CommunityDays.org turned three on October 13th. I still can't quite believe that.

What started as a scramble to fill a gap when SPSEvents.org shut down has turned into something I'm genuinely proud of. It's not perfect, and there's always more to do, but three years in feels like a good time to look back at how we got here.

How It Started

When SPSEvents.org announced it was going away, it left a real hole. That site had been the central hub for SharePoint Saturdays and Microsoft community events for years. Organizers relied on it. Speakers browsed it to find events to submit to. Attendees used it to figure out what was happening near them.

I figured someone needed to step up, and I had the skills to try. So I did.

It was a lot of late nights and weekends. SoHo Dragon sponsored the effort, Microsoft backed it, and Jeff Teper was kind enough to announce the launch at Ignite — which was a surreal moment for me. But the idea itself was always simple: give organizers a place to list their events and give everyone else a place to find them.

By the Numbers

Hundreds of organizers. Thousands of sessions. Speakers from all over the world covering Microsoft 365 (M365), Power Platform, Azure, and more.

I'm proud of those numbers. But honestly, the numbers aren't the part that keeps me going.

The Stories That Stick With Me

After the M365 DC event, Charles Lakes II came up to me and said the site had helped him find more events, get in front of more audiences, and that it played a part in him earning his MVP. I want to be clear — Charles earned that through his own hard work. But hearing that Community Days helped him find those opportunities? That meant a lot to me.

At that same event, I sat in on a Power Platform session from Diego Da Silva who was just getting started as a speaker. You could see it click for him — that moment when someone realizes they have something worth sharing and people want to hear it. That's what community events do. They give people a stage before they even know they're ready for one.

Those are the moments I think about when the work gets heavy.

The People Who Make It Work

Community Days doesn't run on one person. There's a group of people who show up consistently — reviewing events, promoting the platform, flagging bugs, keeping things funded and running. I could list every name but the list would get long and I'd inevitably leave someone out. You know who you are, and I appreciate what you do. You can see the full list of contributors and sponsors on the Community Days about page.

On the partnerships side, Adis Jugo and the team at run.events and Domagoj Pavlesic and the crew at Sessionize have been real partners in this — not transactional, but built on a shared belief that community events deserve good tools and good visibility. Working with them has made Community Days better.

Why I Keep Doing This

People ask me sometimes. It's volunteer work. It takes real time away from other things. There's no big team behind the curtain.

The honest answer is that I enjoy it. I've been part of the Microsoft community for a long time, and I've seen what happens when people share what they know — when they mentor someone new, when they give up a Saturday to teach a room full of strangers something useful. I want to support that however I can.

Community Days is free for organizers. The event listings, the call-for-sponsorship tools, the Speakerboard — all free. I feel strongly that the moment you start putting barriers in front of community, it stops being community.

Looking Ahead

I'll be honest — the last three years haven't always been easy. There are stretches where the to-do list feels infinite and the time feels short. But then someone shares a story about how the site helped them, or just says thanks, and it puts things back in perspective.

394 events listed. On to year four. Thank you to everyone who's been part of this — the organizers, the speakers, the attendees, and the people working alongside me to keep it going. I appreciate all of you.

Get Involved

If any of this resonates with you, there are a few ways to get involved:

• List your event on CommunityDays.org — it's free for organizers
• Browse the Speakerboard at CommunityDays.org/speakerboard — speakers who present at community events are automatically listed, making them discoverable by other event organizers
• Organize or help with community events — the Microsoft Global Community Initiative (MGCI) runs regular office hours and training for new and existing event organizers
• Sponsor a community event — browse events looking for sponsors through the call-for-sponsorship listings
• Want to help out? — reach out through the contact page and let us know how you'd like to contribute
• Just show up — attend an event near you. That's how most of us got started

Related Links

• Celebrating Three Years of CommunityDays.org — Microsoft Tech Community announcement
• CommunityDays.org — Browse upcoming community events
• About Community Days — Meet the team and sponsors behind the platform
• Jeff Teper Announces CommunityDays.org at Ignite — Karuana Gatimu interviews Jeff Teper about the launch
• Celebrating Three Years of Community Days: A Love Letter — Diego Da Silva's perspective on the Community Days journey

I'm happy to share that I've been renewed as a Microsoft MVP for 2025-2026.

