It was back at the fall edition of Ignite 2020 when I remember watching this particular breakout session on large meetings. And in that session it was hinted that Microsoft Teams Meetings and Live Events were going to merge at some point in the future. In fact, I was so excited about this that at the time I actually screenshotted it and threw it up on Twitter. Doing an advanced search this evening it's right here and honestly I was kinda surprised that I didn't hear more about it. The session was DB138: Scale and Customize Virtual Meetings and Events with Microsoft Teams. Now, I am of the personal opinion that even though today they are separate it makes a ton of sense to merge them at some point. Why? Because having one type of event which you can skin exactly how you want it to be is far simpler than two with two different ways of setting them up, two different sets of functionality and having to repeatedly explain the difference in terms of the event experience to users. Whether its many to many, one to many, few to many, big or small, a single event based upon a combination of event options, functionalities and apps would make life simpler. Let's think about the the recent webinar functionality - webinars are simply a registration form over a standard meeting where the registration data is held in the Lists app and meeting options are configured in such a way to facilitate the format of the event. Hard mute is auto applied. The presenters set in the webinar setup define the presenter and attendee roles. But under the hood it's still just a Teams Meeting right? Could we reach that point with a Teams Meeting and Live Event? As mentioned, hard mute dropped late in 2020 and we now have hard mute for video in addition to audio. We also have the ability to turn off chat and reactions in the meeting options both of which came out this year. Therefore, today the audience cannot should we wish interact with the presenters. What's the other defining feature of a Live Event? That's right. Q&A. When I think about it, Q&A has really been the backbone of the Live Event: questions raised and answers given by a moderator as the speaker is doing their talk