Teams Nation is back! Join us! A Q&A to get you up to speed

SUMMARY

• Wednesday 21st February 2024, 09:00 – 19:30 CET (Central European Time) (UTC+1)
• 7 dedicated tracks to all aspects of Microsoft Teams including Mesh and Copilot
• 60 + Sessions with Microsoft, Microsoft MVP’s, Regional Directors & Microsoft Certified Trainers
• Register: https://teamsbuzz.com/register
• Website: https://teams-nation.com

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Yes, Teams Nation is back! And as we have just opened the registration, let me take the time to bring you up to speed.

WHAT IS TEAMS NATION?
For those of you reading this who have never attended, Teams Nation is a 100% free, 100% community driven online conference dedicated to Microsoft Teams, it’s underlying technologies and it’s extensibility options. It aims to bring together exceptional technical talent and thought leaders to democratize Teams knowledge, encourage participation in the Teams community and give those who are struggling financially an opportunity to attend a first class Teams conference.

For those who have attended Teams Nation previously, we ran the conference from 2019 until early 2022. Over those three/four years the conference came progressively bigger until our last event had over 5,000 registrants. You can read a bit more about its early history here.

SO WHY IS TEAMS NATION RETURNING?
Many in the community will naturally be interested as to why we are returning to run the conference, and I guess there are a few reasons. When Teams Nation ended in early 2022, we had executed 5 conferences back to back without much of a break, each one getting progressively larger until it became huge, a beast – which took a significant amount of time for all of us to execute on top of our daily jobs. Conferences of a few hundred attendees and a few dozen speakers take a lot of work. In the final conference we had over 5,000 registrants, over 3,500 on the day, and over 170 speakers. At that point, we were quite burnt out, and inasmuch as we needed some time away, there were a lot of other opportunities in the community to experience other things we had previously put on the backburner.

But over time we missed the conference and the magic of it. Those showtime moments. We missed our community friends as its an opportunity to catch up and stay in touch. But also, many in the community reached out and told us they missed the conference too. Some couldn’t make events in person. For some it’s too expensive or they have commitments at home. Some loved what Teams Nation was all about. And at the time its probably fair to say we probably didn’t appreciate it as much as we should because we were so in the thick of it.

IS THE WHOLE TEAM RETURNING?
100%. The whole Teams Nation team is back. Vesku Nopanen, and Adam Deltinger, and Chris Webb, and Matti Paukkonen and Paul Dredge. It feels like a reunion of a band or something. We’ve all done our own thing for the past few years and now we are back together. None of us ended the conference and left on bad terms, we all still talk to each other regularly.

SO MORE OF VESKU’S PROMOTIONAL VIDEOS?
Hopefully! It wouldn’t really be Teams Nation without Blade Runner meets Metallica Ride the Lightening era promotional videos!

WITH THE REBOOT OF TEAMS NATION, IS METAVERSE ONE STILL CONTINUING?
For sure. There is no plans to stop Metaverse One even with Teams Nation returning and with Vesku at the helm I can see it going for a long time unless he decides to bring it to an end. In fact, I was speaking to Vesku before the last event back in September, and whilst I stepped down as principal of Metaverse One due to pursuing Security MVP at the time, we were both planning for me to make a cameo return and have some input on that conference. Unfortunately, due to scheduling and going on vacation I couldn’t make it. But let’s see how this year goes.

WILL TEAMS NATION BE THE SAME SIZE AS IT WAS?
No, not for this one. Rebooting the conference we’ve literally had to resurrect everything because we were pretty thorough when we wrapped it all up. And at the time we never really envisaged that we would be back. This has meant recreation of the site, the assets, everything. In terms of the conference this year it will still be around 60-65 sessions, 7 tracks and will have some of the best speakers in the Microsoft Teams world. Of course, it has meant that we have had to be rather more economical and keep lean.

IS THERE ANYTHING WE WON’T SEE THIS YEAR?
Yeah, we have kind of reigned it in and are laser focussed on the fundamentals as in making it very focussed on Teams. If we took the last conference as an example we were doing such as broad spectrum of Microsoft services that maybe that became a bit diluted. We were doing a load on Viva, and Power Platform and Microsoft 365 services like SharePoint – sessions based on their own merits not even about Teams. That isn’t to say that this conference won’t have sessions like that – rather it will just be very, very explicit that it’s all about Teams. It’s means this year we won’t see a Power Platform or a SOYS Track, but we will see a consolidated synergies track.

Secondly – and it was a painful choice – but we dedcided to bye the local tracks (France, Spain, Germany). This is simply because we’ve lacked the time to get them set up properly. It was the same regarding getting a VR space rigged up.

So all up, the really nice to haves have taken a bit of a back seat to focus on the core of the conference. In a sense we all have to reacquaint ourselves with running a conference and if this is going to be a multi-year event then we need to get those things right and locked up this year.

MULTI-YEAR?
We’ll be doing it in 2025 for sure

DON’T YOU NORMALLY ANNOUNCE THE NEXT DATE AT THE CONFERENCE?
We used to. I think we did on the first few runs, but it’s all a bit tongue in cheek and now many conferences do it as a final hurrah in their endnote. I don’t think we would start it all up again just to shut it down. And I don’t think that we’ll build what we want at one attempt. If we learnt something from our first period (2019 – 2022) it was that you need to gain momentum over the course of a series of conferences to get the real buy in from the community and make something of value.

