TeamsFest just celebrated its first ‘birthday.’ The event’s first-ever iteration happened before the pandemic hit in October 2019. The second, April 2020, and the third, October 2020. Even before the novel Coronavirus forced many events to go virtual, Chris Hoard, MVP, Partner Education Lead, Vuzion, and one of the lead organisers of TeamsFest shared with me the conference has always been a virtual one.
Hoard sat down with me for an interview, and he started by giving me a brief overview of TeamsFest and shared the enthusiasm of the European Microsoft Teams user landscape. He added, “TeamsFest is a 100 percent free of charge and a 100 percent community-based event dedicated to Microsoft Teams.” Today, the event happens twice a year and is designed to democratise Microsoft Teams’ knowledge along with experience for anyone who cannot afford to attend other conferences that require travel.
“The first TeamsFest, which ran in 2019, was called Oktoberfest and is a result of the European Teams user group. Myself and co-organiser Adam Deltinger wanted to put together an event larger than what we were doing at the time”
The name TeamsFest came from Vesa Nopanen, a Microsoft MVP, who spoke at the user group. Nopanen later joined the organising team during the first event. Over time, others joined that team, including Chris Webb during the second event in April 2020. For this October’s event, TeamsFest had over 2,500 registrations with about 1,300 unique attendees in one day.
“We more than doubled the number of attendees that we had for our previous event in April”
One of the elements of the events Hoard told me he’s pleased with – the sheer breadth of subjects they managed to pack in: Windows Virtual Desktop, NDI, Tasks, Lists, and Project Oakdale. “This is the first time we had something for everyone in attendance,” he added.
Hoard told me, the feedback for TeamsFest this year has been ‘unbelievable,’ adding, many folks have already asked if the group has planned an event in 2021. “I cannot begin to articulate what this means to us and how fulfilling it is to create something which brings value to people’s lives.”
He did caution there is a lot to consider when it comes to appetite and demand. Oversaturation – the amount of time people now spend online and the relevance of the content are two big deciding factors. “There’s no doubt we will be back – but we are going to have a rest, regroup, and take a little time to think about when this will be.”
I’d like to highlight a session that Johan Delimon, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business MVP, MCSM, Microsoft Trainer, put on. The session looked at the various camera and lighting conditions that exist so you can identify the best options to ensure your video lighting is solid. Everyone has faced this problem at some point, but it has been especially prevalent during a period in history where video conferencing is more relied upon than ever before. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of value in attending such a session.