This is my ninth year in the program, and it still means as much now as it did when I first received the award back in 2017. It's not the kind of thing you get used to — every renewal is a reminder that the work you're putting into the community is being recognized.

What the Microsoft MVP Program Provides

The MVP award is an invaluable resource to me personally. It gives me a more direct line of communication with the Microsoft product teams and employees — the ability to provide feedback, collaborate on things together, and get early insight into where the platform is heading. That access makes me better at what I do, and it makes the guidance I share with the community more informed.

The award also validates the work I'm doing in the Microsoft space and the impact on its community. The majority of my contributions live on the CommunityDays.org platform — organizing events, supporting other organizers, and helping grow the community events ecosystem.

But that's just one piece. I'm still highly technical and sharing knowledge through blog posts and talks. I'm mentoring the next generation of developers coming into this space and solving real customer problems every day. I'm running events locally and visiting and supporting other events around the world.

And it helps with community events in a real, tangible way. When we organize and run events for our local community, people are more confident that the event will be of value when it's organized and delivered by Microsoft MVPs. That credibility opens doors — for speakers, for sponsors, and most importantly for attendees who take time out of their day to show up and learn.

What This Past Year Looked Like

On the MGCI (Microsoft Global Community Initiative) side, I joined the board and participate in weekly meetings with Microsoft to help steer the direction of Community Days. A few times a month there are MGCI board meetings, and I'm running the Tech and Tools subcommittee — focused on the platform and tooling that powers CommunityDays.org. I also pop in on the MGCI Community Event Organizer Training & Office Hours to help new organizers get started.

A new role this year: a recurring bi-weekly appearance on the M365 General Dev Special Interest Group (SIG). It's been a great way to stay connected with the broader developer community and share what we're building.

Behind the scenes, I've put thousands of hours into developing on CommunityDays.org — the platform that supports community events worldwide. That work doesn't always get visibility, but it's foundational to everything else.

Events — Running, Attending, Supporting

On the events front, this was a big year. I helped bring M365 NJ back, ran M365 NYC for our biggest and best event since the pandemic, organized AI Conference (AICO) New York City and M365 Philly, and helped out with M365 DC. I also attended events like TechCon Atlanta and M365 Memphis! — showing up to support other communities matters just as much as running your own.

Mentorship and Connections

Beyond events, I've been focused on mentoring — helping people navigate their careers in this space, making introductions, and connecting folks with job opportunities when I can. Some of the most rewarding work isn't visible at all. It's a conversation that helps someone land their next role or find the confidence to submit their first session.

The Ideas That Didn't Ship

I'll also be honest about the handful of initiatives that started with momentum but didn't have enough bandwidth to fully develop. Time and resources are finite. Some ideas need to wait for the right season — and knowing when to put something on hold is just as important as knowing when to start.

Continuing to Contribute While Life Changes

I'll be honest — the landscape of contributing has changed for me personally. Early in my MVP journey, time was abundant. I could travel to events, write late into the night, and pour hours into side projects without thinking twice. Now I'm a father of two young girls, and that math is different. I'm doing what I can to give back while also being an involved parent.

That tension has actually made me more intentional about where I spend my time. I focus on contributions that have the most impact — the events that reach the most people, the blog posts that solve real problems, the mentoring conversations that help someone take their next step. Less time means I have to make it count.

The goal hasn't changed since before I ever had the MVP title: if something I share helps one person solve a problem or learn something new, that's the mission accomplished. I just have to be smarter about how I get there now.

Thank you to Microsoft and to everyone in the community who makes this worth doing.

If you're thinking about contributing to the community — speaking, organizing events, or sharing what you've learned — start small and get involved. The ecosystem grows stronger every time someone decides to give back.

