Well, where do we start? This year has been a bit of a marathon for us here at Rencore. If we had to describe 2015 in one word, it would be – events! There’s been plenty of them, from trips to Barcelona, London, Stockholm, Paris, Oslo and Munich to Redmond for the recent MVP Summit, we’ve certainly seen plenty of airport lounges over the last 12 months! As we sit here in December, fresh from another great conference in the European SharePoint Conference, we can finally sit back and reflect on what’s been a brilliant year.
We want to start by saying a huge thank you to everyone that’s either organized an event, been an attendee, sponsor or speaker, for making our travels that much more rewarding. For the Rencore team, again a big thank you, we’ve had some extremely busy periods this year which we wouldn’t have been able to survive without the help of the whole team. We hope everyone has had as much fun as we have!
Our first Rencore on Tour post was back in March, where we looked ahead at some of the exciting events that we had coming up. It’s hard to believe 10 months has passed since we started, but looking back we can safely say that not one has disappointed! And if we thought we were busy back in August, that last few months have certainly provided us wrong. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind – attending, sponsoring, speaking, travelling, planning and organizing!
Starting off in September, ShareDev Cologne was a great experience. The event was aimed largely at software developers, technical decision makers, IT professionals and architects in the areas we all know and love – most of the time 😉 – in SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure. We sponsored the event as a silver partner and Matthias got the chance to talk on a familiar subject – ‘Transformation of SharePoint Farm Solutions to the App Model’. We hope all those who attended Matthias’s session enjoyed themselves.
The close of September saw us venture to Spain for SharePoint Saturday Barcelona. For those who aren’t familiar with the SPS events, they bring together those passionate about SharePoint and Office 365 for one action packed today. They’re certainly a highlight for anyone working in the SharePoint community, and SPSBarcelona was yet another fantastic occasion. Organized by a good friend of ours – Edin Kapic – Barcelona didn’t disappoint. As well as sponsoring the event, we were also speaking. Matthias joined the awesome speaker lineup and delivered a session on Visual Studio, SharePoint Farm Solutions, apps, Azure and deployment. A big thank you to Edin for hosting (we know the effort that goes in to doing so!) and thanks to all those who attended Matthias’s session. Here’s our resident Lead Dev Hugh Wood rocking some SPCAF swag!
With over 10,000 attendees, 120 speakers, 7 tracks in 4 different languages and a run-time of 24 hours, Collab365 is the worlds biggest Sharepoint, Office 365 and Azure online conference. It was a hugely impressive event and truly international! Congrats to Mark Jones for putting it all together, a brilliant achievement. We sponsored the event and also ran our own SPCAF ‘Code Clinic’ with Hugh and Andy Talbot. We were very grateful to be so involved and look forward to the next one! Here’s Hugh and Andy just before the madness started!
We already mentioned what a fantastic event SPS Munich turned out to be, we had both a brilliant (and rather stressful) day which we recapped here. We started things off with a keynote from Jeremy Thake, hosted over 25 sessions, and finished things off with the traditional SharePint get-together! It was an incredible day and we can’t wait to do the same (and more!) next year.
Moving into the middle of October, Amsterdam and Unity Connect was our next stop. Matthias warmed up his vocal cords and readied himself was once again to speak – this time on ‘Code Quality of SharePoint Solutions and Add-Ins. Unity Connect featured a host of great speakers, including Wictor Wilén, Andrew Connell and Vesa Juvonen, along with the Microsoft Office 365 product team and the European and global SharePoint and Office 365 communities. Another top event.
Just 3 days after Unity Connect in Amsterdam, we were on a plane once again and off to Norway for SharePoint Saturday in Oslo. Hugh got the chance to do his own talk on an area he knows well – JavaScript best practices. It was a great talk, the feedback was fantastic, and we’re sure Hugh had a great time sharing his experience and expertise as a developer with all who attended!
And that brings us to the grand finale! As we mentioned before, the European SharePoint Conference marked the last event of the year for us at Rencore and what a way to sign off! We got to hear from the best in the business: Microsoft’s Jeff Taper – aka “The Father of SharePoint” – was part of a fantastic keynote, and the event was a comprehensive breakdown of the latest innovations in SharePoint and Office 365 technologies.
To find out what went on, what the main takeaways were from the week and news on our award (thanks to everyone who voted!), check out our Abba themed blog.
So there we are. Having started our event journey way back in February, we can’t believe it’s almost over. The good news is, we can recharge the batteries and start looking forward to the next year!
So, we’ll close by saying here’s to a great year, and many more to follow. A massive thank you to everyone who has helped and been a part of our journey. There are too many to list off but you know who you are! This year has been truly fantastic for Rencore; we have met loads of great people along the way, added to our team, and had a lot of fun. We knew it before the year began, but these events have reminded us just how great the SharePoint community is, and it’s amazing to see so much passion from everyone who is involved. We look forward to what lies ahead, and seeing you all again next year to experience it with us.
See you in 2016!
