SPS Events - Live Online SPS Gulf

Iman Al Maskari

A Web Applications Developer with 6 years experience and a specialization in .Net and SharePoint technologies. With a strong drive for learning, a passion for challenges and determination to deliver the best possible solutions, Iman has worked on and delivered projects that spanned different areas of the SharePoint platform and other web technologies.
As a founder member of the UAE SharePoint User Group, Iman has also taken part in organizing and speaking in different events held by the group.
When not busy with IT related activities, she enjoys reading, crafting and capturing beauty through her cam.

Sessions

- SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search
  Level: 200
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  Search has been a cornerstone of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies since SharePoint Portal Server 2003. After introducing a successful and mature search platform in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and acquiring FAST search in 2010; SharePoint Search 2013 has been re-architected to ensure a more robust and richer experience for IT staff and users.
  In this session we will cover the core and latest SharePoint Search Server 2013 features that will help you to:
      • Learn how to help users to reach content smoothly without struggling in remembering where things are.
      • Leverage the full SharePoint experience by utilizing the most of search features provided by SharePoint platform.
      • Customize end users experience without having any deep development skills by using simple HTML & JavaScript.
      • Learn how to build and continuously enhance a trustworthy search solution that users can rely on to find what they need.
  
  Co-Presenter(s)
  
  Jamil Haddadin (MCT)
  
  Microsoft Applications Development Senior Consultant
  UAE SharePoint User Group
  
  @jamilhaddadin
  Blog

Liam Cleary (MVP)

Associate Director | Protiviti

Liam began his career as a Trainer of all things computer related. He quickly realized that programming, breaking and hacking was a lot more fun. He spent the next few years working within core infrastructure and security services, until he found SharePoint. He now works as a Solution Architect for Protiviti in Virginia. His core focus is to ensure that SharePoint can either natively or with minimal customization meet the business requirement. He is also an eleven time Microsoft MVP focusing on Architecture but also crosses the boundary into Development. His specialty over the past few years has been security in SharePoint and its surrounding platforms. He can often be found at user groups or conferences speaking, offering advice, spending time in the community, teaching his kids how to code, raspberry PI programming, hacking the planet or building Lego robots.

Sessions

- Keep SharePoint "Always On"
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: English
  
  High Availability and Disaster Recovery are two topics that frequently come up. But how do you architect and build your SharePoint environment in order to meet these requirements? This session will look into the various designs for SharePoint and SQL to help you decide on the best approach for your SharePoint Implementation

Ayman El-Hattab (MVP)

Technical Services Manager | AvePoint

Ayman El-Hattab is a recognized industry expert and an enterprise collaboration strategist focusing on helping organizations, IT professionals and software developers plan, design, develop, build, govern and operate collaboration solutions using SharePoint & Office 365. Ayman is a passionate evangelist who has presented at many conferences all over the Middle East & Africa (including SharePoint Saturdays, TechEd events & others) about SharePoint, Office 365, Application Lifecycle Management, Business Intelligence technologies and other business-focused topics. Ayman is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for 5 years in a row , ALM Ranger, published author (SharePoint 2010/13 Unleashed) and an enthusiastic speaker who enjoys working with the online and offline communities all over the world. Ayman is the founder of SharePoint4MEA, O365ForAll, MEA ALM Community & SharePoint4Arabs, community lead at Egypt SharePoint User Group, an organizer of several SharePoint Saturday events and a member of The World Association of SharePoint Business Strategists. Outside of work, Ayman can be found watching soccer games, playing XBOX or watching documentary movies.

Sessions

- Application Lifecycle Management in SharePoint 2013 & Office 365
  
  Level: 400
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  There are several methods to customize SharePoint. Developers have the option of creating new cloud applications for SharePoint or maintaining legacy full trust code. Coupled with the complexity many organizations have in terms of managing SharePoint customizations across Office 365 and on-premises implementations, developers and solution architects will need to understand how to adjust application lifecycle management (ALM) techniques to support and deploy quality solutions. This series of blog posts will focus on the establishment of development, testing and deployment best practices for on-prem and cloud applications and solutions. This will also include concepts such as continuous integration, release management and automated testing.