SO HOW MANY WILL YOU SEE AT THE CONFERENCE?
We honestly don’t know. Vesku and I were discussing this recently and so much has changed even in a little under two years. We like to think we were popular based on numbers, but that was in the period of the pandemic. In person has had a lot of resurgence since then, and rightly so because it is good to be together with people and enjoy their company. I certainly felt that way when I spoke at Modern Workplace Conference in Paris last year and I’m thankful to Patirck Guimonet and team for giving me that opportunity. However, I also think it’s a lot about outcomes and mediums dependent on many factors like time, circumstance, finances and so on, and that online events are still great if they result in a return on the time invested. I think there should be options for both – and hybrid. Choice is good.

WHAT KIND OF TRACKS WILL PEOPLE SEE AT TEAMS NATION THIS YEAR?
As we focus on fundamentals all the favourites will return: Adoption and Management, Security, Productivity, Meetings, Rooms and Calling. We have always been proud that the event has catered for and appealed to developers so Build and Extend will return. We’ve consolidated several tracks into Synergies. But the one that is topical is AI and Metaverse for obvious reasons. Copilot has really dominated Microsoft in the past 12 months, and Mesh has made many advances since we last had an event.

WILL COPILOT BE A THEME OF THE CONFERENCE?
Of course. It’s going to have an impact on our work and our lives in the years to come. I don’t know the extent or magnitude or ramifications of that since we are only really getting to grips with it in Microsoft 365 and Azure – but it’s important we are all involved with it as a.) I believe we can’t hide from it, and b.) our involvement will be neccessary to ensure that it’s used responsibly. But Copilot isn’t going to be the only theme of the conference. It’s important that it has many themes and that these are equally as valid as Copilot. Its important to ensure that other themes are not crowded out.

SO WHO ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING THIS YEAR?
Always the most difficult question! There were so many good sessions submitted, and due to the shrinking the conference it was terribly difficult. I am proud of this lineup – every session down to the last – and am glad that many are returning: incredible experienced speakers that I admire like Loryan Strant, Martina Grom, Toni Pohl and Rick Van Rousselt. I am glad that we have many conference favourites returning like Eickhel Mendoza, Yannick Reekmans and Chirag Patel. There are community legends like April Dunnam, Stale Hansen, Darrell Webster, Raphael Kollner, Ragnar Heil and Laura Rogers. Then we have friends that we grew up in the community who became wonderful session speakers like Amanda Sterner, Linus Cansby, Michael Plettner, Mar Llambi, Ville Gullstrand and Karoliina Kettukari. There are many new speakers like Miska Kyto and Katerina Chernevskaya who is our first ever speaker from Bulgaria. There are such passionate speakers like Marco Rocca, Robert Muslow, Sara Fennah, Lesley Crook and Nikki Chapple who give it all and leave nothing at the table. They are all good people. We are just giving them a space to do what they do.

DIVERSITY IS AN IMPORTANT SUBJECT AT IT CONFERENCES. HOW IS TEAMS NATION DOING?
Teams Nation is a conference for all. This year, around 40% of sessions at Teams Nation have a female speaker which is up from previous years. For about 2/3 of conference speakers english is not the native/first language and of around 60 sessions there are 20 nationalities at the conference from 5 continents. Its all positive but there is always more to do in this area.

WHEN IS TEAMS NATION?
Wednesday 21st February 09:00 – 19:30 CET which is Central European Time (UTC+1). Some thought we did this because we used to be the European Teams User Group, and as much as I would like to say its a homage to our original group its really because the majority of speakers and audience are in Europe.

SO THIS IS A MORE EUROCENTRIC CONFERENCE THIS TIME AROUND?
It always ultimately been that: Europe and MENA are the primary audiences and will be able to easily see it all, whilst India catches most of it. The east coast of the US will see the latter half or so, but unfortunately for those in West Coast US this largely takes place overnight and finishes early morning. But people from West Coast US have previously joined us late at night and go on into the early hours their time. People from Eastern and Central also get up early. And we were talking a few years back about coverage for somewhere like Japan which would be interesting to reopen the book on in the future

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO REGISTER?
Go to https://teamsbuzz.com/register and sign up

AND DO YOU HAVE A WEBSITE?
Yes, it’s at https://teams-nation.com. It’s newly set up so it’s sparse, but I like that. It passes through to the Sessionize Agenda, as well as the registration page.

A COUPLE MORE QUESTIONS BEFORE FINISHING. CAN WE HELP WITH THE CONFERENCE?
Absolutely. Teams Nation is a 100% free 100% community conference meaning that it is completely run for free by community members independent of Microsoft or any other third party. The speakers are doing this for free out of their good nature and because they believe strongly in helping others. You can help the event by getting colleagues, friends and community members to register at https://teamsbuzz.com/register and help promote the conference on social media, or in mediums such as forums. This is a great opportunity to see sessions by the experts who you would typically pay a significant amount to see.

AND WHAT WILL MAKE TEAMS NATION A SUCCESS THIS YEAR?
I hope we manage to recapture some of the independent spirit and the joie de vivre of past events. If we do that, as well as come out the back of it with a happy audience, and happy speakers – and don’t half kill ourselves in the process – then it’s going to be all good.

Teams Nation is online Wednesday 21st February 2024. Register at: https://teamsbuzz.com/register