MSIgnite 2016, Day1

The first official day at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia is over. It’s been 14 hours since I left the hotel room. It’s time to charge the batteries and put down some notes from the day.

Because of the time zone travel I was early awake and got the first shuttle bus from the hotel to the conference center. Kind of heavy traffic on the highway in to Atlanta.


5 lines of queue

With the early arrival, there were no queue at the breakfast in the C-building and we got a marvelous welcome from the Microsoft personell. Lucky me!

Breakfast done and I found my fastest way to the Phillips Arena by walking outside the buildings in the great weather.

Nice weather in Atlanta

With no queue at the Phillips Arena, the security check went fast, and I found a perfect seating in the middle of the huge stage.

The Keynote was a great experience with a lot of inspirational information from leading personells at Microsoft like Julia White, Scott Guthrie, Satya Nadella and many more.

BMW was one of many companies presented as heavy users of Microsoft Cloud technologies

New Office 365 applications and hardware was demonstrated https://www.stormboard.com/ on surface hub

Techy people like me are also interested in the behind-the-scenes views from the stage production

Microsoft Ignite 2016 has 1417 sessions to chose from, and I had picked the Cloud Voice session with Gurdeep Singh Pall as my second session on this first day. I did however not expect the jam in the hallways when moving from the Phillips Arena to building B. 23.000 participants where on the move. Not all did know where to move, and a lot of people where restricted from moving because of security. Luckily I did find a good spot to join the “Move all your communications to Skype for Business” session.

We had a lot of good information and news during this session related to Skype for Business client for Mac, thight iOS callkit integration, Microsoft Meeting Room system, Logitech Smart Dock for Skype Room Systems, Crestron Skype Room Systems, Polycom RealConnect for Skype for Business, Cloud PBX news with exciting powershell demos, Analytics Dashboard, Skype Operations Framwork (SOF) and more.

The new Skype for Business innovations are described here.



Delanda Coleman demonstrating new Skype for Business client for Mac and iPhone

Ilya Bukshteyn and Gurdeep Singh demonstrating the new meeting capabilities with a lot of exciting news.

A really good session was over and it was time to find the next stage from my carefully picked schedule. I started to realize that my schedule was to tight – the hallways was to long and crowdy – the floor maps were to poor – the escalators regulations was annoying and my mobile phone battery was empty. I did however have good shoes.

After som back and forwards between the buildings and levels I learned that the Theatre sessions was hard to find. I did however got my self to the “Meet Windows Server 2016 and System Center 2016” session hold by Mike Neil and other impact full speakers. Here they actually announced the release of Microsoft Windows Server 2016 and explained many of the new features!

Just enough and just-in time administration

A lot of demos with PowerShell during the Windows Server 2016 session

I gave a visit to the Exhibit Hall before the next planned session. A lot of exciting stuff to see in this large area, a lot of giveaways to collect and actually some places to charge my phone.

Logitech Equipment for the Skype for Business Room experience

Logitech equipment for Skype for Business Room experience Read more about Logitech SmartDock

The MVP Hub Talk session had a lot of great sessions – this was related to PowerShell

Ståle Hansen Talking about Skype for Business

Kanwal Khipple had a great session related to the many modules in Office365

At the end of the day I was entering the Skype for Business area of the giant Microsoft Showcase in the Exhibit hall. It turned out that a part of the Skype for Business design team was actually hanging out there discussing their system with the Ignite attendees – the same persons that was on stage together with Gurdeep earlier today. Interesting to hear their workflow and plans for Skype for Business and especially the unofficial information related to support for third party applications like call centers and switchboards in the cloud based Skype for Business. I did also meet a couple of Skype for Business friends from Norway and Sweden at this spot.


Ilya Bukshteyn was walking through the new Skype for Business Room system.

Surface4 and Windows10 as foundation. Windows Store delivers updates to the SfB Room System App.

Time to find the shuttle buss for the hotel. Traffic jam also this time because of a concert in town by Beyonce.


One truck for the Beyonce “The Formation World Tour” spotted yesterday…

Finally at the hotel room it’s time to empty the bag, charge some batteries, summarize the day and revise the plans for tomorrow (I need to make space for a session by Ilya which he made me aware of).

Who mentioned food? Must have forgotten that today…