Haaron Gonzalez

SharePoint & Office 365 Consultant

Solution Architect & Consultant devoted to design mission critical solutions for organizations where collaboration, communication and knowledge are strategic investments. Evolving since 1997 with Microsoft development tools and server platforms. Microsoft Most Valuable Professional in ASP.NET since 2005 and SharePoint Server since 2009.

Sessions

- Introduction to Intranet Planning
  Documents:
  
  spsgulfslideintranetplanning-140412090305-phpapp02(1).pptx
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  In this session we explore the different elements that you need to oversee when you are planning a Intranet for your company. We will discuss the different intranet approaches we can follow based on they way you want to engage with your end users. Learn the difference between communication portal and collaboration team site in order to establish an Intranet framework able to scale business needs.

Jamil Haddadin (MCT)

Microsoft Applications Development Senior Consultant | UAE SharePoint User Group

Jamil Haddadin:
Jamil Haddadin is an application Development Senior Consultant and expert Microsoft Certified trainer with 9 years' experience in Microsoft SharePoint and .NET tracks. A technology enthusiastic and inspiring community leader, and influencing public speaker; Working with SharePoint development and administration since 2003, a solid .NET developer specialized in delivering high quality and long lasting solutions for small, medium and large scale enterprise, Jamil has a huge community contribution as being one of the founders of UAE SharePoint User Group and Jordan SharePoint User Group, speaker at many user groups' meetings and SharePoint Saturdays, in addition to authoring many articles on his blog and TechNet wikis with a big contributions in many online forums, away from SharePoint; you can find Jamil triathlon-ing, playing music & traveling.

Sessions

- SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search
  Level: 200
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  Search has been a cornerstone of Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies since SharePoint Portal Server 2003. After introducing a successful and mature search platform in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and acquiring FAST search in 2010; SharePoint Search 2013 has been re-architected to ensure a more robust and richer experience for IT staff and users.
  In this session we will cover the core and latest SharePoint Search Server 2013 features that will help you to:
      • Learn how to help users to reach content smoothly without struggling in remembering where things are.
      • Leverage the full SharePoint experience by utilizing the most of search features provided by SharePoint platform.
      • Customize end users experience without having any deep development skills by using simple HTML & JavaScript.
      • Learn how to build and continuously enhance a trustworthy search solution that users can rely on to find what they need.
  
  Co-Presenter(s)
  
  Iman Al Maskari
  
  @imanalmas

D'arce Hess (MVP)

President | DH Consulting

D’arce Hess is the founder and President of DH Consulting LLC. For more than eight years, D’arce has specialized in the creation of custom portals and experiences in SharePoint and Office365. As a UI/UX Designer and Developer, D’arce uses industry and Microsoft best practices as a base for creating solutions that simplifying processes and drive user adoption and governance from the start. As a recognized Microsoft MVP, D’arce has had the opportunity to work with Fortune 500 companies and has become a trusted partner to her clients in the industries of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, legal, travel & tourism and entertainment.

Sessions

- SharePoint Branding 101: Concept to Production
  Documents:
  
  Branding101.pptx
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  When looking through the internet, it is easy to see a great website and think “I want that” or “How did they do that?” You go to your office and start digging in with concepts and a grand vision of what your company’s new site will look like when completed. While you have an idea of what your site will look like finished, there are many steps that will happen long before you see the finished product.
  In this session, we will go through the vital steps you should take starting with the creation of the initial wireframes and mock-ups on to the creation of page layouts and master pages. You will learn what design features to take into account when creating a Publishing Site versus a Non-Publishing site and the planning process for both.
  If you are excited about beginning your first SharePoint branding project, this session will give you tools, examples and a strong planning foundation so that you will be able to move forward with a quality site and avoid coding and design mishaps along the way to your vision of SharePoint.

