Hi All,
Yesterday I arrived in Las Vegas for the biggest SharePoint event worldwide, SPC 2014 and at this very moment it is 4:23 am in the morning and I have a jetlag:-). That is quite normal, because I live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and there is a time zone difference of 9 hours. I am staying at the Trump Hotel and from my room on the 50th floor I have a great view on the Vegas Strip and fortunately excellent Wifi connections to make my work much easier.
However, I am not tired at all, because I am very excited and looking forward to attend the sessions during this event.
So the best things to do when you have a jetlag is to do the next things:
- Go to the gym and workout at 5:45 am in the morning: check.
- Go out and in 5 minutes you are walking on the strip and do some shopping at Walgreens which is 24 /7 open near by the Pallazo Hotel : check.
- For those who do not like to workout or walk outside, go write some blogs and share it with your community.
- Call your wife at home, because she will be missing you: check.
As you can see, I think all the things mentioned above and I am still awake:-).
If you have any questions or remarks let me know via twitter ,Linkedin or mail and follow us via our blogsite www.jcccloud.com and website www.jccconsultancy.com
Enjoy reading and be inspired:
So let me tell how my agenda will look like for the coming week and what I will be blogging for all of you:
Sunday March 2nd:
- Sunday March 2nd: Tomorrow is the day where all attendees can pick their All in pass at The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. This all-access pass covers the full attendance at the conference. It includes admittance to every single session, access to the exhibit hall, all of the evening events, and daily conference meals. This is also the day where you can get the first impression of the the event location. I will make some pictures tomorrow and share this with you and in the evening from 18.00 pm there will be WELCOME RECEPTION and this will actually introduce to beginning of the event.
Monday March 3rd
Monday March 3 rd is going to be very interesting and I will be give you an insight of my agenda and the sessions I will attend and will give you followers and all Business Decision Makers of Microsoft Un managed SMB Partners who are not able to attend, a live update on every session I will attend.
- 7.30-8.30 : All 16.000 attendees are going to have breakfast in the early morning before the keynote starts;
- 8.30-10.30: The keynote takes place and Bill Clinton is one of the guest speaker. Besides him, ofcourse Jeff Teper and Jared Spataro will be doing the keynote as well
- 11.00:12.15 : Julia White, The Dynamice work of the future: Microsoft General Manager, Julia White, for an insightful examination of trends that impact business, productivity, and technology. Drawing from analyst and Microsoft’s own research, Julia lays out the challenges and opportunities that face executives, decision makers, and platform owners. Look at the tipping point facing enterprises in 2014, and the critical decisions that leadership must make, and chart the journey ahead. This executive keynote-style session is be the perfect kickoff for the Executive Track of the SharePoint Conference, and the Executive Track team will highlight the valuable sessions, discussions, and networking activities that will help you maximize your time at SPC14.
- 12:00:13.00 : Business Lunch with Microsoft Gold Partner Datapolis from Poland to discuss how to work together with JCC Consultancy
- 14:00-15:15: Adam Pisoni, Founder of Yammer : A responsive organization stays ahead
of the competition. See, 2 years ago I saw Adam Pisoni at the SharePoint Conference 2012 in Las Vegas and he was presenting the roadmap and ambition of Yammer. In that year 2012, yammer was acquired by Microsoft and I am very curious where Yammer is standing right now in 2014 and what their plans are for 2014 and further. Also live blogging will be shared with you guys.
This session will focus on why organizations realize that they have to rethink their work and communication styles to stay competitive. They must become more responsive to an ever-changing environment and their fluctuating customer needs. Innovative companies assess their own workplace, encourage employees to act beyond their job descriptions, and then empower individuals to be creative and collaborative beyond the normal work routine. This session will uncover the simple secrets to becoming responsive in this new era of business.
