SharePoint Saturday 2019 was a superb example of the types of free community events that are possible when enough people come together with the same goal – helping others.
SharePoint Saturday 2019 was held at County Hall on the beautiful South Bank on June 1st 2019. With over 50 speakers and hundreds of attendees the event was a long and eventful day.
Some of the UKs best speakers gave sessions of everything from SharePoint development and office 365 topics, including PowerApps 101, Cognitive Services, Microsoft Flow and many showcase style session showing development ideas, techniques and best practices.
Sadly the keynote Jon Levesque was unable to attend but the enigmatic (yup there are many other words you could put in here) Seb Mathews and his team made sure the audience were kept entertained and busy.
The event itself was reflective of the changes in the SharePoint platform, it totally embraced the SharePoint connection to Office 365, the Power Platform and Azure development topics and the sheer variety of depth of the sessions from 101 to hardcore development meant that at each breakout session the main hall emptied and the attention shifted to the expert speakers who had given up their Saturday to share their knowledge with a very appreciative audience.
Just a few of my favorite session of the day came from the speakers listed below, but with 50 of us presenting there were no shortage of sessions to attend;
- Rebekka Aalbers
- Chris Hungerford
- Ahmad Najjar
- Luise Freese
- Chris OBrien
- Alan Eardley
- Daniel Laskewitz
- Marjin Somers
- Sharon Sumner (yes me!)
All sessions were well attended and the audiences were both responsive and engaged.
During the breaks there was food and coffee and plenty of technical discussion and time to catch up with friends old and new
SharePoint Saturday 2019 – Luise Freese MVP SharePoint Saturday 2019 – Encodian Chis Hungerford MVP, Rebekka Aalbers, Keith Watling MVP SharePoint Saturday UK 2019 – Ahmad Najjar MVP
Attendees were a good mix of senior stakeholders, developers, consultants and power users. Also attending were some familiar faces including Keith Watling, Manuela Pitcher and many other familiar faces.
Overall the day was full of great conversations and lots of networking.
The venue was excellent, which despite scorching temperatures outside stayed cool and the catering team were first class. The helping hands that made the event come together included Laura Graham-Brown and Paul Brant -familiar faces to any long term SharePoint fan.
Following the event was the ever popular SharePint where both speakers and attendees got to hang out at a local London pub for a pint and a chat.
This was my first time taking part as a presenter of a SharePoint Saturday event and I have to say it was awesome. The team looked after the speakers too with a Quest sponsored pre-event dinner and trip on the London Eye which was a great night – its always nice to catch up and meet new people in the Microsoft speaking community – these people really are the most welcoming and genuine bunch I have ever me with a drive and passion to share unlike anywhere else – I’m proud to be a part of this group 🙂
London Eye June 2019 Those guys in Pod 1
Pod 2 – clearly the best bunch of speakers