Jim Bob Howard

Director, SharePoint Practice | JourneyTEAM - Nashville

Jim Bob Howard is first a husband and father. For fun, he gets to work and play with SharePoint. Jim Bob has invested almost 25 years in software development and website management for companies of all sizes. For the last 9+ years, he has applied his expertise to SharePoint UX/UI Development and Architecture, and in his current role as SharePoint Practice Director for JourneyTEAM in Nashville, TN. Jim Bob is heavily involved in the SharePoint community globally, having organized SharePoint Saturdays in Austin, TX, and Nairobi, Kenya; and spoken on SharePoint at more than 20 events.

Sessions

- Self-Service Site Creation in SP 2013, with SharePoint Designer: A Case Study for a Project Management Office
  Documents:
  
  SPSGulf 2014 Self-Service Site Creation Workflow in SPD 2013.pptx
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  SharePoint Designer 2013 has some new actions that allow a workflow designer to call SharePoint web services from within the workflow. That means a workflow can be used to create, edit, and delete sites, lists, libraries; read and manage permissions... to basically perform any action in SharePoint right from the workflow. Obviously, permissions are a concern, and creating the web service payload and reading the results are non-trivial. With much power comes much responsibility.
  
  In this session, Jim Bob will share a case study involving a Project Management Office (PMO), which allows project team members to create project-specific sites using an approval workflow, including initialization of a Project Status list from rolling up Earned Value Management data to the top-level PMO site for an executive level dashboard, using the Content Query Web Part.

usama khan (MCT, MVP)

Chief technology officer | Evolution Technologies

Usama Wahab Khan is Sr.Solution Architect with have more than 15 years’ experience in Microsoft SharePoint/ Enterprise Technologies. He also been awarded by Microsoft for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) SharePoint 2014 ,2015,2016,2017,2018, Microsoft community Contributor Award, Microsoft Community Recreation Award and Microsoft Certified Trainers. He received more than 28 industrial awards in his career. Also President, Prime Minster of Pakistan and chief Minister and governor Sindh issue the letter of appreciation in news Paper For His Project Hyderabad-GIS PAKISTAN AND ASIA FIRST CUSTOM GIS.AND more than 700000 Visitor has been visiting my blog http://usamawahabkhan.blogspot.com. And Usama Wahab Khan is very active Community member in Pakistan and GULF and regular Speaker in Microsoft events. Leading SharePoint UAE with Co-Funders. Founder dev Saturday UAE. Active Community Speaker, Author on various Community sites such as like. NBSP

Sessions

- Introduction to SharePoint Cloud Business Apps
  Documents:
  
  SharePoint 2013 Cloud BIz App.pptx
  
  Level: 300
  
  Track: English
  
  By using the Cloud Business App template in Visual Studio, you can create apps for SharePoint in which users can view, add, and update SharePoint data. The Cloud Business App project type uses Visual Studio LightSwitch technologies, which greatly simplify the process of creating business app hosted on SharePoint. In this walkthrough, you’ll create an app to track job candidates, taking advantage of the SharePoint for Office 365 social integration feature to provide a newsfeed for the app.

Ahmed Mahmoud

Technology Solutions Professional | Microsoft MEA CoeX

A technology professional who is passionate about technology, specially SharePoint and Office 365.

Sessions

- Overview of Office 365 and Yammer
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  Birdseye overview to see how Office 365 and Yammer can benefit your business and how to make innovative, agile and progressing organization.

Michael Noel (MVP)

Partner | Convergent Computing

Michael Noel is an internationally recognized technology expert, bestselling author, and well known public speaker on a broad range of IT topics. He has authored several major industry books that have been translated into over a dozen languages worldwide. Significant titles include SharePoint 2013 Unleashed, Exchange Server 2013 Unleashed, Windows Server 2012 Unleashed, SharePoint 2010 Unleashed, and many more. Currently a partner at Convergent Computing (www.cco.com) in the San Francisco Bay Area, Michael's writings and extensive public speaking experience across all seven continents leverage his real-world expertise helping organizations realize business value from Information Technology infrastructure.

