 Hey, this is Chris Buckley. We just wrapped up another collab talk tweet jam, and I'm here with Mark Jones. Hey Good afternoon for you or evening. Hi everybody. And thanks for a good tweet jam there. Chris. I really enjoyed it Yeah, I think the the comments that I had from quite a few people And I think this every single month was how incredibly fast it just flies by an hour And we're only covering seven questions during that hour, but I mean it just screams past us Yeah, I think a lot of people have a lot of things to say around when it comes to community That's what I found anyway Well, when you're looking down at the screen or you're you're paying attention You're reading what other people are writing and trying to get a comment in via Twitter It just it helps it all fly by very quickly. The topic this month Of course was something near and dear to both of our hearts Is the best practices for organizing community events and that's online as well as in person And you've done both of those things but for people that don't know who you are Maybe you can introduce yourself in some of the events that you've put together. Yes, you're so I'm Mark Jones And I've I've been in SharePoint probably for around about 12 years now And then I got more into the community in about 2013 and I think a lot of you probably remember SP 24 Which is I still have the stickers. Yeah. Yeah, the first 20 I can't believe it's so long ago as well So that was the first 24 hour virtual summit and when we did that I completely got the bug and off that we've spun out club 365 we've got blog sites. We've done I think at last count it was 22 virtual events Well, we've done loads more 24 hour ones, but now we've kind of settled into four a year Which we're calling the club 365 summits. So I'm all about virtual really I have been to in-person events as an attendee, but my speciality is really virtual And I've done both of those and I'm more of the novice on the the virtual events You know where I was very interested in and having participated in quite a few of yours I mean the SP 24 for people that are aware of that event I mean they were you guys were running it like running a television station for a 24 hour period So following the Sun and so I participated like at the beginning of the sessions and then early morning the next day And you guys were all still going and heavily caffeinated and that was a massive undertaking Yeah, they're the most exhausting things to do But they're also a very good buzz and I do like the idea because you can include everybody in the world in that one event But by the end of it, you are absolutely shattered. You're gone. Yep. Yeah indeed Well, let's run through this is the questions that were discussed today kind of get you'll share your thoughts on each of these So the first one is what are your go-to tools for organizing community events? So we can probably break this down into like the the kind of operational tools for virtual events and also the marketing tools operationally to actually run an event we use we actually We've created our entire own conference platform that we run them in just so it's bespoke and it's easy for us to use and Marketing wise we use a platform. So we use active campaign to manage lists We've got a we use a social tool called Sociomonials to actually spread out our social messages along this the different social networks Because it's if you probably agrees really are if you've got one thing you want to say the last thing you want to do He's got post it on Facebook post on Twitter and LinkedIn, right? I'm like a paid Hootsuite user tweet deck There's a number of tools that are out there for like an individual consumer or for teams to go out and do that So yeah, so we use that but I probably say that the most important one for up is is active campaign And for those that don't know active campaign allows you to run Manage an email list effectively So once you get them in the email list you can then send a follow-up email series so it's really important for us and I guess the other important one for us personally is something called WordPress which many people have heard of but we use a Plug-on on plug-in on top of that called fry themes, which is a really really really cool page builder Makes life really easy. So there are kind of main tools We use loads of other things beyond that to do with like paid advertising, etc But they're the main ones who run in the event and get the speakers there. Oh, yes The other one is a guy called Matt Western. I'm sure most of you know He built us the most beautiful speaker on board in processing Paranaut mate Microsoft forms share point in teams So now we managed the whole process of call for speakers and Helen who was on the camera a month while ago She just manages it all and we can see it all into inside of teams Which is awesome because it centralizes everything for awesome. So that's like a team's version of session eyes Yes. Yeah, we've yeah, I've not seen session eyes personally, but yes from what I've heard about it will be the same Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty popular over here is gaining a popularity, but it's and it's a session eyes There's of course the paid version out there if you're doing a Non-profit a free community event you can get the tools for free as well But but like we use for a lot of our community activities that are in person events I mean event