Introduction

After an event I like to wrap up some of my thoughts on how the event started and some of the lessons learned. This post will be broken out into the two parts of the story on the event and then some of the lessons that come with running an event. For those that don’t know me I run many community events in the NY/NJ/PA area and involved with helping other events either get started or with supporting them by volunteering my skills, time or helping them reach people.

The Back Story

Each year I host a local Azure event in New Jersey as part of the Global Azure Bootcamp. It’s a 1 day event held on a Saturday at the local Microsoft office in Iselin, NJ. It’s been a very successful event with about 90 out of a possible 100 that can fit in that office safely. In our area we’ve seen a demand for Azure training and information grow drastically over the past 3 years. Due to the local office being closed for public events we’ve had to spread our wings and take to the cloud.

This year was our first virtual Azure event on our own. Alone in the sense of no major support from a company. It would be a grassroots event where we would have to push this out to the public to gather sponsors, speakers and attendees with little visibility / marketing. Events like this cannot happen alone. You need a solid team to help and that’s something that I knew I had in my pocket.

It start with a phone call from Rajaniesh Kaushikk who was an attendee at the 3rd Global Azure Bootcamp. He reached out to me and said we haven’t had an Azure event since the pandemic, would it be possible to run one before the end of the year. If it wasn’t for his push, I would probably never have run this event. Raj’s energy had set the spark for me to gather the team. Jason Rivera who runs M365 Philly events like the User Group and M365 Saturdays. Manpreet Singh from the Tech Platform who always helps out with NY/NJ/PA events and many other events within the community.

The bootcamp was initially planned to have 4 speakers and short and quick, easy to manage. What would be a small event with a few people, no stress, easy to manage. We put out some feelers but launching a call for speakers on Sessionize.com. We were a bit overwhelmed with the response. Speakers from around the globe were applying to our little event from regular people wanting to share their experience, seasoned professionals, Microsoft Certified Trainers and even Microsoft Azure MVPs. We had 34 sessions and 22 speakers to choose from which included 8 Microsoft MVPs, a handful of C# Corner MVPS, Bloggers, Speakers, YouTubers. Quickly our event gained some momentum at least from the speaker community. We ultimately settled on 18 speakers, although we knew that would be a handful to deal with in just 1 day. We had to have 2 tracks and run longer than we’d like to. It was a virtual event, so our focus wasn’t on just EST time, we knew we’d have audience in attendance from other areas.

As I just mentioned the event was planned around EST time. This created some challenges for speakers from around the globe. We had some dedicated speakers! Eric Cheng from Sydney, Australia presented his session from 3am his time. Any many others presenting at 9pm their time. I was blown away by the commitment of the speakers and they were so appreciative of the opportunity to speak at this event.

Running the Event

Prep Work

There is a lot of work that goes into these events. There’s a ton that goes into prior to anything you might even see from the outside. I’ll shed some light into some of the major areas.

Team – you need a solid team of people to do actual work. You don’t want to end up doing everything yourself. I am known for taking on too many things and doing everything myself. You need to form a team and be able to plan, delegate, track, and keep that ball rolling. This is always challenging in a community ‘free’ event. Watch out for volunteers that simply volunteer to put their name on it. You need grunts and you need influencers. It’s very common for other MVPs to come along and offer to help but those typically aren’t the ones that put in the real work. They might help your event get some notoriety or help with promotions, but they aren’t the ones building the website or making slides [typically]. Get a balanced team – with some people that are motivated to help and do work. If you’re the leader then you need to be sure to lead and delegate. Give people tasks and check in and follow up weekly / bi-weekly.

Graphics – no event can happen without some great graphics. You need catchy event graphics, speaker promotions, sponsor promotions and more. You could sub this out to fiverr but if you can link up with someone that can use Canva or even better Photoshop then you’ll be set. I used to do all the graphics but for this event I was able to get help from Omer at SoHo Dragon.

