The excitement for Teams Nation is building. Today, we discovered that we had surpassed 1000 registrants, which is absolutely amazing considering that just a few weeks ago we thought that we may not have been able to run Teams Nation at all. Now that the dates for Microsoft Build have been officially confirmed (25th – 27th May) we can disclose that we discovered these dates via a leak online and had to make an immediate call on whether to stick with the date of 26th May, whether to reschedule or whether to cancel it outright. Since we had committed to doing another event last October – the first since we changed the name from TeamsFest to Teams Nation we really didn’t want to can it since we had been working on it since the new year. We also decided that it would be unfair to make attendees choose between Teams Nation and Build as we thought many who would register for our event would ultimately like to attend both. So we ended up bringing Teams Nation forward by two weeks to Wednesday 12th May. Our choice on this date is mainly due to when all of us were available, as well as avoiding conflicts or being too close to any other events that we were aware of in the calendar
The following few weeks were absolutely frantic as we had to inform all of the speakers who had submitted sessions throughout the Call for Speakers (which was open for two months at that point) about the date change. This was over 200 individuals many of them MVP’s. We were all absolutely blown away as pretty much every one of them could accommodate the change in dates. There is no way that we can really begin to thank them – and the moderator team enough for sticking by us. For me, this says a lot about who they are and how they really are the best community in tech
So moving forward to May 12th, Teams Nation will feature
- 115 Sessions
- 11 Tracks
- A new track dedicated to underlying technologies called SharePoint, OneDrive, Yammer and Stream (SOYS)
- A new track which focuses on Table Talks and Unconference sessions
- A new track in the French Language
- A new track in the German Language
This year, we are proud to have a number of firsts
- We have more women speakers in the conference than ever before
- We have our first speakers from Africa
- This is the first event we have had tracks in other languages to the English language
We have tried again to push what we do in order to keep things fresh. The new tracks aren’t new as in completely new formats – we’ve looked to emulate what we liked from other conferences such as Microsoft Ignite (Table Talks), Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon (Multiple Language Tracks) and MVP Summit (SOYS) to see if these formats work and appeal in our own conference setting. We learn each and every time we do a conference and I guess we will soon see if attendees like them or not. We’ll have to think about it again soon for next time.
Yes. Next time. You may be surprised – but people have already asked us!
Traditionally, we usually confirm that there will be a next time on the day – and traditionally we um and ah about that right up until that point. However, since we don’t want to get too formulaic and given what happened this time around we want – at all costs – to avoid a clash with Build and any other main event in the Microsoft calendar such as Ignite and Inspire. Because things are so exciting right now we’ve decided to just put it out there – and as far as we know 2022 is completely free at the moment with nothing scheduled. We held our first TeamsFest conference back on April 1st 2020. We thought it would be great to return to that original date of the first Wednesday of April
To that end, we are announcing Teams Nation 2022 which will take place on Wednesday April 6th 2022
There are many reasons why we have chosen to do it again, but the main one is that Teams Nation is a true community conference and a labour of love for us. We don’t have corporate sessions or sponsors. We are not trying to sell you anything. We don’t paywall or have vendor sessions or try to force networking situations, or offer things like raffles for vendor prizes even though we have had several opportunities to do so in the past – and at this event too. We have turned them down each and every time. For us – who already work in corporate roles and are on payroll so don’t need any remuneration – it’s all about coming together as a community to learn and show our passion for Microsoft Teams, it’s underlying technologies and extensibility options no strings attached. One of our tenets since we have run conferences and user groups since the beginning of 2019 is that we aim to democratise knowledge and do that for people who cannot afford to attend. We want to bring the opportunity to attend a first class conference to them which can help them day to day in their skills or help them develop their career further. Many attendees have become active community members and it’s a point of pride for us that several speakers have gone on to achieve MVP status
As a community conference, the one thing we need your help with is to spread the word about Teams Nation 2021 and help to get others onboard. We have great reach, but of course you can help us significantly through passing it on to colleagues, friends, your customers and your local community. Your recommendations really do make a difference. We have made the registration easy and the join process friction free. All you need to do is provide the following links to register and browse the amazing line up for this year
Registration: https://teamsnation.rocks/register
Teams Nation Hub with Schedule: https://teamsnation.rocks/hub
The line up really is truly one of a kind. We know that choosing sessions will be difficult – even more than last year, however we want people to have different conference experiences and explore all different kinds of options. As you will see from the schedule every speaker at this event is amazing and excel at what they do. We are also so fortunate to be partnering with The aMS Community run by Patrick Guimonet and Teams Community Day DE run by Raphael Kollner who are facilitating our French and German tracks respectively. They are great to work with – and of course we hope that this can be made more permanent in the future.
Adam, Vesku, Chris and I look forward to seeing you at Teams Nation 2021
As always we have another great day ahead of us. And now one more in 2022
Best, Chris
@Microsoft365Pro 