Tuesday 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM · Room 433-434

Growing Adoption: Cultivating Change That Takes Root

We’ve all been there—great technology, strong intentions, and big investments… but adoption just isn’t growing the way we hoped.

In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore how to turn new tools and ways of working into a thriving, healthy garden that people actually want to be part of.

We’ll begin by taking a clear look at where your organization is on the adoption journey—because every garden grows differently. From there, we’ll focus on preparing the soil by setting the right conditions for change, including mindset, communication, and readiness.

Next, we’ll plant the seeds with proven strategies for effective adoption that you can start using right away. You’ll walk away with practical approaches to help engagement grow naturally, not by force.

Finally, we’ll tend the garden by building strong training and support structures, measuring success, and reinforcing change so growth continues over time—not just at launch.

This 2 hour and 45 minute workshop is designed to give you the tools, language, and confidence to help adoption take root, grow strong, and deliver a bounty of real results.

Wednesday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 337-339

Master your Microsoft Environments: Manage, Secure and Recover to Reduce Complexity

As Microsoft environments continue to grow, so does the complexity of managing them. IT teams must oversee an expanding mix of users, endpoints, identities, cloud workloads and security controls across multiple dashboards and disconnected tools — all while defending against increasingly sophisticated and fast-moving cyber threats. Join this educational workshop to learn 8 winning strategies for simplifying your Microsoft operations, strengthening security and improving recovery. The session focuses on real operational challenges, common blind spots and actionable steps IT teams can take to make Microsoft environments easier to manage, harder to compromise and faster to recover. Attendees will discover how to: Centralize visibility across Microsoft users, devices, identities and cloud resources. Automate routine management and security tasks to improve efficiency and accelerate response. Connect email, identity, endpoint and cloud telemetry to detect and contain threats faster. Recover Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Azure and collaboration workloads quickly, after ransomware, accidental deletion or malicious changes. You'll leave this event with practical strategies to reduce operational silos, strengthen your security posture, automate key response workflows and accelerate recovery across your Microsoft environment.

Wednesday 11:40 AM - 12:50 PM · Room 423-424

AI-Powered Project Planning with Teams, Copilot, and Planner

Learn prompting best practices to generate structured, actionable project plans using Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams. This session will show you how to guide Copilot with effective natural language prompts to create project plan templates in Microsoft Planner—complete with tasks, buckets, assignments, and timelines. Whether you're starting from scratch or standardizing repeatable workflows, you'll walk away with practical techniques to turn ideas into organized plans in minutes.

Wednesday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 337-339

What Leaders Must Do to Make AI Work

The gap between AI investment and AI impact isn't a technology problem, it's a people problem. Most organizations can deploy an agent or spin up an AI solution. Far fewer can rewire the culture, redesign the processes, and build the human capability required to make AI matter at scale.

This session gives leaders the context and frameworks they need and gets to the hard part: what leaders actually have to do. That includes how to build a culture, modernize the workforce, and deal with AI advancements that are coming every quarter. And baked in are the attributes you need to adopt as a leader to work effectively with an organization that's equal parts excited and terrified.

If you're an executive or IT leader who's tired of pilots that don't scale and strategies that don't stick, this is your blueprint. Practical. Field-tested. Ready to make a difference.

Wednesday 3:10 PM - 3:30 PM · Solution Studio

What It Takes to Make Your Organization AI Self-Sufficient

Making AI stick and your own teams AI SELF-SUFFICIENT takes three things: culture, capability, and an AI Center of Excellence (CoE) with experts on demand. Miss one, and even the most sophisticated AI deployments can become expensive lab toys.

This session demystifies AI success and shows how organizations can rapidly become AI self-sufficient.

Thursday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 423-424

Project Management Agent: The Future of Delivery

Project management is at an inflection point. For decades, leaders have relied on tools, dashboards, and manual reporting to keep delivery on track. Now, AI is shifting from assistant to agent—a proactive orchestrator that runs the flow of work across Teams, Planner, Outlook, and beyond. This session introduces the concept of the Project Management Agent, an AI‑powered operating layer that consolidates updates, surfaces risks, rebalances workloads, and ensures governance in real time. Instead of chasing status reports or juggling disconnected systems, leaders can rely on the agent as a single source of truth and accountability. Attendees will see how today’s Copilot capabilities in Microsoft 365 are the building blocks of this future, and walk away with a practical framework for piloting agent‑driven delivery in their own organizations. The result: less overhead, faster decisions, and a new model for scaling operational excellence.

Thursday 2:00 PM - 3:10 PM · Room 333-334

From AI Promise to Proven Impact: Building Business Cases That Deliver ROI

Turn AI potential into high-impact business cases and measurable ROI Tagline: "A practical framework for translating AI opportunities into prioritized use cases with quantifiable returns leaders can defend

Thursday 4:00 PM - 5:10 PM · Room 437-439

Level Up Your Microsoft Skills: Tips, Tricks & Time‑Saving Magic

Join us for 20 Tips and Tricks to use in the Microsoft ecosystem. Save time and frustration. If you use Microsoft Tools, you'll find at least two tips that will blow your mind and you might even giggle.

Friday 10:20 AM - 11:30 AM · Room 445-446

Power employee engagement with Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot

Learn how Microsoft Viva, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Copilot come together to foster company culture, unlock communication and engagement opportunities, organize content, and spark employee creativity.

Friday 12:30 PM - 1:40 PM · Room 423-424

Brand, Format, Ship: Your Microsoft 365 Newsletter Playbook

Ready to elevate your internal communications? Microsoft Outlook’s built-in newsletter feature makes it easier than ever to share updates, announcements, and stories across your organization. In this session, you’ll learn how to launch an internal newsletter that people actually read. We’ll cover practical tips for gaining your first subscribers, defining your newsletter’s scope, and creating a consistent brand identity. You’ll also discover formatting best practices, common pitfalls to avoid, and strategies for keeping your content engaging. Whether you’re starting from scratch or refining an existing newsletter, this session will give you the tools to make your communications stand out.

Walk away with: Understand the Microsoft Outlook Newsletter feature – Learn how to set up and configure newsletters using the built-in tools for internal communication. Develop a strategy for engagement and growth – Explore practical tips for gaining seed subscribers, defining your newsletter’s scope, and maintaining consistent branding. Master formatting and content best practices – Discover techniques for creating visually appealing layouts, avoiding common pitfalls, and keeping your content relevant and engaging.

Friday 1:50 PM - 3:00 PM · Room 423-424

AI in Portfolio Governance: From Reporting to Real‑Time Insight

Portfolio governance has long been bogged down by static reports, manual updates, and lagging indicators. With Microsoft Copilot embedded across Planner, Teams, and Viva, governance is shifting to real‑time, AI‑driven insight. This session explores how leaders can embed Copilot into portfolio reviews to surface risks, resource conflicts, and adoption signals instantly. Attendees will see how AI converts delivery data into actionable governance metrics, reducing overhead while improving transparency and trust. Through live scenarios, Michelle Boyd will demonstrate how Copilot can transform messy project inputs into structured dashboards, highlight portfolio‑level risks, and propose mitigation strategies. The session closes with a practical framework for building AI‑enabled governance practices that scale across programs and portfolios.