Today I would like to write few words about Ignite 2017 conference. I had this great possibility to be one of the participant of this amazing event. This post I am writing the day after. It will not be so technical, but I would like to share with you my few thoughts about it. And also about the impact on my a few key carrier decisions. Technical post will be next ๐Ÿ™‚

I have written the post about what’s important when we make decision where we are going to work. And the fact that I am here means to me that I done good choice. In many companies we will hear that we are get crazy when we suggest to our boss that we would like to go to big event like Ignite. In my case everything has been organized by my boss. It means that there are people who care about employees and team.

Everybody know that very often we are focused on our work and we don’t have a time to find out what’s going on in our business  and if our carrier is going in the right direction. We don’t need to go to such events every year, but every 2-3 years will nice. I think everyone should have in the agreement point with information that our company will provide us possibility to participate in such event every 2-3 years. I was downloading videos and presentation from such events before. Believe me it’s not the same…

Ignite
Ignite

Ignite from my point of view

I will be honest with you. I was participating in many conferences but I can’t compare Ignite to them. Ignite it’s just awesome! 20 000 geeks in one place make huge impression. Everything works perfect. In case of lunch or just transportation from the hotel. If you have a problem you can ask guys from the service and they will do everything to help you. By the way their enthusiasm looks like powered by some strange medicines ๐Ÿ™‚ …

One more thing. I had possibility to participate one day before Ignite in something called Pre Training Day. That was really amazing. I spent 8 hours and learn so many things in such short time. I had possibility to talk to people who created in fact solutions which I use on daily basis. And when you can just ask Vesa Juvonen or some other people from his team about almost everything? Wow! That’s superb useful. When you do exercises they will help you to make it running. That was really great time.

What I found about myself?

To be honest, Ignite it’s also marketing and PR event. And companies from the states are master in those. But still, possibility to participate in such event is priceless. If you really interested in you can get so much from such event. Also you can get some additional information which can’t hear from the stage…

For me it was also important to find out that I have still something. I mean after 20 years IT work I am still interested in and I can get a little crazy about those stuffs ๐Ÿ™‚ . This is what my colleagues say- you get crazy… Again ๐Ÿ™‚

What about SharePoint?

Second important thing. I always think about myself as SharePoint architect, developer, administrator. I found out during conference that this is dead end. From my point of view I can still work on SharePoint but as part of something bigger – Office 365 and Azure. For me it’s not a core product any more. Of course there are still jobs on the market with C# coding for SharePoint, but I am not going to invest any second of my time to learn new things about SharePoint on premise. Of course you can get really good position now, but what’s next? You will stick to the solution which is going to slowly die. And after few years you will be on the market with skills which no one needs.

I had possibility to ask Microsoft employee what about SharePoint Apps? He asked me: Are you already started to build something? No? So don’t do this. Focus on SharePoint framework.

Of course we will get next version of SharePoint server, it has been already announced by Microsoft during conference. But do not expect any breakthrough. Simple example. We heard some information about bots in Office 365 at Ignite and how we can use it, but there’s no plans that they will be available on the premise. In general most of really amazing ideas is in the cloud.

And this it for today. It was really great week and I hope that I will go there again. And I wish you the same ๐Ÿ™‚