CollabCon 2024

Disney Dining Room

Would you rather have one ecosystem that can do everything OK?  What about a combination of a baseline platform but mixing in best of class applications?  Is there a cost benefit to picking on over the other?  How does AI fit into this whole thing?  Let's tackle what today's modern workplace even means and how best we can meet the needs of knowledge workers or for that matter any persona of your workforce.

The "New" Modern Workplace

GenAI has opened doors to a wealth of information at a speed we haven't seen before.  However, writing the prompts that get you the answers you're looking for is a skill in and of itself.  In this session, we'll explore prompt engineering techniques that will help guide your use of common GenAI tools such ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity and more to get higher quality answers and potentially lower the risk of hallucinations.  

Chatting with your new BFF: How to collaborate with AI

Explore the comprehensive world of AI in Microsoft Teams during this session. Uncover how intelligent features enhance collaboration, streamline tasks, and elevate productivity within the Teams platform. From smart scheduling to real-time language translation, discover the diverse AI capabilities designed to transform your team's communication and efficiency.

How AI is Improving Collaboration with MSFT Collaboration

Microsoft 365 quickly brings together collaborators across your agency and your partners. That built-in collaboration, however, creates new concerns around tracking who has access across your environment. Organizations must monitor how users interact with data within a Zero Trust Architecture.

When viewed individually, core pillars of Zero Trust, such as network, data, and user, are bound in M365: How is our service secured? How do we protect sensitive data? Which users do we authenticate in our system? However, this approach misses the intersection across Zero Trusts pillars in the collaboration spaces themselves.

In the past years we've talked about Governance, but by not talking about security we are leaving a large hole in the security of our data.

In this presentation, we will discuss the importance of including your Collaboration Workspaces (Teams, SharePoint Site Collections, and Groups) in your security plans and how to leverage native and 3rd party tools to best accomplish this.

Secure Collaboration in M365 within a Zero Trust Lens

Do you dream of seeing the world, but feel you need to wait until you retire to be able to do so? In this day and age, there's no reason to wait! I sold my house and gave away most of my belongings 8 years ago, and until recently was traveling the world while still working in the M365 space. If this sounds like something you'd fancy doing, come hear my experiences... Learn about logistics and tips to create the lifestyle of your dreams. It's not all roses, of course, so I'll talk about the downsides as well. But if you have a taste for adventure and a flexible attitude, you too can become a Digital Nomad!

Set Yourself Free: The Digital Nomad Lifestyle

Need to be more engaging and productive in your meetings? Join me for an interactive session to help you schedule, facilitate and present better in meetings. 

You'll learn how to:
•	determine differences between channel and private meetings
•	Track attendee availability
•	Craft a insightful agenda with the meeting invitation
•	Set up Microsoft Forms polls for use in the meeting
•	Set up a space for meeting notes
•	Customize meeting settings
•	Share content 
•	Manage Microsoft Forms polls
•	Manage your meeting schedule with timeboxing
•	Record a meeting
•	Collect attendance

Top 10 Tips for Leading Successful Meetings in Microsoft Teams

Today employees digitally collaborate with more people, more frequently, on more things and in more ways than ever before. This increased volume, velocity, and variety is changing how digital employee collaboration is evolving. 
 
We can no longer re-actively respond to collaboration needs with baseline enablement. We need to pro-actively work to improve the collaboration and process experiences of our digital employee experience or we risk being left behind in the race for talent, competitive advantage, and better business outcomes.
 
There are proven approaches and best practices that organizations are using today to lead the way when it comes to collaboration and the employee experience. Microsoft Loop changed the way we can collaborate across experiences, Copilot has changed how we collaborate, Viva Learning has led to more organizations collaborating on learning, Viva Pulse has led to more ways of collaborating against feedback, Viva Goals has led to collaboration on priorities and alignment, Viva Insights gives us new ways to improve and optimize collaboration, and much more. 
 
Join Richard Harbridge, a Microsoft MVP and internationally recognized expert on Microsoft 365 and the Employee Experience, as he shares insight on how to better plan for, prepare for, and benefit from the future of employee collaboration.  

The Future Of Collaboration & How To Prepare Today

Copilot AMA Panel - Ask Me Anything

In today’s chaotic business climate, leaders and teams are grappling with massive uncertainty. A.I. is reshaping industries, return-to-work feels imminent, inflation is squeezing margins, and global instability is forcing unpredictable shifts. It feels like every day brings new volatility, leaving organizations overwhelmed, reactive, and struggling to keep up.

Change is constant... but could there be a way to make it energizing?? Trying to manage this endless turbulence with old strategies won’t work. To thrive we must look beyond technology and tap into the most powerful and renewable resource we have: the energy of our people.

In this inspiring and thought-provoking keynote, leadership expert Josh Allan Dykstra will take you on a thrilling journey from the past to the future to unlock fresh insights that will help you and your team navigate unrelenting changes with more creativity, resilience, and impact.

YOU WILL LEARN:

+ The Human Energy Canvas™, a playbook for leading through uncertainty and helping you turn chaos into creative opportunity

+ 6 practical worksheets containing tools and practices that will energize your team and boost resilience in the midst of constant change and volatility 

+ A powerful strategy to build psychological safety across in-person, hybrid, or remote teams, improving learning agility and innovation

+A simple framework to unlock untapped reserves of motivation, naturally reduce burnout, and drive engagement via flow states — leading to increased productivity