Last day of the MS Ignite conference for me. Let’s take it to the bridge:

Another metaphor? You betcha:

– Cloud vs on-premise
– Microsoft as Service Provider vs Shrink Wrapper
– Unified experiences vs Diversified devices
– People-driven Intranets vs Intranet-driven people
– Windows OS as a true personal & biz life and productivity platform vs Windows OS as a 900 pound gorilla

My top picks for Day 4 in the SharePoint/Office 365 realm (with a little .NET 5 in there to maintain my Dev street cred):

• Strategically Evolve Your Role as an IT Pro
• Behind the Scenes: Engineering NextGen Portals
• Developing with Microsoft OneNote in the Cloud with Office 365 APIs
• Advancing into Next generation for Security and Trust in Cloud Services
• Office 365 Video and Custom Solutions Built on Azure Media Services
• Introduction to Microsoft ASP.NET 5
• Case Study: How Two Companies Do eDiscovery (Featuring Rogers Communication and Microsoft Legal)
• MVP Panel: SharePoint On-Premises, Online and Everything in Between
• Best Practices for Design and Performance in SharePoint Online
• Ernst & Young: Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Search Adoption
• Compliance with Standards and Regulations Made Easier in the Cloud with Office 365
•  How to Decide When to Use SharePoint and Yammer and Office 365 Groups and Outlook and Skype
• Everything You Need to Know about the Office Store
• Big Bang: The New Universe of Findability and Discoverability
• Best Practices for Client Access to Office 365
• The Social Intranet: Integrate Yammer into Your Microsoft SharePoint Experience
• Mark Russinovich and Mark Minasi on Cloud Computing
• OneDrive for Business for B2B External Sharing, IT-Lead Cross-Org Collaboration
• Experts Unplugged: Office 365 Security
• Office 365 for Small Business: Deployment, Implementation, and Management
• The Microsoft IT Portals Journey, On-Premises to Office 365
• What Really Happens When There Is a Service Incident with Office 365, and What’s My Role?
• Boost Productivity for Legal Professionals: How Microsoft Is Using Office 365 and Matter Center
• Search Extensibility in SharePoint 2013
• Microsoft Office 365 MVP Panel
• Enterprise Social, from “Ooh, Shiny” to Business Success
• OneNote for OneLife: From Notes to Productivity and Platform
• Experts Unplugged: Office 365 Compliance

My last-day sessions:

JEA: A PowerShell Toolkit to Secure a Post-Snowden World

When asked what to do about corporate hacking, Ex NSA Director Michael Hayden replied, “Man up and defend yourselves.” Edward Snowden then rocked the world by disclosing privileged NSA information. JitJea stands for “Just In Time, Just Enough Admin.” It’s a Windows PowerShell toolkit that admins use to perform functions without giving them admin privileges.

MVP Panel: SharePoint On-Premises, Online and Everything in Between
Imagine five great minds coming together to talk about Microsoft SharePoint across the board, be it within Microsoft Office 365, in Microsoft Azure, on-premises and certainly hybrid. Via a panel Q&A format, these MVP experts expose how online and hybrid improvements increase both deployment scenarios and value. This session is designed to help ITIs and ITDMs find the right cloud formula to deploy based on practical business and technical considerations. This is a must-not-miss session for any IT pro!

How to Decide When to Use SharePoint and Yammer and Office 365 Groups and Outlook and Skype
Your users may struggle with these questions: Should I share a message via Skype for Business instead of Yammer, Office 365 Groups, or Exchange? Should I collaborate on data using an Excel sheet or a SharePoint list? Should I share a file in Outlook, in a meeting, from OneDrive for Business, on Yammer, in a Group, or in a SharePoint site? This session is the ‘How To’ user’s guide What happens when your users can’t decide what technology or feature to use? They use what they know, or what’s easy; even if better options exist. In this session, Richard and Kanwal help you maximize the value of your Office 365 investment by providing the guidance you need to help your users make better, more effective decisions on how they get work done.

Experts Unplugged: Office 365 Security

OneNote for OneLife: From Notes to Productivity and Platform
OneNote is awesome. Really. Knowledge, learning and info on the bleeding edge benefits from structure – but not too much structure. We all need a place to inscribe understanding, without having to go overboard on the word-processing end of things.  I’m always thrilled to hang out with the OneNote crew as I sometimes wonder if they know they have the future of Education and Wikis in their hands.

Microsoft OneNote gives you one place for your notes and other content with you, anywhere now that OneNote is across all platforms and devices. Write by hand, type, record, snap a picture, clip from the web, or use a growing number of other partner apps and devices and OneNote saves it. Organized or not, you can easily find your notes in any form (text, writing, picture, or audio) with OneNote search. This session demonstrates end-user productivity scenarios at work to give you a clear understanding of how OneNote can help drive adoption of Office 365 with cross-platform, real-time collaboration, and extensibility with OneNote API. You’ll walk away wanting to use, evangelize, and build on OneNote personally or for your organization.