bright or we use and pay for meet-up and we use that for our regional community activities here in Utah Yeah, but session eyes And then a lot of these other tools that you've mentioned Well, so the second question I think is really important. This is a hard one when you start talking about marketing So what are the three things an organizer can do to raise awareness of their community event? I Know that's not just three things, but well when we go back to SB 24 days It was really easy to get but we got five and a thousand people registered not spending a penny on ads So we were able to put a message on Facebook put a message on Twitter LinkedIn And we got five and a thousand people registered We did some other things as well like the guys went over to chaplain conference at the time I did a bit of promo there, but it was all done organically free But the thing the thing that's changed three years ago Is Martin Zuckerberg said it's an end to free organic traffic So if you now go post a link on Facebook You're not going to get much traffic from his stall. So we now use we've gone heavily into Facebook ads heavily heavily heavily and we spend an eye watering amount every time on Facebook ads but Then that obviously leads to the question how you pay for those which we can go into if you want But that's our number one is we use Facebook ads and we use Twitter ads during the event because we find that's really easy to Build awareness to say hey be venture any come come come And then things like sociobonials we go to our list because we've obviously got a massive list next we've done so many events So we refresh that way and we ask the speakers as well So we do speaker videos for everybody and we ask the speakers to share the videos on organic traffic themselves But from you know from reasons I've just mentioned That's not as effective as it used to be because obviously Platform doesn't always show these videos, right? Well, that's one you know having a strategy for saturation is smart I think you're doing that the paid advertising Of course, you've got presence in a number of locations. Usually you have your event page You've got blogs blog posts from you as the event organizer as well as the speakers And so help you get the word out there that is going to help even through while I agree with you Organic no longer exists. It's certainly not in the Facebook world But even out in the other social platforms and Twitter and LinkedIn can get lost very quickly But if you have let's say 30 speakers for a full day event And they're all blogging and actively tweeting and posting out on the other social networks and Instagram You're gonna start to break through some of that however no matter what you do Just realize that the end of all that prep all that work You'll still have people that will come to you a day or two after the event and say I had no idea this was happening How did I miss this? Yeah, it's good tonight? It's good in but it's it's it's painful So Christian On the SharePoint Saturday side of things as I know you've done a few of those Do you find the marketing to change over the last two or three years? Yeah, I mean the hard part is it's kind of like you use the example of sp24 When you did that nobody else had really done something like that So it stood out and and so there was a you know a hunger for something like that I mean right now. I think the difficulty I mean certainly you're probably feeling this although you've got momentum and you've got your lists around your events that you're doing like your teams event your multi-day event for example is that you now have like the SharePoint conference was The physical conference canceled. They've partnered with the West Coast U.S. Community team Putting together a two-day event. You have the European collaboration summit that is doing an online event You have every user group that's doing stuff like I've gone from hosting monthly experts For our user group where I'm trying to line them up almost every single week because we're all home So there's this this moon now of online content So that's made it difficult. I think for a lot of user groups Though I've been advocating for a long time. What we've seen is a drop in the physical events even before the The COVID-19 There was a drop in the number of attendees But we saw a lot of growth strong growth in people that were Attending virtually because we would livestream or broadcast and on teams our user group meetings And we get a lot more traffic that way and I was on the community the organizing community. I was trying to Push the rest of the organization to say let's let's stop doing monthly in person Let's do Quarterly at most and then special events like our SharePoint Saturday and let's do everything else digitally And we'll be able to grow it and I think that because of this experience. I think there's more Support for that idea of doing the lesson person Yeah, it's just interesting. I was the main the main interesting point for me I can't imagine ever running an in-person event Digital for me. I find really really hard with everything you need to do. There's the dog fight. Yeah, yeah But so you I've just really interested to see whether actually SharePoint Saturdays and local community events have also changed along with The way virtuals changed as well. Yeah, it's well it I think that there was SharePoint Saturdays is something very unique. Of