Social Media Promotion – no event can happen without promotion. You won’t be seen or noticed without a social media presence. We failed in this event to secure an Azure Community Bootcamp twitter profile, so everything went out from my personal account or M365 NYC account. I’m sure people were not thrilled to be getting tons of promotions from my personal twitter and LinkedIn, but I didn’t care that much. Mute me. The point is that you need to get the word out. Involved the speakers, sponsors and organizers in the promotion. It’s everyone’s job. If you can create a game for attendees to promote, then do that as well. Our primary methods of promotion were LinkedIn and Twitter. We posted our event on Eventbrite which has some built in traffic that can also help. We also cross posted on the NJ & PA user groups on Meetup.com. In hindsight I should have reached out across the USA to the Azure meetups. I would have if I had more time.

Ticketing – mentioned above we used Eventbrite for our ticketing which can help with some promotion sales. It takes a good amount of time to setup the Eventbrite for an event. It’s not difficult but you should be asking questions and gathering the correct information of the attendees. You want to think about collecting information if you are sharing with sponsors. Important things like company, location, phone. You must also ask if you can share the information. I highly suggest an option to be added to the mailing list. Building a mailing list is critical for building an audience.

Website – you will need a website. Hopefully someone on your team can make one or you could use a wix.com site. We’d prefer to have a custom site, but we started out with no site. Ultimately, we decided we needed a site to look like a legit event. Legit in the eyes of the world you at least need a website. Not a meetup.com event, not a Eventbrite event. You need a place on the internet that you can see the event, the schedule, the speakers, etc. We went with wix.com because we could have a site up and running within a few hours. Another requirement is that it needs to be mobile accessible. Using wix it was easy enough for volunteers to help update and did not need to know programming languages or anything else. Just use the web interface to make changes. We also used Sessionize embed for the speaker / sessions / schedule which was a bonus since we did not have to build that integration. You can check it out here – https://www.azurecommunitybc.com/

Speaker Call – having a formal speaker call allows potential speakers to submit their information to you for evaluation. Sessionize.com works great for FREE events. ** Sessionize is a pay service BUT is FREE for a FREE event. You must apply when you host a free event to get it for free **. You can use the speaker call to bring in speakers. You can customize the form with custom questions. The platform allows you to invite content members to help select speakers. You can accept / deny speakers from the platform easily. You can build the schedule inside the platform with rooms and time slots. You can email out all the speakers from it to communicate event updates. Most importantly you can use all the information from Sessionize to embed into another website. You do not need to recreate the schedule, sessions or speaker lists on your site. You can simply use the embed code to post the information. If your feeling frisky you can even customize the CSS to style it as you wish.

Sponsors Call – Community events I run are free, but we do need sponsors to help. Sponsors help pay for website costs, domain names, email accounts, and some other misc fees. Once you run an LLC for a User Group you’ll see. You need to file taxes, have accounting software and whatnot. Even though I keep those at the bare minimum there are other expenses. Plus, you want to have a great event with some giveaways. Normally the sponsor dollars cover food which is not happening at the moment, so they cover the web hosting fees + giveaways. It’s the truth that someone pays for a free event. I’ve covered many a user group pizza night on my own dime. It’s fine because I am able and willing to do so. You understand when you run a user group. My insight here is keep the sponsorships to a normal amount and make it fair. We didn’t solicit sponsors for money for this event, I just wasn’t prepared to ask for money not knowing the outcome. I felt that big sponsors wouldn’t be interested in such a small event [turned out to not so small]. Our sponsors have donated resources like time from their employees or services. We thank SoHo Dragon and the Tech Platform for their support this year. Both of those sponsors help out with ALL of my events no matter how big or small.

Tech Challenges

Meeting Platform – we chose MS Teams Live Events to run the meetings. There are some pros and cons to this approach.

Pros #1 it’s easy, you run 1 long event for each track and you are done. No need to have attendees drop in and out of sessions. This was a huge draw since we did not have a huge moderator team. #2 you can’t see the live attendees – if there are no attendees the speaker doesn’t know so they don’t act differently. Present without the concept of an audience. We’ve seen / attended and even presented to teams events with 1 or 2 people and it’s just not fun. [not this event but with others]

Cons #1 you can’t see the live attendees – The speaker doesn’t know who is in the session or how many people attend. This can throw speakers off if they plan to have Q/A or interactive sessions. It just doesn’t work in this format without planning [using surveys or forms for questions and circling back], #2 there is a delay – this causes disconnect between the presenter and the audience. If you are asking questions, it just doesn’t work great. It can take a minute or so before the audience hears the question and then replies.

