint

SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles 2019

I want to send out a huge thank you to the SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles team for letting me talk about my journey to the Cloud. This was an incredible event in the Southern California area. Thank you for adding me at the last minute to fill gaps.

My presentation for this year's event was Don't Fear if the Forecast is Cloud! where I talked about my journey from Server Hugger to lover of Cloud and Modern Engineering. I know it can be a tough situation when you don't have all the information. There is mo much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the Cloud and I hope to clear at least a start of that. My journey has been rough at times as I had to change my mindset and learn new skills to enable my change. Do not feel bad if you are having a rough time with the change; that is a very normal response.

To help you get through some of the rough times and questionsabout the Cloud or my journey, feel free to leave a comment and I can resond. If you want to ask me a question privately, use my contact form on the site.

SharePoint Saturday Utah 2019

I want to convey a big thank you to the folks at SharePoint Saturday Utah for inviting me out again for another year. SharePoint Saturday Utah is one of my favorite events and I love attending every year for the past 4 years. This year was no exception even with the fun of a cancelled flight home extending my stay another night. Got to love February weather in the Rockies!

I had a blast talking with attendees and other speakers about Cloud, Office 365, SharePoint and Power Platform. My talk, The Power of the Cloud: Working with Flow and PowerApps, went quite well. On top of that, I filled in some space with a talk about my Journey to the Cloud. If you wanted a copy of either deck, click the following button.

I am sorry that it took a long time to post these. It has been a busy year and I forgot to do it. Should have done it on the extra night in Salt Lake City.

Office 365 Connect 2018

I want to send a large thank you to NC Communications and Nigel Clapham and Spencer Harbar in specific for inviting me to speak at the Office 365 and SharePoint Connect 2018 conference in Haarlem, Netherlands. This is the second time I have spoken at the Philharmonie in Haarlem and enjoyed it just like the last time.

Arriving later on Tuesday, I got to see some fellow speakers in the evening at a local user group meeting. With this conference in town, the local user group gets to have some incredible speakers for their meeting this month. I sat in on some of the discussions and the start of a panel discussion. Unfortunately, my stomach growled so loud it interrupted, or so I felt it was. Dinner was at a place I enjoyed a lot last summer, Thrill Grill, and was as good as I remembered it.

Wednesday started with some errands for my trip in the Netherlands so I missed the Keynote. I did get to the Philmarmonie in time to catch Eric Shupps session on Introduction to Azure Web Applications for Office and SharePoint Developers. The developer in me thanks Eric for some understandings of how to setup Web Apps to work with Azure AD. I had some good conversations with presenters and attendees around many.

In the afternoon, my first session of the conference was an oldie but goodie, Migrating SharePoint from On-Prem to Office 365 - Lessons Learned by Microsoft IT. One of the things I find is that many conferences like this session because so many businesses are still looking at a move from on-prem to the cloud. This is still popular and Office 365 Connect 2018 wanted me to present it. I got some really good interaction and had a great time presenting it. I want to thank all of the folks who attended and made the session a good one.

On Thursday, my second session of the conference was a "Lightning Session". I presented my SharePoint on Azure - Tips and Tricks session. Normally, this is a 60 minute session but I had to cut it down to 20 minutes. I felt bad for the presenter after me as I didn't make the 20 minutes but ended at 25. Another good session with great attendees wrapped up my Office 365 Connect for 2018.

Again, I can't thank the NC Communications team and Nigel Clapham for the opportunity to come speak at their conference and hope to return for more in the future.

Cheers!

SharePoint Saturday Kansas City 2018

It was my pleasure to come to Kansas City for SharePoint Saturday Kansas City 2018. I was excited to speak on PowerApps and Microsoft Flow in the morning and Migrations to SharePoint Online in the afternoon. The great thing about intimate events like SharePoint Saturdays is the interaction with the attendees and I was not disappointed by SPSKC.

Friday night was a great time to talk engage with the other speakers at the SPSKC Speaker Dinner. The selection of location at Hayward Pit BBQ was a great choice. I was hoping to get some Kansas City barbeque on this tip and I was quite pleased with the quality and choice of meats. (Insert Tim Allen monkey grunt here) On top of the food, the conversations were great with the speakers, especially spending time with Mike Fitzmaurice chatting about tech and the Bed and Breakfast industry.

Saturday started with Stacy Deere-Strole's keynote to kick things off. I got my first session in the morning, Quick and Easy Business Apps with PowerApps and Microsoft Flow. I had a great audience of various types of roles from IT Pro administrators to Devs to Business Users. One of the things that feeds me as a speaker is the reaction from my audience and I had a great time with this audience. We got to experience PowerApps and Microsoft Flows around Twitter and the #SPSKC hashtag. I showed how I can schedule tweets and follow the hashtag using Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, and SharePoint Lists. Click the button below to get the slides that I presented in the session and thank you to all of the attendees of this session.

In the afternoon, I gathered some folks to talk about Migrating SharePoint to the Cloud: Lessons Learned by Microsoft IT. In the session, we got to talk about some of the mindsets and steps taken for migrations to SharePoint Online. Those mindsets and steps could also be taken for on-prem upgrades as well, which made the information even more effective. Then, we talked about how Microsoft IT migrated our key internal portal from on-prem to the cloud. If you click the button below this paragraph, you can get a copy of the slides I presented in the session. Again, I want to thank all of the people that attended the session and added to the discussion.

Now that SharePoint Kansas City is done for 2018, I would like to thank the planning committee, folks like Sharon Weaver, Jonathan Weaver, and Nate Chamberlain, and the sponsors like Focal Point Solutions, INNOVA Consulting, K2, SkySync, Smarter Consulting, and Trabon Solutions for making this a very successful event. I look forward to returning again and engaging with the SharePoint/Office 365 Community of Kansas City.