Sessions

- SharePoint Infrastructure Tips and Tricks for On-Premises and Hybrid Cloud Environments
  
  Level: 300
  
  Track: English
  
  There are a myriad number of approaches to design and architecture of SharePoint servers, not all of which are ideal, however. Since the design of a SharePoint environment is subsequently critical to its performance and functionality, it is critical to understand what the best practices around SharePoint infrastructure design are. SharePoint architects need to be aware of the various installation options, the differences between SharePoint search architecture models, how and when to virtualize SharePoint, and ways to optimize the SQL Database tier of SharePoint. In addition, integrating SharePoint On-Premises with cloud models such as SharePoint Online and Enterprise Social environments such as Yammer has its own set of infrastructure challenges.
  
  This session goes right to the heart of the matter, providing for physical and virtual architecture guidelines and specific configuration settings that can immediately be used to construct best practice SharePoint On-Premises and/or hybrid cloud environments. In addition, a close look at new models at the data tier such as highly available farms that use SQL 2012 AlwaysOn Availability Groups are outlined. Real world advice obtained from the presenter’s experience designing hundreds of production SharePoint farms is provided, and the installation options are discussed frankly.

Mai Omar Desouki (MCT)

PFE [Premier Field Engineer] - SharePoint | Microsoft

Mai Omar Desouki is a SharePoint - PFE at Microsoft. Mai worked before Microsoft as Sr. SharePoint Consultant at Vodafone Egypt & previously in Infusion Dubai. Mai is Certified MCT, MCP, MCTS, MCPD, MCITP. She had done several SharePoint sessions; lately in the SP24, SPSBoston, SPSGulf, SPSUtah and in the European SharePoint Conference in Copenhagen & Dubai SharePoint Saturdays. She has been working with Microsoft Technology for 7 years, with the main focus on SharePoint.
Her main SharePoint deployments have been for customers in Egypt & Middle East region. She also has done multiple migrations for enterprise customers from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 & from SharePoint 2010 to 2013. Mai is focused on helping customers get the most business value from their SharePoint deployment through integrating SharePoint with other solutions such as Microsoft CRM Dynamics and others. Mai has won the MCC Microsoft Community Contributor Award for 2011.
Mai had done lots & big SharePoint Project in the Middle East. Mai has strong experience in SharePoint 2007, 2010 & 2013.

Sessions

- Workflow Manager Tips & Tricks
  
  Level: 400
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  Workflow Manager is a new workflow engine added in SharePoint 2013 which has some tips & tricks, We will see in this session how to go with smooth installation.

Jasper Oosterveld (MVP)

Cloud Consultant & Microsoft MVP | InSpark

Jasper Oosterveld is a frequently booked speaker and he writes blogs and articles about the topic that makes his heart beat faster: SharePoint and Office 365.

At Sparked he provides seamless implementations of SharePoint Online and Office365 as Cloud Consultant. Jasper is able to keep track of both the outline and micromanage and he works flexibly and convincingly towards the very best result for his principals.

As co-founder of the site SP&C NL he supports corporate users, but he also provides fresh information about SharePoint and Office 365 via Twitter and LinkedIn on a daily basis.

In 2014 Jasper was awarded the Office 365 MVP Award. In summary, Sparked’s Microsoft MVP is the ultimate ‘go-to guy’ for SharePoint and Office 365.

