MSIgnite 2016, Day5

A short day at the conference left some time to explore the city. The sessions I attended was of uniform Ignite quality.

My first session today was out of my traditional track - it was Lonya French talking about "Create meaningful stories in an instant with Office Sway". It was time to explore something new, and Sway seemed to be an interesting product to include in my everyday life at work and on private. Sway is a new Microsoft Office app that lets you easily create presentations, reports, and stories to share with the world. In Sway I can concentrate on the content and let Sway take care of the design. Looking forward to explore this further.

Lonya starting her session

My second session of my last day at Ignite 2016 was held by Korneel Bullens known from earlier. Today he also got company from Sunie Sutjahjo. The sessions topic was "Deploy ExpressRoute for Skype in Microsoft Office 365". This session was enlightening and structured related to the subject which InFact could be relatively floating. The speakers did manage to describe the ExpressRoute product in a perfect manner. The important thing was to get an understanding on when we need Express Route, and when we don't need an Express Route. We did also get third party applications to know.

The presenters are getting ready.

One slide describing the Express Route

Korneel described perfectly when a Express Route would gain the network performance

My last session for the conference was held by my Norwegian acquaintance Lasse Nordvik Wedø on the topic "Configure Skype for Business Cloud Connector Edition with your SBC". The session did have a good flow thanks Lasse's good preparations. We did have video recordings of the demos and the presentation did continuously update with corresponding twitter posts. Great ninja skills!

Lasse starting his session at Ignite 2016

Lasse was very exact in his prerecorded demoes on the Sonus SBC's 

After the last session was finished, it was time to pick my luggage and have my last Ignite Lunch... this year.

Orlando announced as next years Ignite location

Now I had some time to explore the city before my flight home.

Relaxing in the sun outside of Georgia World Conference Center

Changing to hotel downtown for my last night

Visiting the Coca-Cola world museum (Coca-Cola origins from Atlanta, GA)

Had a great dinner at Hard Rock Cafe Atlanta

Me with a motorbike found at Hard Rock Cafe Atlanta that Elvis Presley bought the year I was born.

Thanks to Microsoft for being a great host during this week in Atlanta. Thanks to Serit for allowing me to attend to the Microsoft Ignite 2016 conference. Thanks to my wife Else Marie that runs our home with our three lovely kids while I have been travelling abroad. Much appreciated!

MSIgnite 2016, Day4

15,5 hour since I left the hotel. Almost 13.000 steps on my pedometer. A day full of great sessions topped with an awesome Microsoft Attendee celebration. It's late, but I need to preserve some memories.

First session first: "Enabling mobility with Skype for Business" held by Praveen Maloo. This session did review all the features across the different mobile plattforms with lots of good demos on the Skype for Business mobile apps and integrations with the Outlook app, iOS 10 and more.

Praveen Maloo starting his SfB Mobile Client session

The new iOS10 integrations are demonstrated - here is a SfB call answered from the lock screen

My second session was Brian R. Ricks talking about "Configure Skype for Business for Skype Room Systems, Project Rigel and Surface Hub". This in-depth session described how to properly setup the overall environment in order to have best best possible experience from Microsoft Surface Hub, Project Rigel and Skype Room Systems.

Brian on stage with a humoristic intro to his good session

First hand information shared by Brian

I had planned two sessions as my third session. I didn't figure which one to attend today. Instead I did take an early lunch in the Ignite Hang Out. This turned out to be a good idea since I got my phone charged, I had a nice couch and ok food. With a pair of headset connected to a remote receiver I could also zap between 10 livefeeds from current running sessions at Ignite. I did mostly follow session on monitor 7. The agenda was slightly out of my hardcore areas, but the speaker was really engrossing. Much of the topics could however easily be transferred to any other project involving end users.


3/5 part of the large screen in the Ignite hang out

My personal wireless sound receiver/zapper

Session 2048 turned out to have a good speaker - I need to see this on demand later on

After my lunch I attended a really good session held by Nikolay Muravlyannikov on the topic "Plan for Skype for Business cloud connectivity with Microsoft Office 365". Nikolay was very detailed in his presentation of the two types of connectivity with Cloud PBX and he shared a lot of experience and information. Time well spend!

Nikolay starting his presentation

One of many good slides from Nikolay.

My fourth(?) and last session today was the hardcore depdive "Deploy Cloud Connector Edition with Microsoft Office 365" held by Kerneel Bullens. This session gave an end-to-end description of an CCE Appliance installation. The session was well seasoned with practical tips and tricks from years operating in the MS UC field.

