SharePoint Conference North America (SPCNA) is poised to be the place to be to learn what’s new, next & top of mind from Microsoft. This event will contain the most sessions delivered by Microsoft about Office 365, SharePoint & OneDrive during 2018 and split across 3 main tracks of Developer, ITPro, & Business User.

There are 2 sides to this event that are worthy of note:

1.) Microsoft delivered content
2.) Community delivered content

The Microsoft content is being delivered by the Product teams and will focus on the latest, greatest, bleeding edge features & functionality that they are releasing AND what is still to come. Many of the sessions are roadmap sessions that lay the future foundation for what you can expect to see Microsoft deliver over the next 18 months. Add to that the SPCNA keynote will be headlined by Jeff Teper to start the show and you can be assured of some surprises & fireworks like the SPCs of old.

The Community delivered content, put together by track chairs like me, are focused on what we know you want to learn about how to keep up with the new wave of Office 365 features. Many of the top speakers in the space have been tapped to deliver brand new sessions at SPCNA. The session catalog has been ever evolving as Microsoft slowly drops clues to what they are going to be sharing with us in May.

This will be the first time since 2014 that the SharePoint Community (with the addition of the broader Collab communities of OneDrive & Yammer) is coming together in Vegas the way that we used to for the SharePoint Conference. The message we have heard out of the Microsoft is that they are “All IN” & are “doing this because the people have been demanding that they go back to Vegas to deliver their latest update in person, because the magic is in the Community”.

On a personal note I am lucky to participate in the major conferences in the US, plus some in other parts of the world, and for me this is a cannot miss event. With that said, you can bet your last chip that I will be at SharePoint Fest & SPTechCon this year as well to take part in those unique conferences & engage with the community as I always have. This one event does not define our community, but we hope that as SPC always did in the past, it can provide an additional spark that lights the fire of excitement for the year to come and all the other events that help to strengthen our amazing community.

See you in Las Vegas where I will be delivering a Power BI pre-con with my BIFocal.show co-host John White & a hybrid SharePoint & Office 365 post-con with Neil Hodgkinson, Bill Baer, & Spencer Harbar!