Tech Check – Always do a tech check with MS Teams. Make sure the users can log in and share their screen on the same computer they will do it live. It verifies that the account can get in with no issues. We’ve seen people attend the tech checks and then not able to join because they are using a different computer or different account. We’ve seen people have issues b/c their session is about teams and they need to be logged in to present and also log into teams. They need to use a VM in that case to be part of the live event and show another MS Teams tenant. Also if you get any last minute speakers always do a tech check [got us this time]. We’ve seen people use gmail accounts and then have difficulties logging into MS Teams because it needs a MS based account like hotmail/outlook.

Time Check – send out the schedule in your time zone. Don’t depend on the web or Sessionize to convert it correctly. We had some speakers at the wrong time because they saw online at some point it say something else. Make sure to send the print out / email of the schedule with the time in your time zone.

Multiple Presenters – MS Teams multiple presenters is a problem. One event I moderated had 3 presenters that I would be constantly changing the web cam for. Teams can only show 1 webcam at a time. This is a problem for us in the wrap up session. We want to have all of our organizers on to say their last words about the event. We use streamyard.com to create a live event on youtube and forward our attendees there for the last sessions [the wrap up]. We still don’t know who shows up but it allows up to wrap up the event with a little behind the scenes footage. We give our take and thank everyone involved. Sometimes we raffle items off in there as the close out and if not we just use that as the organizer platform to speak our minds.

Communication – over communication is never a problem. Stay in touch frequently with your speakers and attendees. Let them know about the event at least once a week when you are in the final month. Attendees need to know how to easily access the sessions. Give them multiple ways to get in – post is in the email, use the web, blast it out on social media. It’s never a problem to over communicate how to attendee the event. Same with the speakers – let them know about event changes with the schedule or format. Give them access to a OneDrive folder with the content for promotion materials, slide decks or whatever else you might have for them.

Moderators – have enough moderators for each session. The purpose of the moderator is the welcome the speaker and inform them of any last minute changes, how to share screen, let the speaker know that nothing is sharing, how to turn on subtitles and remind them when time is up and to show the event slides / feedback slide. Have a dedicated moderator for each session and 1 backup so that people can switch out. Never let someone moderate [alone] that hasn’t moderated before. Put a moderator schedule out ahead of time so everyone can confirm that they will be on the watch for their session.

Physical Challenges

Time Management – running events is a full day affair. If your involved, you’ll likely have to take off work. There’s no room to concentrate on the event and try to take a meeting. That means be aware of business owners / CEOs or CTOs on your team. They would likely get pulled away with some emergency. You need reliable sources to help the event.

Real Life – If you have kids let the team know when you won’t be available because you’ll need to focus if you want to do a proper job. My kids are young, so they don’t really listen when I say play quietly. To them that means check out who’s on the camera, draw behind me on the whiteboard, rip my office apart, play with loud toys or just fight because I can’t stop them. They might have made an appearance in this event.

Bio Breaks – you can’t be moderating all sessions on two computers. Sure, it’s possible for a short time but not all day. Make sure you have back up and let the speakers know that you’ll be in the session to help out but popping in and out every 10 minutes. This gives you are free minute to use the bathroom or stretch your legs. It’s impossible to sit at the computer the entire day without leaving. You need to program in some breaks for your person.

Summary

What a day, what a day. The experience of running a virtual event doesn’t even come close to a live event. Live events you get that instant satisfaction of meeting people and hearing about their experience. Virtual events you get to read about it from the few that bother to fill out our the feedback form. If you know me then you know I’m not a huge fan of virtual events, but I know that they are important to keeping the community alive during this time. Despite some of our challenges above I would consider the 2021 Azure Community Event a success. We did it, we held a unique online event that reached 100’s of people and I’m happy with that. We held an event that hosted 18 speakers of high caliber, with 2-3 moderators, 4 organizers, no monetary sponsorships, 1 day, 10 hours, 2 tracks, planned within 2.5 months.