Sessions

- External Collaboration with SharePoint Online and Yammer
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  External collaboration has never been easier with the latest version of SharePoint Online. Every end-user can store personal and business documents with OneDrive for Business. SharePoint Online makes it very easy to share these documents with colleagues but also your business contacts. The Project Site is a new site template with valuable features for project collaboration. You may ask yourself: what features? These include an integrated OneNote Notebook, Site Mailbox, Document Library and a Task list with a timeline to present important tasks in a clear overview. It doesn't stop here! Microsoft acquired Yammer in 2012 and promoted Yammer as the Social tool for SharePoint Online. Since the acquisition, Yammer is being integrated with SharePoint Online. The combination of SharePoint Online and Yammer proves to be the perfect solution for external collaboration.

Gokan Ozcifci (MCT, MVP)

Entrepreneur | Neoxy

Gokan is an independent SharePoint and Office365 consultant for Neoxy where he assists customers with building innovative, intelligent and responsive cloud driven solutions. With the Mobile first, Cloud first ideology, his is to empower every person and organization to do more with the Microsoft cloud and the ecosystem is perfectly aligned to accelerate this. Creativity, automation and perspectives is what he loves the most when using the Microsoft cloud, so every customer can be more agile, responsive and competitive. Gokan is a frequent –and funny conference speaker. He presented at numerous national and international conferences - and is actively involved in the European as American conferences: Microsoft Techdays, Microsoft Experiences, European SharePoint Conferences, SharePoint Days and SharePoint Fest are a few major ones.

A proud author of books that reached the half million of downloads and founder of several communities, Gokan is a real community warrior. Due to his active contributions in these domains, he has been honoured with Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award. Additionally, he is an active Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and a Microsoft Regional Lead for all MCTs in Belgium.

Sessions

- Optimizing the release distribution process of SharePoint 2013 to minimize the impact on farm’s availability
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: English
  
  This session is aimed for developers and other SharePoint professionals interested in the implementation of the deployment process of SharePoint 2013 Server. When, why and how to create/update/delete custom solution (app)? What kind of operations must be performed on a on-premises platform to reduce down time? This session includes a Top 10 of best practices from Microsoft Belgium for a SharePoint Release Distribution. This session will answer questions and show you how to optimize the deployment of your solutions to minimize down time and impact on your SharePoint 2013 farm.

Bjoern H Rapp (MCT, MVP)

Senior Cloud Architect | Profitbase AS

Bjoern is an experienced developer and community leader who has taken steps from previously building and customizing solutions for SharePoint and Office 365, to become a recognized expert on cloud solutions and advanced analytics. He is a regular speaker at local and international events and he has also become a highly sought after instructor delivering courses in several countries, both in the classroom and online.

As a native Norwegian, Bjoern has a natural passion for nature and wildlife, and is also deeply interested in space exploration and technology.

Sessions

- Getting Started with Office 365 and Power BI
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  This session will walk you through the new and compelling way of utilizing data in familiar Tools as Excel and Office 365 using Power BI. The session will demonstrate how to use Excel to create compelling content and reports, and Power BI for Office 365 to amplify those data with interactive sharing, collaboration, and data management.

Knut Relbe-Moe (MCT, MVP)

Product Evangelist & Partner manager | Valo & Knowledge People

Knut was awarded with the Microsoft® MVP Award for 2015 and 2016, 2017, and 2018 Office Servers & Services. Knut is a Office 365 MVP, conference speaker and blogger. He is the founder of docsnode a template solution for Microsoft Office hosted in SharePoint. He works as Technical Evangelist for Valo one of the best Intranet in a box providers in the market. Knut is MCSE SharePoint, MCSA Office 365 and MCT. He delivers both engaging keynotes and highly technical sessions (level 400) on many different subjects in the Office 365 space. His job as an architect is to engage people and companies in evaluating and adopting new technologies as well as running key projects as a consultant. His core competence is to explain complex scenarios and make it understandable by combining technical insight and business value. As a SharePoint enthusiast he is the organizer, program manager and marketing guy for the SharePoint Saturday in Oslo.

