We are delighted to announce that on October 8th 2015 we will be running a 24-hour online, free conference along similar lines as SP24.

Our conference this year will be an event driven by the community for the community. This time our focus will be Office 365 (including SharePoint, Exchange, Azure, Office Apps and more). It will be called the Collab365 Conference.

Who is going to speak?

For starters – this is going to be a mammoth conference full of tracks ranging from “household” speakers to up and coming stars. As we did with SP24, we want to put together a fantastic mix of speakers that represents the Office 365 and Azure communities from around the planet.

How long will it last?

The conference will last for 24 hours. Yes you read it correct! This conference will start at 9am New Zealand Time and end 24 hour hours later.

What will the tracks and sessions be about?

We’ve already had well over 50 submissions (in less than 2 weeks) and all we can say now is that you will not be disappointed! We are going to be putting sessions together catering for all abilities across the entire Office 365 product family and also Microsoft Azure. (If you want to speak please see the section towards the bottom for instructions).

What if I miss out?

As with an offline conference, you will need to make the decision as to which sessions you want to attend during the conference. There’s no way around this – although with an on-line conference it is possible to be in two places at one time 😉 We are going to make all of the content available after the conference (with permission from the speaker). However, there are going to be a few big surprises (that we will announce in due course), but all we can say is that you need to make sure that you keep the day free!

Get the whole office involved and let’s party!

As so many of you did during SP24, why not book a conference room at your workplace, get the pizza’s in and enjoy the experience! This will ensure you don’t have any distractions and also allows you to create your own experience! Make sure you take plenty of photos and submit them to our “Collab365 Conference Wall” (coming soon)..

How much does it cost?

As with SPBiz, we have purposefully made attendance FREE for all. However, as you can imagine, we do have some hosting, streaming and management costs to absorb. For that we will be seeking sponsorship. So if you do attend, please support the sponsored activities and speaker sessions because without their support we could not host such a fabulous event free of charge.

Want to support the Collab365 and / or SPBiz Conferences?

If you want to help us keep this event free, then please get in touch as we have a variety of unique opportunities for you to get involved. We are expecting over 10,000 attendees (and probably nearer 20,000), so this should be a mouth watering opportunity!

SharePoint-Community.Net and Collab365 – a match made in heaven!

As you probably know, SharePoint-Community.Net boasts a very large online, vibrant community that welcomes over 3000 users to it’s virtual doors daily. We are absolutely delighted to announce that we will be partnering with the community to provide an unmatched experience for community goers 365 days a year. To make this less confusing for members, we will be renaming and rebranding SharePoint-Community.Net to “Collab365 Community” in the coming weeks. More soon….

What is the SPBiz Conference?

SPBiz is happening in June this year and is aimed at people using either SharePoint On-Premises or SharePoint On-Line and who are mainly Power or Business Users. There will be plenty of sessions that are suitable for Architects, Analysts, IT Pros and even developers but the technical level will be on the low (100) side. We also have sponsorship opportunities, so if you’d like to join the likes of Metalogix who are our Gold partners then please get in touch!

How do you sign up?

Be sure to you secure your place on both of our fantastic, free, online Conferences that are going to take place this year. SPBiz is targeted at the SharePoint for Business/Power Users, whereas the Collab365 Conference will be a 24 hour mammoth conference with several tracks covering all aspects of Office 365 (including SharePoint, Exchange, Delve, Office Apps, BI) as well as tracks dedicated to Azure.

Want to speak at either conference?

If you want to speak at either conference then please submit a session. We are looking for a great cross-section of speakers who can bring a difference perspective to the topics covered. To speak you won’t be required to travel, you just need to get comfy in front of your PC 🙂

What’s next?

We don’t plan to stop there. Our goal for 2016 is to bring you a unique online/offline hybrid conference experience. By partnering with other conference organisers, we are going to be bringing you their offline content using our online platform.