You can visit the event website here – https://www.azurecommunitybc.com/ . We’ll be posted the recordings from the event within the next week. Leave me a comment, let me know if you have questions about running an event in your area or online.

** At the time of this writing I have not yet read any event feedback from our attendees. **

For the past 10 years or so I’ve been somewhat known for hosting and helping out with events in NJ and NYC at the local Microsoft offices. I’ve hosted SPFx bootcamps, both Office 365 Developer and Azure Global Bootcamps, and last but not least SharePoint Saturday NYC + NJ aka O365 NYC aka M365 NYC. These events in New York have had upwards of 900 registered users to attend and typically see 300-400 people in person, and on a good year peaking 500 people in person. Amazing to be able to see this event unfold and the amount of planning and preparation on the organizer partnering with the Microsoft staff is truly a spectacle.

Here we are now in the virtual event era where all we can have is virtual events. Running events in person have certain challenges in terms of budget, location, logistics and come with risks of getting speakers, no shows, cancellations, timing. Virtual events as they seem somewhat easier… they are not.

Organizers – The backend planning crew. It takes a few people to be the heart and soul behind the event in order for it to actually happen. In the case of the Philly crew it was Jason Rivera, Mike Mukalian, Manpreet Singh and myself. With the late addition of Dave Leville. We all have different responsibilities which make the event happen. I’ll outline the roles of our Organization team below.

Jason Rivera – Main Organizer aka Project Manager – runs the user group in PA and starts the process. The Heart of the operation. Jason has the pulse of the local area and drives the month to month operation of local events [virtual for now]. Jason is the key point of contact with the local community and also ensures that the best interest of the local community is upheld with all decisions that are made.

Manpreet Singh – The Tech Platform – Runs The Tech Platform and is very comfortable with running online Teams events. Manpreet is also a key part of events running in the NJ/NYC/PA area, Current host of the NJ M365 User Group. No stranger to online events and know how to run things in MS Teams and cross platform like YouTube/ FB Live. Manpreet was always in the background supporting our producers in the event that anything went wrong.

Michael Mukalian – Microsoft Contact – the blue badge. Loads of knowledge and contacts. Critical role to have on the team to ensure that the event runs inline with Microsoft’s vision aka best practices aka the direction of the modern workspace. Michael has always been involved in the Philly community for many years and his years of dedication to fostering events is essential.

Thomas Daly [myself] SoHo Dragon – Support – My role was a support role such as getting the word out for speakers to apply, getting producers, talking to sponsors, assisting in voting of topics, being a producer and any last minute things that fall through the cracks. The years of experience and relationships in the community play a vital role in my ability to provide support.

David Leveille – Crush Networks – Marketing / Support – David not just a typically sponsor. David was a late addition but nonetheless a crucial role in help us spread the word for the event. David brought in both speakers and sponsors attention to our event. David was also key in the marketing aspect of our event as he has experience in mastering the social platforms to raise awareness and visibility to outside of our respective reach. David is also key persona for other M365 events such as M365 Virtual, California, Idaho, Mexico

Producers – Your frontline workers. Having the correct number of producers to help with welcoming the speaker, kicking off the sessions, controlling the timing so session do not run over, facilitating questions from the audience in a controlled manner. Depending on the number of tracks / sessions you need to have full coverage with dedicated producers to be your eyes and ears in the channels. They will report back any major problems during the sessions.

Shout out to our Producers:

1. Jaime Willis-Rose – Applied Information Sciences – Super Star Power Platform Developer – Jaime is a super star, always willing to step in last minute and help out. Rockstar in my book.
2. Tosha Desai – Co worker at SoHo Dragon – A dedicated colleague and expert in the M365 realm. Jumping in the last minute to help to produce our Friday Sessions.
3. Stacy Burris – M365 Organizer – former director of SPTechCon now PAIT Group Marketing & Operations Director – Stacy always goes above an beyond when she can. She helped produce a few of our Saturday Session for this event.
4. Nishant
5. Mohammed

Schedule

We put all of our sessions on the website through rebrand.ly. This is in case someone accidentally closed out the Teams Live event. If they close the Teams Live event we would have to recreate a link for a new event and have our attendees access that. rebrand.ly was our vanity url service so in the event that a Teams Live event was accidentally close we could have minimal down time. We could quickly change the link behind the scenes and users would experience very little impact.