Session from Kerneel is about to start - during his presentation he was constantly walking and talking :)

A good slide from Kerneel describing all the acronyms used within the profession

With such a great line of sessions today I decided to drop my planned Theater session for the benefit of some relaxing in the sun. Time to charge the body for tonights Ignite Attendee Celebration in Centennial Olympic Park! Microsoft had even put om a great troubadour in the park outside the congress center. I did also use some time discovering the surroundings after 4 days mainly inside the Georgia World Congress Center.

Just as I imagined...

The WCC surroundings 

Centinel Olympic park in the front with the Skyline

Downtown

Childrens Museum... Is it the Gravesite?

Entering the camp...

Barbequeue...

The crowded campsite

 

Thank you Microsoft for a day filled with good sessions, a great camp party with some live banjo music and Tennessee rock from The Delta Saints!

MSIgnite 2016, Day3

Three days has passed at MSIgnite 2016. Still two more to go, but first a wrap up of some notes to my self from this day stuffed with exciting sessions.

After breakfast I found time to do a spark portrait. As usual I had a sharp eye on the technology. Pretty interesting to see and even hear all the shutters released at the same time for a photo nerd like me. The result:

Session number one was the "Troubleshoot new Skype for Business offerings" held by Jason Collier and Ricardo Garcia. This was a really good deep dive into how to troubleshoot the new SfB offerings. The experienced speakers did share a wealth of information from the nuts and bolts of the most common scenarios. They did also show helpfull tips and tricks through the tools of troubleshooting SfB. A much appreciated session stuffed with valuable technical information. The slide deck will be studied and the session replayed more than once.

Jason, Ricardo and Bryan from yesterdays SOF session

Start with a structured approach for troubleshooting

Gather as much details as possible from the error situation

Classify the issue from the details

Common causes to problems. Note that the Client also needs patching to keep up with the pace of the Cloud

Session number two this wednesday was by William L. Looney: "Troubleshoot Operations with Skype Call Quality Management". Unfortunately he had some demo syndroms, but the essence of the topic was good - this topic has also been mentioned in other sessions so far during this Ignite week.

William Looney on stage

Tool overview for Call Quality management

As my third session today I did choose the "Migrate to Exchange Online via Exchange Hybrid" held by Timothy Heeney and Michael Van Horenbeeck. It's a pleassure to experience such highly related sessions according to my current running projects held by such vital and knowledgeable people. This session did answer quite a few questions. It was a thrill listening to Timothys stories from development spiced with sweet humor. Both speakers had a good flow and high speed. Appreciated!

Thomas Murphy Ballroom was a great arena for som superior speakers

With help of Twitter I got noticed to join the "Plan for Cloud PBX deployment" session held by Jamie Stark. This was also a really good session held by an inspiring and captivating speaker with mint presentation skills, knowledge to the subject and superb flow. The session did cover an overview of all the features of Cloud PBX - from administration capabilities to interoperability to end-user features. Jamie did also have a good live demo of the Cloud PBX admin interfaces.

Jamie Stark getting ready to start his session

Cloud UC presented as the fourth communication era in a credible way (listen to the session on-demand!)

As a final session this day I did enjoy Thomas Poett at the MVP Hub Talk where he gave a good session related to "moving forward with Office 365 and Skype for Business". A dedicated speaker describing some techy SfB stuff from projects.

Poett describes large voice enabled O365 implementations with several SBCs in different parts of the world

It is hard to put one session up against another in order to say if one is better than another. The speakers at Ignite are the best available within their subject. As long as I pick sessions with subjects of my interests, they tend to fit like a glove.

On the Expo floor today I explored more new technologies surrounding Skype for Business and got a chance to tamper with some cool stuff like phones from Yealink, the new meeting room experience from Logitech Smart Dock, Attendant Pro from Landis etc. I even got a chance to explore the Nano server through a pair of Microsoft Hololense!


Yealink T48G. They will come with a T49 with cam as well(!)

 

So far during my Ignite journey I have tended to attend mainly at UC sessions. Seems like my planned schedule for the rest of my week at Ignite will have even more UC sessions. Oh what a joy!

Today was a special good day at Ignite whit a lot of knowledge captured that will become handy already at Monday. I even got myself a lunch today!

MSIgnite 2016, Day2

I am back at the hotel room after day two at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta. Better knowledge to the buildings and a looser schedule gave a lower number on the pedometer related to day one. A day full of impressions deserves some notes along with my "photographic" memory.

It was crowdy in the hallways after breakfast. Some people was smart enough to take the outside promenade between the buildings. Unfortunately I was stuck in the queue for a while.


