SharePoint Saturday Denver

Another SharePoint Saturday and another great event! I want to thank the SharePoint Saturday Committee for Denver, Colorado for inviting me to speak and giving me the opportunity for not only one, but two sessions. The attendees were great and had incredible questions for both sessions.

The day started with the keynote delivered by Dan Holme about many of the announcements for SharePoint both on-prem and in Office 365. Some of the announcements were from Microsoft Ignite but some also announced prior to Microsoft Ignite. The audience loved his hands-on presentations which added to his presentation.

After the keynote, my first session of the day was Migrating SharePoint to the Cloud: Lessons Learned by Microsoft IT. The attendees were very interested in this topic and understanding how they can effectively move from SharePoint on-prem to SharePoint Online. I walked through how we setup and ran the projects to move to the cloud, the mines we stepped on and how to avoid them. I appreciated the good questions and interaction we had.

Later in the day, I got my first opportunity to co-present with Rick Claus, Lead of the Cloud Ops Advocate team at Microsoft. We spoke about our Journey to the Cloud as we have changed our careers going from Server Huggers to Cloud Administrators. We spoke about the change in mindset we had to do ourselves and then help enable in others around us. This change was internal teams at Microsoft for myself and for IT Professionals around the world for Rick. While most of the presentation was our story, the end of the presentation, including the deck, talked about how you can work to get the Cloud Mindset. Check out the links and resources to help you along.

Again, I would like to thank the SharePoint Saturday Denver team, specifically Liz Sundet and Jeff Willinger, for reaching out and asking me to speak. It also gave me a great opportunity to collaborate with Rick for the first time and to introduce Rick to the SharePoint community. I also want to thank Theresa Eller for reminding me to apply for this great day of sharing and Art Hogarth for joining in after the Tech Talk we did the day before.

Microsoft Tech Talks - Managing Success in Microsoft Teams

I want to thank Art Hogarth, Jason Morales and Adam Findlan of the Denver Microsot Tech Talks team for the opportunity to speak with Theresa Eller on how to Manage Success in Microsoft Teams. The turnout was great from the local community with IT Pros from across many different business types as well as those supporting government agencies and military branches. On top of the great attendees, the nacho bar was the hit of the day!

The attendees got to listen to me talking about the infrastructure and services that Microsoft Teams utilize. After surviving my presenting, they got to see some great demos from Theresa showing how Microsoft Teams could be used and integration with Power BI. On top of the great information, we got a lot of great questions from the audience and valuable conversations from the questions and answers.

The sides that were presented during the Tech Talk will be available by clicking the following button and finding the October 2018 Tech Talk.

Microsoft Ignite 2018

Even though this was not my first Microsoft Ignite or Microsoft TechEd, this was my first time attending as a speaker and Microsoft Expert working in a Product Group booth. I want to thank the Azure Customer Success team and the Cloud Ops Advocates for the opportunity to speak with the attendees and TheCUBE for the opportunity to chat with them about Site Reliability Engineering.

As usual with Microsoft Ignite (or Microsoft TechEd before that), the week is spent walking, talking, eating and networking. While I did not have a step counting device, I spent a good amount of time during the week with others using them. If I had to estimate my mileage, my mileage would have ranged from 4.5 miles on the shortest day to the 9-10 miles on the longest day. My legs are definitely not up for this on a consistent basis. Thanks to the hot tub at my hotel, I was able to recover a couple of times during the week.

During the week, I spent two of the days in the Azure Customer Success booth talking about the five habits of highly effective Azure users. You can head over to https://aka.ms/fivehabits to find out more about them. They include using Azure Advisor, Azure Mobile App, Azure Service Health, and Azure Roadmap. Now, you might say that is just four things. The fifth thing is engaging with your peers and the community. I am a member of #TheKrewe and the SharePoint communities. When I see very successful IT Pros, they are engaged with their communities both asking and answering questions.

