Ignite 2015 Conference Articulate the Future for Microsoft
Microsoft Ignite 2015 kicked off this week in Chicago, IL. Touted by Microsoft as "a unified enterprise technology conference [that] will bring together the best of previously individual events—the Management Summit, the Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, Project, and TechEd conferences—and then take it to the next level, based on what our customers and partners have asked for," the event aims to educate and inspire IT workers, network administrators, and other technology professionals that work in enterprise solutions.
The event features hundreds of activities, presentations, certification opportunities, and lectures. Keynote presenters scheduled to appear include:
- Brad Anderson Corporate Vice President of the Enterprise Client & Mobility (ECM) team at Microsoft
- Joe Belfiore Corporate Vice President of the Operating Systems Group at Microsoft
- Dave Campbell CTO—Server and Tools Division at Microsoft
- Peggy Johnson Executive Vice President of Business Development for Microsoft
- Chris Jones Corporate Vice President of OneDrive and SharePoint
- Julie Larson Green Microsoft’s Chief Experience Officer
- Gurdeep Singh Pall Corporate Vice President of Office Lync & Speech Group at Microsoft
Those in the SharePoint community will be excited to know that no fewer than 27 different events relate to SharePoint and its wide assortment of add-on applications. Examples include presentations on the use and evolution of DocuSign and other software designed to implement a truly paperless office of the future, when to deploy different aspects of SharePoint and bundled Office programs to maximize enterprise productivity and security, roundtable discussions about SharePoint governance, and many more.
Microsoft has targeted this conference at technology professionals and companies interested in moving into the world of mobile and cloud functionality. This will be the first event of its kind for Microsoft, uniting the full spectrum of its enterprise solutions in a single conference.
Microsoft’s stated goal is "rewiring what a Microsoft enterprise tech conference is and does." The company wishes to integrate technology into the function of the conference as much as it wishes to talk about deploying it in others’ enterprise solutions. Thus, the conference will use social media and various mobile applications and cloud based services (all running on Microsoft platforms, of course) to more fully immerse professionals in the schedule, presentations, and other events.
The tech giant hopes the Ignite event will inspire a new generation of products and services for customers using Microsoft products. To do this, the conference will cover cloud infrastructure and management, big data and analytics, productivity, unified communications, operating systems, mobile devices, and many other topics. It will also provide unusual levels of access to upper-level members of the Microsoft corporate structure, providing a platform not just for lecturing, but actual communication back and forth between the company’s leaders and the people that rely on their products every day.
Microsoft Ignite runs from May 4-8 in Chicago at McCormick Place. While it is still possible to register and attend, those who cannot attend can go here to view a live video feed of the conference.