Nice weather and noe queue outside... but I was walking inside today

I had picked several sessions for this morning that collided in time. The choice felt on the panel discussion "Improve Office 365 Adoption: top 10 ways" since I recognized one of the speakers from a session on day 1. The discussion gave some good ideas which I hope can be useful in coming projects.

Panel discussion about top 10 ways to improve Office 365 adoption

My second session was "Dive into Project Rigel and the Skype for Business Meeting Device Portfolio" by Group Manager for Skype for Meeting Devices in Microsoft - Ilya Bukshteyn. This was a very interesting session on the new possibilities in the Skype Meeting Experience. We got the historical backdrop for the project, a detailed walkthrough of the process towards the new system and presentation of all partners involved in the project. There was performed a live demo of the impressive and intuitive system (one-click-join experience, attached presentations in meeting invite added to presentation bucket, connect local computer to present or project, easy to start adhoc meetings/calls etc) I hope to be able to see and work with a lot of these technologies in the meeting rooms in the near future - from small huddle rooms all the way to large conference rooms.

Ilya had a huge number of equipment on stage for his live demo

 

My third session today was called "Migrate to the Cloud - Skype for Business Online". The presenters Sean Wilson and William Haberkon did cover workloads to move, how to connect an on-premises deployment to the cloud and new features in moving to the cloud like meeting migrations or managing tenants that span multiple regions to ensure the highest media quality.

Migration paths to Skype for Business Online covered in this session.

Skype for Business online now supports the new Multi-Region enabled state

set-msoluser -PreferredDataLocation was demonstrated live in the session

My fourth session at Ignite 2016 Day 2 was named "Introduce Windows Server 2016 into your environment" held by Jeffrey Woolsey. A level 200 session that rushed through many of the new features spanning from better Time Server, more secure DNS, improved sign-on experience, stronger authentication, stronger ID protection, shielded VMs, Containers, Nano servers, software defined networking/storage and even more. A nice overview of the new server from an inspiring speaker.

More details from Microsoft on the new server can be found here.


Jeffrey Woolsey talking about the new Windows Server 2016

TimeSync - a small, but important component in multi-site/national companies

A phased approach related to Time Server when implementing WinServer 2016
Remember to sync the Time server with a trusted source

Containers was presented in different scenes and variations

My last session for the day was named "Dig into the Skype Operations Framwork". This session was held by Bryan Nyce, a great speaker. SOF is a comprehensive guide and toolset for implementing and managing a reliable and cost-effective communication service based on Skype for Business. The framework is pretty fresh (presented at WPC earlier this year), but are continuously evolving. I can't wait to start study the SOF from microSOFt.

One main quotation from this presentation

During the day I got notified through twitter that I had missed a great Skype for Business session held by Andrew Bybee on the topic "Build native cloud apps for Skype for Business: Skype Developer platform overview". It is not directly related to my operations, but there was given interesting information and demonstrations on the new Trusted Application API for the cloud. I guess this means that third party applications providers pretty soon can start develop their solutions for cloud pbx integrations (callcenter and switchboard providers like Trio Enterprise, Competela and likewise). These inputs combined with other inputs so far in this conference (day 2:5) makes a clear picture on where things should be run in the future. Thanks to Matt Landis for twittering the news from this session!

At the end of the day I had some time in the large EXPO hall where I did consult some expertise related to ongoing projects. It is really appreciated that Microsoft puts people with knowledge, experience and influence into their showcase area! Today I got precise and accurate answers to a couple of projects of mine involving hybrid configurations between on premises installations and cloud. I even got a pretty interesting talk with D'Arcy Salzmann from the Hololens strategy and product team which described a pretty interesting use of the Hololens together with Skype that would have been fun to test with a customer.

Polycom PTZ camera and Control screen (prototype) for the Skype Room System

Crestron Control screen (prototype) for the Skype Room System

Exploring the Surface Hub. Would love to have these for a huddle room at work...
...even though I am a mobile worker.

My phone did decharge pretty quick today as well. I had a powerbank, but that didn't last long. Long time experienced surviver made me improvise with the stuff I had and found that my Surface did provide power through the USB port even though it wasn't running. This gave me the following hack of my Microsoft Ignite bag:

Charge cable through headphone port of the Microsoft bag made the surface a giant UPS for my phone.

No giveaways today - only pure knowledge!
And by the way - I did remember lunch today, but it was to late - they were empty...

Now it's time to catchup with the mailbox with my dual-monitor-hotel-room-system based on Surface, iPad and duet display!