This leads me to the networking part of my week. It was great to get back in touch with friends and colleagues from around the world. It was also great getting to know new friends. The one thing that Microsoft Ignite does is bring IT Pros from around the world together in one place to talk and share ideas. Michael Bender, a Cloud Ops Advocate for Microsoft and leader of #TheKrewe, talked about on his blog about a successful conference that sessions are important but hallway conversations are almost more important. I took advantage of this as much as I could throughout the week, both on-site at Microsoft Ignite and in the evenings.

The biggest part of my week was my presentation on Thursday. I have been lucky to speak at some great events on my own and on behalf of Microsoft. This is one of the highlights of my speaking career. The 75 minutes I got to talk with the attendees about my journey towards the Site Reliability Engineering role was very close to my heart. I can't thank the attendees both in-person and online. The best part is the session was recorded and available online for those that could not attend live. You can watch the video streaming below or click on the button below, sign up for a Tech Community account, and download the video and PowerPoint deck.

If that wasn't enough, I got another opportunity thanks to Phoummala Schmitt, another Cloud Ops Advocate from Microsoft. She introduced me to Stuart Miniman from TheCUBE and we got to chatting about Site Reliability Engineering. One thing led to another and I got the opportunity to that with Stu and his co-host, Rebecca Knight, about SRE on TheCUBE. Thanks to Stu, Rebecca and the team from TheCUBE for the opportunity to talk about SRE in the Enterprise environment.

Jared Shockley, Sr. Site Reliability Engineer, Microsoft sits with Stu Miniman & Rebecca Knight for Microsoft Ignite 2018 for Microsoft Ignite 2018 in Orlando, FL. #MSIgnite #Microsoft #theCUBE #SRE #AzOps

Microsoft Ignite 2018 was a great week for me professionally and personally. With the move of the event to early November next year, I am hoping to get myself back as a speaker.

Microsoft Ignite 2018

I have some amazing news. I will be attending Ignite 2018 this year in Orlando, FL. But I just won’t be attending … I am presenting my first time ever at Ignite!

Many of you might have seen me present at SharePoint Saturdays, online via Microsoft IT Showcase or Channel 9, or other events and conferences. This will be my first time at Ignite and I could not be happier.

So you might be thinking that I will be speaking about Office 365, SharePoint or Azure but you would be wrong. I am going to be speaking about the transition of my career from IT Operations through Service Management into Service Engineering and finally to Site Reliability Engineering.

Many IT Pros feel like they might not understand how to make the next steps in their careers and when they hear about things like the Cloud, they get scared of it. My goal is helping you advancing your career to the next step, walking a similar journey that I have, and showing you how my career has progressed with advancing my skills and knowledge.

Come hang out with me on Thursday, September 27th from 10:45 am to 12:00 pm in W304 E-H in the Orange County Convention Center.

Microsoft Tech Talks - Managing Success in Microsoft Teams

I have the great opportunity for another stop on my Road Trip this year in Denver. Working with Art Hogarth and teaming up with Theresa Eller as a co-presenter, we will be presenting how businesses can take advantage of Microsoft Teams and its integration capabilities.

During this session, Theresa and I will demonstrate how to use Microsoft Teams and how it can be leveraged with other Microsoft applications. We will show you how to use Teams to display and analyze data with Power BI, make phone calls, setup automation and other efficiencies with Flow, as well as discuss how to use API’s to connect to other data sources like Salesforce and other developer tasks. We will also discuss the various roles and platforms that are currently available.

If this sounds like something you want to learn about and happen to be in the Denver area on Friday, October 5th, register to join us.

About Theresa Eller

Theresa Eller is a Microsoft Premier Field Engineer with a passion for technology and customer success. Accordingly, she is a frequent speaker in the international SharePoint and Office 365 community. Theresa holds a Master of Arts degree in Teaching and Learning with Technology, has two dogs, and loves to travel.

Meeting Schedule

Time		Schedule
2:00 pm		Food/Networking/Sign-in
2:15 pm		Opening/Welcome/Featured Topic
3:50 pm		Q&A

Additional Details

• Food and drinks will be provided.
• Photographs of attendees will be taken at the event and may be used for Microsoft-internal marketing communications.

Parking

FREE Parking on site!

Location

Microsoft Office
7595 E. Technology Way, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80237