SharePoint at 25: Lessons from the scars

SharePoint has been declared dead for two decades and somehow keeps showing up to work. I started with it in 2009 when people were already calling it outdated. Since then I have built intranets, migrated file shares with hundreds of thousands of documents, cleaned up permission disasters, over-customized sites, ripped customizations back out, and watched Teams and Copilot expose every weak decision in real time. This is not a history lesson. It is a field report from the trenches.

In this session, I will share hard-earned lessons from 25 years of SharePoint. Lessons about document libraries, folders, metadata, version history, search, governance, migrations, customization, and adoption. What actually breaks at scale. What users really struggle with. What admins ignore until it hurts. And what I would build differently today in a modern Microsoft 365 tenant.

SharePoint is not a website builder. It is a content platform that rewards clarity and punishes shortcuts. After this session, you will see it differently. And you will build it better.

Viva Connections first steps

In this session, we will go over the set up and customization of the Viva Connections app, including getting your home site up and running as well as creating your initial dashboards. We will also cover designating news sites and how they can streamline your internal communications.

Stop drowning in updates: build a system for Microsoft 365 admin news and roadmap alerts

Running a Microsoft 365 tenant means juggling user expectations, governance, and a constant feed of updates from Microsoft. The admin center gives you digest emails and an alerts feed, but that only helps if you enjoy manually sorting through hundreds of changes every month. Most admins do not.

This session shows you how to stop reacting and start owning the update stream. You will learn how to extract roadmap and Message Center data, store it in something you control, apply filtering logic using Copilot or Power Automate, and route the high-impact items into Planner, Teams, or email. We will walk through tagging updates by category, creating task triggers for major releases, and building a change-dashboard that gives you a reliable forward view. You will leave with a blueprint you can implement in your tenant without buying another tool or drowning in admin spam.

The Hive Mind: Copilot Learnings from the Community

Let's talk about real-world preparation Microsoft Copilot! Yes, it can transform modern work, when the implementation is done correctly.
Joy and her colleagues surveyed leading M365 experts on how to make Copilot a success. And Diego shares his experience and lessons learned from a recent Copilot implementation.
This session brings all those insights to you!
We'll dive into:
*Expectations vs. Reality
*Three Facets of Copilot Readiness
*Technical- Essential technical preparations for Copilot.
*People- Strategies for engaging your team with Copilot.
*Content- The role of content in optimizing Copilot's performance.
*Starting Points- Leave with practical steps to embark on your Copilot journey.

Join Joy Apple and Diego Domingos Da Salva as they dive into Copilot readiness, ensuring you have the knowledge to move forward with confidence.

SharePoint Brand Center in real life: wins, fails, and everything in between

SharePoint Brand Center demos are polished and sometimes a little too perfect. But what really happens when you roll it out in an enterprise with messy data, opinionated users, and IT teams just trying to keep the lights on?

In this no fluff, tell it like it is session, I will share my experiences deploying Brand Center across SharePoint, Teams, and Office apps in a healthcare environment (translation: HIPAA, acronyms galore, and humans who want it to “just work”).

Through real world demos, blunt lessons, and more than a few “I did not see that coming” moments, we will cover:
- What worked, what didn’t, and what was most surprising
- How to make Brand Center actually useful in daily M365 life
- Integrating brand images and document templates across Word, PowerPoint, and Clipchamp
- How Copilot interacts with branding assets (sometimes beautifully, sometimes… creatively)
- Tips for keeping users on brand without needing to play logo police
- What I would do differently if I had to start all over again

If you are curious about Brand Center beyond the glossy announcements, or about to roll it out in your own organization, this session will give you a reality check, a survival kit, and maybe even a laugh or two.

Letting the Chaos Cook: Tales of the Spicy Brain Tech Renaissance

What happens when neurodivergent minds meet agentic AI, automation, and a refusal to suffer through soul-crushing admin? You get Copilots born from vibes, bots that battle executive dysfunction, and automations strung together with hyperfocus and hope.

This panel brings together neurodivergent creators, thinkers, and technologists in the midst of a spicy brain tech renaissance—where automation isn’t just about productivity, but survival, accessibility, and joy. Through candid storytelling and lived experience, panelists will share how they’ve harnessed AI, Copilots, custom agents, and automations to offload boring stuff, reduce cognitive friction, and finally do the things that light their brains up.

Whether you’re ADHD, autistic, AuDHD, chronically overwhelmed, or know someone that is, this session invites you to embrace chaos as the feature it is—not a bug—and walk away with ideas (and maybe a bot or two) that could change the way you approach the mundane.

Copilot Academy: Revolutionizing Team Productivity and Learning

Dive into the future of productivity, collaboration, and learning with Copilot Academy: Revolutionizing Team Productivity and Learning. This immersive 8-hour workshop empowers teams to leverage cutting-edge tools like Copilot, Microsoft Teams Premium, Viva Learning, Purview, and more.
Participants will explore the key differences between Copilot Personal and Work to optimize each experience for unique needs. With a focus on security, the workshop covers configuring Microsoft Purview to ensure compliance and data protection for AI-powered workflows.
You’ll also gain a deep understanding of how to prepare organizations for Copilot integration, utilize Copilot capabilities across Microsoft Office applications, and foster a culture of continuous development with Viva Learning. Plus, explore how to design and customize your own Copilots using Copilot Studio and Copilot Agents in SharePoint.
Through hands-on activities, real-world scenarios, and interactive discussions, attendees will acquire practical skills to confidently implement these tools. This workshop will inspire teams to innovate and thrive in today’s dynamic digital landscape.