Sessions

- What's new in SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1 (SP1) ?
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  SP1 is the latest release to SharePoint Server 2013 on-premises. The service pack includes performance, reliability, and security fixes. It also helps IT address some of the most common scenarios faced when moving to the cloud, helping them deploy cloud-based workloads in their organization faster and with less complexity, while providing them with the control they demand. In this session, you will learn some of the new features in SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack1, how to set them up, how to upgrade your SharePoint environment to SP1 and what you need to need to be aware of before the upgrade.

Ahmed Said Moussa

SharePoint Consultant | Mannai Trading

Ahmed is a SharePoint consultant, founder of Qatar SharePoint community and Qatar SharePoint User Group.
He is having the first SharePoint server 2013 administration course in Arabic online.
A member and author in SharePoint4MEA community.
He worked in past 5 years in SharePoint demonstrations, business analysis and implementing different type of projects based on SharePoint.
He has spoken in some events in Qatar and demonstrated a lot of presentations about SharePoint.

Sessions

- SharePoint Server 2013 as a Digital Asset Management System
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  A digital asset is an image, audio, or video file, or other reusable rich content fragment that an organization uses in applications across the enterprise. The asset library in SharePoint Server 2013 enables users to easily create, discover, and reuse existing digital assets within the organization.

Saifullah Shafiq (MVP)

President | Hot SharePoint Jobs

Saifullah Shafiq is CEO of Wali Systems, Inc., a company that provides SharePoint development, consulting and staffing services. Saifullah is a SharePoint MVP since 2007 and has written 5 books on SharePoint technology. He has also authored several ebooks and technical articles on SharePoint. He has been working with SharePoint since its first release. He started his career as a web developer 14 years ago. He has been contributing to the IT communities since 1999. His technical work (articles and applications) has been published on hundreds of programming related web sites. He has also written for different IT magazines.

Saifullah is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. He runs a SharePoint user group that has 500 members.

Recently, Saifullah launched a SharePoint jobs portal called Hot SharePoint Jobs (http://hotsharepointjobs.com) that uses latest social media recruiting tools and is quickly gaining popularity.

Saifullah actively participates in technical communities and events. He is a member of several online forums and responds to users queries. Saifullah invites everyone to connect with him.

Sessions

- SharePoint Search - An Indispensable Tool
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: English
  
  This session will cover SharePoint Search, an Indispensable tool used by all organization that use SharePoint. Users will learn why SharePoint Search is a great tool and how it makes searching information easy and useful for the companies.
  
  SharePoint enterprise search is regarded as one of the world’s best search technologies. SharePoint 2013 has gone one step farther and added new enhancements to this world-class technology. There are new enhancements for finding people and expertise. Phonetic search works in multiple languages. Search results display authored documents and information about past projects that can showcase a person’s expertise. There are contact cards that provide a way to contact people directly from the search results.

Muawiyah Shannak

Software Architect | UAE SharePoint User Group

Muawiyah has been working extensively with SharePoint since its 2007 version across many different technical areas of SharePoint projects including defining infrastructure, application architecture, and solution development. Muawiyah is currently employed at Exceed IT Services as a Software Architect where his focus is on delivering high quality SharePoint solutions that satisfy customer requirements in a manner that is consistent with Microsoft best practices. He is also a Microsoft Community Contributor and on the committee for the UAE SharePoint User Group

Sessions

- Client Side Rendering in SharePoint 2013
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  SharePoint Server 2013 provides a new way of rendering content to the browser using client side rendering. This new way of rendering leverages web standard technologies like jQuery, JSON and REST to render data in a clearer and simpler way than before. In this session, you will learn these techniques for creating different types of views and forms of data in SharePoint 2013.

Marwan Tarek (MVP)

Head of Consulting | BrightStarr

A recognized industry expert in collaboration technologies, enterprise content management, search and software development. Since SharePoint 2003 release, Marwan has been building SharePoint solutions for a diversity of industry sectors across United Kingdom and Middle East.Marwan worked for ITWorx and Microsoft for the past 10 years and currently is the practice manager of BrightStarr in the UK.
A SharePoint community leader and 5 years Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award (MVP).