Teams Live Events / Teams Events

The big question is why Teams Live events vs Teams Events. This seems to be the biggest topic for discussion. Teams Live events we scheduled for the entire day so we had a consistently running event. We would later cut the events down for the recordings in post production. In a Teams Live event the speakers can join externally and they don’t need an account as long as they were added to the Team in advance. However some speakers have an issue with this but apparently not so much this time. We had tech checks in place to verify that speakers could join and present.

We could not run Teams meetings last year because there was not option to mute all attendees. This was since correct by the MS Teams team and we could control the audience with a typical teams meeting. However we did take into consideration that M365 Virtual Marathon had some comment spam during these events.

The down side is that our speakers do not know how many people are in the sessions at a given time. There is also a delay for Q/A close to 30 seconds to 1 minutes. This greatly impacts the interactive nature of the conversation. We can’t tell who is there and it’s a little weird to talk to no-one. You might be there but the speakers can’t tell.

Co Presenters

We had a few presentation where there were 2 or more presenters and that was a challenge b/c only 1 screen and 1 video could be produced at a time. I had a track Winning Combination: Team up with the Microsoft 365 PnP Community and become a SharePoint All-Star with David Warner, Beau Cameron, Hugo Benier and Chris Kent that I had to juggle the speaker video as they were talking. This was not necessarily a problem but also a consideration for live events where I had to switch up the speakers video feed during the talk.

Feedback

Feedback is one of the most overlooked aspects of running events. We sincerely look at event piece of feedback both good, bad, and even ugly. We consider each piece for the next event and take it to heart. Each event is an extension of the organization committee and we don’t want to hear negative feedback however we know negative is a part of growth and we incorporate that into the planning for the next event. I can tell you we look at ever single piece of feedback and we adjust based on that. Typically people leave feedback when they had a either negative or positive experience and not typically for mediocre experiences. We absolutely review each piece and adjust accordingly.

Purpose

We know that these events are free for all to attend and listen. Yes, sponsors get some opt-in information to solicit their services but that is part of their incentive to help us out financially with prizes or covering hosting or other costs. For all of us involved we don’t get paid to organize, we don’t get paid to produce, we don’t get paid as a speaker. This year we had a purpose to host an event that is free for all that want to attend and we also asked that if you found value that you consider making a small donation to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia were we had a modest goal of $1,000. Which is not much considering the value of the content that was being delivered over a 2 day time span. We sincerely appreciate all the donations that have come in and at the time of this writing we are so close to reaching that goal. This is a charity that is near and dear to our heart and main organizer, Jason Rivera, which I would like to thank each and everyone that donated. It doesn’t matter if it’s $1,5,10 or more each and every bit counts and it’s a relative indicator that you all felt that this event was worthwhile. We have never asked for money ever for the in person events and we will never will but the response to our small charity drive has been overwhelming that we cannot thank you enough.

Each event is run by a local organizer who typically has a small team of other co-organizers. Typically the organizer is someone you might already know that runs your local M365/O365 User Group. They may be a consultant, an employee for a company, self employed, or maybe even Microsoft employee. The point being is that it’s regular people that run these events and not Microsoft. Microsoft plays a huge rule in organizing the support structure behind the event helping with awareness, the global website, supply the facility, subject matter experts, and securing global sponsors for schwag or most importantly lunch. Microsoft is the backbone behind the events while your local community champions obtain speakers, produce schedules, coordinate food/refreshments, generate agenda or content.

M365 is an ever growing platform of software applications. These events help beginners bridge the gap to entry into building applications using the technologies involved. Each event will have it’s own agenda but would focus on one or many of the follow: Azure, SharePoint, Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI or MS Teams.