- 15.45 -17.00 : Dan Holme: The Cloud: Navigating the benefits and challenges of this disruptive innovation
This session is a Must visit for Business Decision Makers, because Dan is not only has a strong technical background and years of experiences, but he has also lots of projects which he has executed on C-level. Ofcourse I will be sharing live updates during this session via my blogsite www.jcccloud.com and website www.jccconsultancy.com
‘The cloud.’ Obviously, a significant consideration for every executive, business leader, decision maker and platform owner. As soon as the words are mentioned, there are aspirational visions of the potential for the cloud, concerns ranging from security to data sovereignty to manageability, and there is a raucous hype of promises, fears, uncertainty, and doubt. How can you align the dynamic nature of the cloud with your strategic objectives? How can you drive your business to optimize value and risk? What are the concerns of your peers and what have they done to address those concerns? In this unique session, we will share a thoughtful, business-centric strategic approach to reimagining service delivery in this brave new hybrid world. You’ll explore the challenges and benefits of the cloud from a SharePoint perspective, but the prescriptive guidance you take away will help you manage on-premise and cloud services of any kind.
Tuesday March 4th
This day the following Business Decision Makers sessions I will attend are:
- 9.00-10.15 :Naomi Moneypenny: A comprehensive strategy to drive business value with SharePoint. In this fast-paced session we’ll look at a spectrum of approaches to driving business value. We will begin with internal wins for overhead reduction and knowledge worker productivity and then explore innovative opportunities for deriving value from external data and delivering actionable insights. Examining a variety of industries and stages of SharePoint maturity, we will highlight strategies and company examples demonstrating business growth through application of the SharePoint platform.
- 10:45-12.00 :Melanie Hohertz: Cargill: Real-world challenges and value in introducing enterprise social.
The reason why i picked this Executive session is because a customer show case is going to be presented and I think the best way to inspire attendees and C-level members is to give them insight in a customer show case how you can make your company more efficient in terms of Implementing enterprise social in your workplace, or considering it to help drive business value? This session offers a strategic, candid overview of Cargill’s experience since launching Yammer Enterprise in August 2012. The presentation will cover key elements fueling network growth, engagement, and success in the context of a global company. We’ll share the real-world challenges and lessons learned during implementation, including SharePoint + Yammer integration. At the core, we’ll focus on culture change, governance and realistic measurements of adoption. This session will deliver straight talk and Q&A with a passionate, practical champion of the new world of collaboration.
12:00-13.00: Business lunch with Connected Services
15.00 : Raymond Dux:Winning User Adoption Strategies from Best Buy, Nationwide Insurance
& Trek Bikes. I picked Raymond, because I saw his session 2 years ago at the SPC 2012 in Vegas and a session at the WPC in Houston last July 2013. He is full of energy and he present his sessions with humor and impressive onsite showcases. in 2012 he made the crowd danced the Psy song GANGMAN STYLE. The whole room went nuts and CEO’S were dancing the Gangnam style by the end of his session. Hilarious.
So i look forward to give you guys a live update on this one.
In most organizations today, SharePoint is nothing more than a glorified file share and while training is a critical component that can drive better adoption, it is not enough. To make the most out of your SharePoint investment, it is critical that your users take advantage of SharePoint’s full capability to address their day-to-day business needs. The key to drive excitement, organizational buy-in and adoption is being able to provide relevant, business-contextual application that drives consistent, sustainable usage.
Join SharePoint MVP Dux Raymond Sy in this interactive customer panel session with Best Buy, Nationwide Insurance and Trek Bikes as these leading organizations share proven strategies on how you can drive sustainable SharePoint adoption in your organization. More importantly, you’ll learn pragmatic adoption techniques, lessons learned, investments made and the key benefits you can reap from an engaged community of users.
15.15- 16.30: Jared Spataro, Work like a network: The power of Enterprise Social. General Manager, Product Marketing – Microsoft Office Division. As General Manager of Product Marketing, Jared manages business strategy, product direction, and go-to-market programs for the SharePoint, Yammer, Project, and Visio businesses. A career software professional, his experience includes roles in engineering, product management, product marketing, and sales. Jared holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in computer science from Brigham Young University.
He is a great speaker and inspirator I think. I saw him presenting the Keynote at the SP 2012 in Vegas and did a great job. On Wednesday march 5th I will have a personal meeting with Jared Spataro to talk about the concept of JCC Consultancy.
