Join us in the Microsoft Teams Community – 2021

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As Community Lead for the Microsoft Teams Engineering team, I want to THANK YOU for being part of the Community. I think we can all agree that 2020 was a challenging year for all of us, and Microsoft Teams played an enormous role in staying connected to family and friends, and for enabling us to stay productive at work. With the sudden spike in usage and the quick need to pivot on existing roadmap items due to changing demands, it would have been impossible without all of you working together as a community to share experiences, best practices, and to help us shape the product based on your real-world needs.

As a team, we are proud of the interaction we have with customers, partners, MVPs, and community leaders worldwide. Through attending community events, reading blogs, listening to UserVoice and having discussions at events like Ignite, we are constantly learning from you. I wanted to take a moment to share some of the exciting things going on with the Microsoft Teams Community and invite you to be involved.

New for 2021 is the Microsoft Teams Community Star Award. This monthly award is presented to someone who has made a significant one-time or on-going contribution to the Microsoft Teams Community making impact on the product. Anyone can nominate an individual for the Microsoft Teams Community Star Award.

We would like to congratulate @Mark Vale who has been named our first Microsoft Teams Community Star Award winner for the month of January. An active member of the community, Mark runs the Microsoft Teams Community Event out of the UK, Commsverse. During the start of Covid-19, he was one of the first event organizers who was forced to move his event to a virtual environment. He did so with creative ideas, pushing the limits as a creative problem-solver. Mark worked very close with the Microsoft Teams product group to share real-world feedback around the virtual event scenario to help drive relevant, timely product feedback. He pulled off a successful virtual event with only a few weeks of planning and shared his experience with other event organizers to help ensure their success. Mark is an expert on Microsoft Teams and has a strong background in telephony. We look forward to participating in Commsverse June 29-30, 2021 and the many learning opportunities leading up to the big event. Follow Mark Vale on Twitter @MarkVale83 or find him on LinkedIn.

Several members of the Microsoft Teams Community have come together to organize a Women in Microsoft Teams Community with the purpose of collaborating, sharing ideas and learning from each other in a virtual setting. All are welcome and monthly gatherings will kick-off February 2nd. If you’re passionate about Microsoft Teams and interested in being part of this group, please join. Register here and you’ll be added to the team to start collaborating!

Since we aren’t able to travel and be in-person like we’ve done in the past, the community has gotten very creative with ideas to keep attendees engaged and continue delivering rich content across a variety of topics with audiences, worldwide. One of the benefits to virtual events is the ability to attend and engage with different people in places you may not have been able to visit, otherwise. We urge you to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge and global experiences the community is sharing. You can find a list of regional and worldwide User Groups and Events in the Microsoft Technical Community Event Listings. If you have a UG or Event to share, please add it to the Event Listing!

Here are a few I have on my personal list; I hope you’ll join!

Commsverse, Weybridge, UK: June 29-30, 2021

CommsvNext, Denver, CO, USA: August 19-20, 2021

European Collaboration Summit, Wiesbaden, Germany: June 14-16, 2021

Get-CSLatam, Mexico City, MX: TBD

Microsoft 365 Collaboration Conference, Las Vegas, NV, USA: December 7-9, 2021 + Spring 2021 Announced Soon!

TeamsCommunityDay 2021, Virtual from Germany: January 28, 2021

Teams Nation, Virtual from UK: May 26, 2021

Thrive Conference, Slovenia: April 13-14, 2021

If you haven’t already been monitoring this blog space, I hope you will take time to check out the many articles written by members of the community for the community. Not only do we hope you’ll share your own experiences and knowledge in the discussion board, we do hope you’ll consider authoring your own blog. There’s so much knowledge and we can learn so much from each other and our different experiences. If you have something to write about, please submit your topic at aka.ms/teamscommunityblogger for consideration.

Until next month…Be well! #CommunityRocks

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/join-us-in-the-microsoft-teams-community-2021/ba-p/2080418 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-community-blog/join-us-in-the-microsoft-teams-community-2021/ba-p/2080418 2021-01-20 22:24:14Z