This will be our 4th year running our local bootcamp. The first two years we ran the events in New Jersey and New York. This last year I’ve connect with the team out in Pennsylvania and we’ve all joined forces to run the event in NJ, NY and PA for 2019 and 2020. This year’s event will be 100% virtual and open for any one to join us. Initially the intention was to keep it to 30 people hands on but the registration numbers grew to over 700. This is beyond our expectations but we will still deliver the same content in a deep dive demonstration format with the correct subject matter experts for each of the technologies.

Our NJ, NY, PA bootcamp will be 3 dates each with their own agenda. Register Now

Nov 7, 2020 – MS Teams Governance

Nov 14, 2020 – Power Platform [Power Apps, Power Automate, Power BI]

Nov 21, 2020 – SharePoint Framework [SPFx]

Shout out to our organizer team. Michael Mukalian [Microsoft], Jason Rivera, Manpreet Singh, James Novak.

So what makes me an MVP? I have no problem in telling you that regardless of the title I live and breathe on help people around me learn the new technologies coming out in the Office 365 stack. My focus is on SharePoint development but it doesn’t stop there.

I am a huge proponent of live events and enriching communities. In the past year, I’ve traveled to numerous states to deliver talks about SharePoint and Office 365 development. I’ve demonstrated GitHub projects showing what you can and shouldn’t do working within SharePoint modern. I’ve worked with others to deliver live events on Office 365 & Azure in NJ, NYC, and PA.

I can say in the past year I’ve given those talks to as little as 5 people to groups pushing 100. I get more satisfaction speaking to 5 than 100 but that’s another discussion. The point is it really doesn’t matter on how many people attend your sessions, subscribe to your blogs/youtube, follow you on social media. I do it because that’s what I enjoy doing and if it helps one person I am satisfied that my mission is accomplished. The reality is that your experience and story doesn’t only touch one person, it effects many. We are all learning together – constantly, as am I.

I have spent at least 5 years doing what I love to prior to becoming recognized for this award and I wouldn’t change a thing. I never started out saying that I must become a Microsoft MVP. The title came much later when my actions and involvement spoke for themselves.

2020 will be a challenge. How can I run events in my community given we can’t meet? I am not a fan of online events however, I am doing my best to deliver live online content through SharePoint Saturdays and other outlets. I am working with other organizers in the community to help events plan, gather resources and execute their online events. For the next few months I am focusing on delivering more online content while we wait for the time when we can meet in person.

I am so happy to announce that I’ve been awarded Microsoft MVP in Office Servers and Services (essentially Office 365). It feels amazing to receive this recognition and be included among some best and brightest out there.

Many people ask how do you get to become an MVP, well for me it was a long time in the making. I have put in 100’s of hours in attending SharePoint Saturday’s, Conferences, and User Groups outside regular work hours. I’ve stayed up late nights tweeting, blogging my findings, and sharing examples/projects within github all while working with Office 365 and SharePoint. I put myself out there and present content for online webinars, sharing at local user groups and presenting at SharePoint Saturdays and Conferences around the country. I also have been running the New Jersey Office 365 & SharePoint User Group as it mutate over the past ten years, from Princeton @ Infragistics now to Iselin @ Microsoft. Finding speakers and sponsors to bring content to our area and facilitate networking. Most of the time laying out my own money for website, pizza & refreshments. I have successfully run 9 SharePoint Saturdays in NYC which are the largest in the country (Approx 500 people), 2 SharePoint Saturday New Jerseys (~125ppl), 1 Azure Bootcamp, 2 Office 365 Bootcamps, and I’ve assisted which helping out in some degree on many other events.

How do you get MVP? I can’t say 100% because it’s different for everyone. While I’m glad to be recognized these are the activities that I do regardless. The main reasons is that I doing it. I like sharing things that I find with people. I like free events that people can come and learn, connect with experts and their peers. These experiences you can’t get from a video or reading a article.

Microsoft thank you for this award! I hope that I can continue to serve my community and be thanked for doing so!