Are you having trouble getting business value from your collaboration solutions? Do your employees feel empowered to be leaders? Microsoft’s Enterprise Social tools provide a unique solution that addresses both the business needs and the people needs of the organization. In this session, we will discuss best practices for maximizing the business value and achieving successful adoption. Learn how you can improve personal, team and enterprise effectiveness
17.00-18.15 : Daniel Harris: Customer Showcase: General Motors: managing 130,000 users’ documents and records – making it easy, while maintaining control. This session is going to be very interesting because it gives us an insight how a big organization can benefits from using solutions such as SharePoint in the right strategic way.
Daniel is the Chief SharePoint Architect at General Motors in Detroit, MI where he’s been for the last seven years. Having started working with SharePoint before it was called SharePoint, he was a Consultant and member of the Microsoft SharePoint Partner Advisory Council, before becoming a Customer and member of the Microsoft Office Customer Advisory Council. In his current role he leads a SharePoint Architecture, Engineering and Quality Assurance Team which manages all of the GM Global SharePoint environments for over 400,000 internal users, dealers and external partners.
19.00-22.00 : This party is for all Attendees of the event and is going to take place at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Wednesday March 5th
For JCC Consultancy , March 5th will be the final day to report directly and live, because we think that Thursday does not have interesting sessions with interesting topics.
But this wednesday is going to be another very very inspiring day, because JCC Consultancy will also have a Executiv lunch with Jared Spataro to talk our unique business proposition of JCC Consultancy and further more there will be a few great Executive meetings and sessions which we ofcourse we update and blog live from Las Vegas.
- 8.00-9.00 : breakfast with all attendees
- 9.00-10.15: Eric Riz: A strategic and pragmatic conversation on governance. Eric is the Executive Vice President of Concatenate, Inc. a software firm focused on maximizing SharePoint through product innovation and systems integration based in Toronto, Canada. He has worked with many Fortune 500 companies on their business adoption, change management and deployment strategies to ensure they maximize the benefits of Microsoft technologies and successfully implement SharePoint-based solutions. A SharePoint MVP and thought-leader in the SharePoint business space, Eric is a regular contributor to many industry journals and newsletters. A sought after speaker, strategist and author, Eric is currently writing SharePoint for Decision Makers. He has developed and facilitated management and technology sessions through-out North America and addressed conferences around the world.
SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online change the landscape in many ways, particularly with its application model and cloud capabilities. From a business perspective, this makes the job of the governance teams more difficult and complex as these issues become key priorities (and areas of weakness) for the organization. This session is a strategic conversation around the elements governance teams should be most concerned with, from data ownership to creating the correct policies and social rights to security. Attendees will learn tactical strategies which can be used as soon as they return to the office.
- 10.45- 12.00: Angus Florence: Giving voice to frontline workers via enterprise social.
In the past, it was very difficult for management and back office teams to connect with frontline staff to learn more about what customers were experiencing first hand. Then with the rise of mobile devices and social networks, everyone has a voice and something to contribute. Now, companies from around the world are empowering their frontline works using Enterprise Social to get feedback faster and become much more responsive organizations. In this session you’ll hear about how these companies have done this and the advantages they are getting from tapping into this previously disconnected part of the organization.
- 13.00-13.30: Executive lunch meeting with Jared Spataro and JCC Consultancy
- 15.00 : Executive Roundtable Discussion: Business, Technology, Trends & Challenges:
Join fellow executive track attendees, Microsoft product team members, analysts and consultants for comprehensive and candid roundtable discussions of business, technology, trends, and challenges. Come together at topic-centric roundtables to discuss what you’ve done, the challenges you face, what’s possible, what’s easy, what’s hard, and what matters. At the next Executive Roundtable Discussions session, you can continue diving deep into the same topic, or connect with new peers and topics. Discussions will focus on real-world issues that matter to executives, strategic leaders, and platform owners. This is the opportunity for you, the busy executive, to ask questions about SharePoint and Office 365 as technologies. Use this opportunity to get answers to burning technical questions.
Roundtable topics will be:
1) Enterprise Search: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to drive business value with enterprise search.
2) Enterprise Social: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world transform business and drive value through social technologies.
3) Extending SharePoint and Office 365 with Apps and Enterprise Solutions: Discuss options for building apps and line of business applications that extend SharePoint and Office 365.
4) File-Based Collaboration and Content Management: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to support team collaboration around files, across devices and platforms, and to manage content.
5) Automating Workflow and Business Processes: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to automate business process and workflows, and to improve operations with SharePoint.