Brand Center Showdown: Real lessons from the field

You’ve seen the Microsoft demos. Now it’s time for the real talk. In this candid and practical session, long-time M365 community pros Diego Silva and Minnesota’s own Pete Simpkins share their experiences implementing SharePoint Brand Center—from the wins to the facepalms.

Through live demos, war stories, and a healthy dose of humor, they’ll break down:
- What worked, what didn’t, and what surprised them most
- How to make Brand Center actually useful in daily M365 life
- Integrating brand images and document templates across Word, PowerPoint, and Clipchamp
- How Copilot interacts with branding assets (sometimes beautifully, sometimes… creatively)
- Tips for keeping users on-brand without forming a branding SWAT team
- What they’d do differently if they had to start all over again

Whether you’re planning your first Brand Center deployment or refining what you’ve got, this session will leave you with a practical blueprint—and some hard-earned wisdom—to guide your own rollout.

How the M365 community saved my life: finding purpose, belonging, and strength in tech

This isn’t your typical tech talk. In this unfiltered session, Diego opens up about how our M365 community became his lifeline during one of the darkest chapters of his life. Through connection, purpose, and countless moments of shared humanity, he found not just healing—but his true voice. That voice eventually led him to the stage as a community speaker. This is a story about resilience, authenticity, and the power of never giving up. Whether you’re recovering from burnout, searching for belonging, or learning to turn pain into purpose, this session will remind you that showing up as your full self is your greatest strength—and that the best community in tech might just be the key to unlocking it.

Copilot in the real world: war stories, wins, and what I’d do differently

Let’s face it: implementing AI isn’t all magic and copilots. It’s messy. It’s political. It’s exciting. And it’s never quite what the demos promised.

In this session, I’ll share my own behind-the-scenes experience leading Copilot and AI adoption across a large healthcare organization over the past year. We’ll talk about what worked (spoiler: governance and champions matter), what fell flat (hint: “just turn it on” is not a strategy), and what I wish I could have done differently.

But I don’t want this to be just about me. I want to hear from you. What’s your AI readiness story? What fears are still holding your teams back? What quick wins have surprised you? This will be a fast-moving, interactive session full of hot takes, post-it notes, polls, and maybe even a few group therapy moments.

Unlocking the Power of Viva Learning: Integrating Teams and SharePoint for Seamless Knowledge

In this intermediate session, participants will explore how Viva Learning integrates with Microsoft Teams and SharePoint to create a seamless learning experience for the entire enterprise. We’ll cover the benefits of using Viva Learning for skill-building and knowledge sharing, navigating its user interface, and accessing content from sources like LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn. Participants will learn to personalize their learning journey, share and recommend content with colleagues, and utilize Viva Learning within Teams channels and chats for collaborative learning. Additionally, we’ll discuss the roles of managers and admins in managing learning content and tracking progress, highlighting how SharePoint enhances content management and accessibility within Viva Learning. Despite being an intro session, this is open for all levels and by the end of it, attendees will be equipped to leverage Viva Learning to foster a more engaged and skilled workforce. Best of all, everything you will learn can be done without any premium licensing or additional costs required.

Power Platform Solutions: A Year of Growth, Innovation, and Timeless Wisdom!

For well over a year, I’ve engaged with diverse user communities, sharing insights and my tips on Power Platform Solutions. This session is an evolution of that journey, where I distill the collective wisdom of the community into actionable lessons. You’ll discover innovative techniques and features designed to streamline your development process. While tailored for smaller teams, these strategies are crafted to ensure your apps and flows are built with scalability in mind, ready to be embraced enterprise-wide from the outset.

Make your SharePoint Online pages unsuck!

I spent over 12 years constantly being asked to make SharePoint not look like SharePoint. Finally, with SharePoint Online, sites are the prettiest they have been. Yet, they can be easily messed up if users do not follow some basic guidance to make them look amazing. In this session, I teach users of all levels how to make their site pages look amazing with all that is available using standard out of the box web parts. I will also provide some neat tips and tricks to rollout a professional looking intranet that will not look like SharePoint in its old days.

Power Platform Solutions: Package your apps and flows and save yourself from future headaches

Are your apps and flows all over the place or split through multiple environments? Have any of your flows ever broke because the author has left the company? Learn some simple techniques that will help you cleanup your environments, make your apps scalable and future proof as well as scaling up apps and flows already being used.

Multi-level approvals in Power Platform

Do your document approvals require multiple reviewers from all over the enterprise? While the approvals app is great, it only allows for one approver, so what happens when you need more? In this session we will go over a tried and true example of a multiple level approval system using basic actions (which do not require premium licenses) that is scalable and expandable.

Elevate Your Brand: Mastering SharePoint Brand Center and CDN Management

Learn how to leverage the SharePoint Brand Center to streamline and enhance your organization’s branding efforts. You’ll learn about the core features and benefits of the SharePoint Brand Center, how to create, store, and manage brand assets in a single, accessible location, and how to apply your organization’s brand identity consistently across all Microsoft 365 applications. The session includes a demonstration of setting up and using the Brand Center, managing brand colors, logos, and templates, as well as handling Content Delivery Network (CDN) assets to improve performance and reduce latency. Additionally, you’ll gain insights into best practices for maintaining brand consistency and ensuring compliance with brand guidelines.

This session is designed for brand managers, marketing professionals, and IT administrators who are looking to centralize and manage brand assets effectively within Microsoft 365.