Sessions

- Exploring SharePoint 2013 Cross-Site Publishing
  
  Level: 200
  
  Track: Arabic
  
  SharePoint 2013 introduced a lot of new features in WCM. Cross-site publishing is a great feature that allows the site authors to publish content cross sites and manage the publishing through managed metadata, search, content search web parts and display template. In this session I am going to walkthrough what you need to plan for building a site that can benefit from cross-site publishing.
  Arabic session

Stefano Tempesta (MVP)

Microsoft RD & MVP

Stefano is a Microsoft RD (Regional Director) and double MVP on AI and Business Applications. Chapter Leader for the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Community in Switzerland, he is a regular speaker at international conferences, including Microsoft Ignite and Tech Summit. Stefano’s interests extend to blockchain and A.I.-related technologies.

Sessions

- Kinecting with your class: An interactive learning experience for Office 365 for Education
  
  Level: 300
  
  Track: English
  
  Kinect for Windows offers an engaging and interactive approach to learning that completes the experience of teachers and students using Office 365 for Education.
  By showcasing the principles of developing applications for Kinect, and specifically integrating the Kinect experience with Office 365 for Education, this session will describe how to introduce gesture-based interactions and voice recognition as part of a class program in a school. This real case study, accompanied by plenty of code and examples, focuses on creating a quiz engine for Office 365 for Education, which uses the Kinect sensor for “gamifying” the test session in a class, by recognizing specific gesture and voice for identifying the correct answer.
  The engine is built with expandability in mind, allowing teachers to create bespoke quizzes with no coding. And to go even further, a “Quiz SDK” exists for developers for developing custom extensions to the quiz engine.
  Let’s put it all together for an exciting learning experience: a web-based learning platform based on Office 365 for Education, Kinect for Windows for interacting with students and make learning fun, and an extensible quiz engine for developing interactive tests that recognize gesture and voice.

David Toyne

Technical Solutions Professional | AvePoint

David Toyne is a Technical Solutions Professional at AvePoint located in the United Kingdom

Sessions

- Winning Strategies for Successful SharePoint Backup and restore
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  When deploying Microsoft SharePoint as a business-critical collaboration platform and digital-asset repository, implementing a comprehensive backup and recovery strategy is absolutely essential. Though SharePoint and SQL Server natively provide some data protection capabilities, these prove inadequate for most competitive organisations.
  In this session, we will discuss the key components of any successful SharePoint backup and recovery plan. After analysing SharePoint's native data and platform protection capabilities, we will identify best practices, available free tools and other best-of-breed solutions for ensuring a fully protected SharePoint platform. Finally, we will review how successful data protection plans can improve platform performance and reliability, establish a comprehensive content lifecycle management process as well as lower storage and management costs.

Eelco Vink

Functional SharePoint Consultant | Delta-N

Good and interesting information is key, presentation is everything. Eelco believes that with that aspect, you can deliver information in the right way. Eelco is a husband, father and works as a Functional SharePoint Consultant at Delta-N. He helps customers decide which aspects of SharePoint are best utilized for the organization and its employees.

Follow Eelco on Twitter at @SPEelco

Sessions

- The Ultimate User Adoption Cookbook: 6 recipes for success!
  
  Level: 100
  
  Track: English
  
  New application (the holy grail) implemented and no one works with it? Thinking that upgrading to the latest version will help people work with the solution? Burning down your budget and still no user adoption? I will show you how you can have both instead of one without the other.
  With all the experts and expertise you figured you had, you forgot that one important aspect "The end user". The person(s) that will eventually work with the application. During this session you will see and understand the benefits of User Adoption.
  - User Adoption, facts and figures
  - Gamification unleased
  - Power User 1 on 1
  - Build – Measure - Learn