6) Insight and Business Intelligence in the World of Big Data: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to improve insight, drive business intelligence activities, and manage big data.
7) Team Collaboration and Project Management: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to support team collaboration around tasks and projects.
8) Extranet: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to support collaboration with customers, vendors, and partners in extranet scenarios.
9) SharePoint and Office 365 Strategy and Business Value: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to reimagine business productivity with SharePoint and Office 365. This discussion will be an open discussion of business value from the perspective of customers and consultants.
10) Governance, Innovation and Service Delivery: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to deliver effective, reliable, high-value, and compliant services on SharePoint and Office 365. This discussion will be an open discussion of business value from the perspective of customers and consultants.
11) Information Management, Security & Compliance: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to ensure security and compliance for content in SharePoint and Office 365, as more organizations move mission-critical data to the platforms.
12) Cloud Strategy: Discuss strategic vision for and concerns about enterprise workloads in the cloud.
13) Adoption and Enablement: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to drive and support adoption of SharePoint and Office 365, including training and evangelism.
14) Branding and Corporate Identity: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to support branding and corporate identity on SharePoint and Office 365.
15) Migration from File Shares and Other Platforms: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to migrate from file shares, email and other systems to SharePoint and Office 365.
16) Supporting a Remote and Mobile Workforce: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to support remote users and a multi-device, mobile workforce.
17) Identity Management and Authorization: Discuss what enterprises are doing in the real world to manage identities and authorization across platforms and services.
18) Technical Details You Need to Know but Were Afraid to Ask: Discuss the technology itself.
- 15.15-16.30: David Norton SHOWCASE University of Washington: students and teachers store, sync and share – OneDrive for Business in EDU. i picked this session, because it is focused on the Education vertical and shows how Onedrive is of enormous business value for Education instituations.
The University of Washington (UW) is using SharePoint to answer the shifting challenges of IT as things move from “top down” to “bottom up.” This session will cover lessons we have learned in the past and lessons we are learning now as we “look to the clouds” to host academic and collaborative solutions that bring real value to the diverse UW community of almost 140,000 people. In this context we will drill down to our experience of rolling out OneDrive for Business to academic, research and medical constituents. We will start this session with high level description of the University of Washington culture, constraints and drivers. We’ll descend into more detail and share: our roadmap, implementation goals, HIPAA challenges, FERPA support and highlight some of the gotcha’s and wins we have encountered along the way. Finally we will drill down into OneDrive for Business and demystify it’s features and functions through hands on demonstration – as answering the questions “What is OneDrive for Business?” and “How can I use it?” have been central to our rollout and adoption by our community.
- 17.00- 18:15: Executive Roundtable Discussions: Industries and Regions.
I chose this Executive roundtable because this session is of a very high C-level background which will be discussing the following topics:
Join fellow executive track attendees, Microsoft product team members, analysts and consultants for comprehensive and candid roundtable discussions of trends and challenges in business and technology as they impact your industry or region. Come together at roundtables to discuss what you’ve done, the challenges you face, what’s possible, what’s easy, what’s hard, and what matters.
Discussions will focus on real-world issues that matter to executives, strategic leaders, and platform owners:
• Construction: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the manufacturing sector
• Energy: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the manufacturing sector
• Finance: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the finance sector
• Government: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to government agencies, ministries, and public sector organizations
• Healthcare: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the health care sector
• Manufacturing: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the manufacturing sector
• Transportation: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the transportation sector
• North America: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in North America
• Africa: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in Africa
• Asia: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in Asia
• Australia: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in Australia
• Europe: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in Europe
• Latin America: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in Latin America
• Middle East: Discuss strategic and tactical issues relevant to enterprises in the Middle East
15.15- 16.30: Jared Spataro, Work like a network: The power of Enterprise Social. General Manager, Product Marketing – Microsoft Office Division. As General Manager of Product Marketing, Jared manages business strategy, product direction, and go-to-market programs for the SharePoint, Yammer, Project, and Visio businesses. A career software professional, his experience includes roles in engineering, product management, product marketing, and sales. Jared holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in computer science from Brigham Young University.
JCC CLOUD, special portal site for Business decision makers of Business Partners (Microsoft and IBM) 