course, you've had the SPS events org the the website and so You know to be able to brand your event and and follow that pattern There's certain kind of rules to follow has to be free Generally had to be on a Saturday. Well, we've we've rebranded our event here in Utah from SharePoint Saturday, Utah to Microsoft 365 Friday and We doubled our numbers And so one of the things I think that what we've learned over doing it that was our eighth or ninth I can't remember a year of doing those events Is that you need to change it up? You need to listen to you know your attendees and We knew that we needed to expand the base of topics We needed to we did some different things where we had like a 101 workshop That was a half-day workshop. So for people that were brand new to Microsoft 365 and had no hands-on experience They could come and sit through a complete 101 onboarding half-day workshop for free and then go to whatever other sessions that they want so I think we've learned to mix it up and do something different Promotional has been for the same things that the reasons that you've mixed things up and are focusing on paid advertising We've done some paid advertising because we're running the exact same issues Yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare isn't it? Yeah So the third one is any tips for selecting content and or speakers for community events So what here's an example that I thought was important that So we had a lot of people with the answers out of the tweet jam. I posted the comment I said, you know one of the things that we've done and we've had some Some well-known speakers that have been upset about not getting selected our We for our local events our preference is local people Giving opportunities to up-and-comers having said that most experienced speakers that are out on the speaking circuit We'll submit multiple abstracts So that makes it easier for us as an organizer to say well, we've got these local people We're gonna have them on these topics and then in other specialty topics that no one locally has done or yes This big name speaker is recognized for you know that and then build our schedule that way So that's one ways to give preference to local people Yeah, and it's tricky for us in a virtual space because Selecting content is because of COVID-19 and we're getting a lot of events throwing in So we've been in place for two months now and we've kind of had a lot of speakers all pre-approved But now we're seeing other events coming before us that are organized after and they're obviously all online and all virtual And we're seeing duplicate sessions So it's it's a bit of a challenge for us because if you're gonna do a duplicate session a week before a different event Then what's the what's the value coming to our event? So we're finding it we are finding a bit of a challenge at the moment But as regards like selecting speakers for our events We obviously do a lot of pre-record So for those are people that don't know we do pre-record and there's a reason for doing it It's because we did live for years and live is just it's awesome things like this headshots bit Most of the sessions that we like in our space are generally like screen shares And so people need to see high resolution screens and the speakers that no Camtasia are things like the post productions Video production software they do a really really cool job at making really nice videos ahead of time Which you can never do live So what we do is we push out the videos like as they live We've done that all of our conference platform and to be honest We never hide it but people do think that actually is going out live And it means the speaker can join and then the reason I'm saying this to answer this question is Is that if it's on demand? We love people speakers from a personal point of view that can get them into us for a week before so we can Quality check them and help fix them out So that's one one key thing if you're going to do anything like that is the God selecting speakers is that? We also like to do things like We do five days and so we're trying to do trying to bundle everything together either by solution or by technology So for example on global com 2 which is our next one We're doing a whole Azure day for beginners So we're picking some Azure technologies and we're putting those together because we realize that you know It's a five-day event people's attention span is a nightmare to get there's no way on earth We do have some people though But there's no way enough 99% of the people are going to come to our event and watch every single session all five days So we try to be courteous for people's time and we try to put sessions that go well together I will have a teams day will have an Azure day And then last time we had a kind of freelancers day so we're on the Friday And I'm trying to do a bit more of that but that's how we kind of select it is one is has it been done before? Yes or no two is have does the speaker get it in on time? And then three is does the session? Track all fit together nicely right that's you know I like that whole concept and we try to do that at our you know our SPS events and other events That I've tried to organize where it's almost like a learning pathway And so if you're and it doesn't always work out obviously if you got more content I mean I like that idea I've been to a couple larger events where there's been hundreds of speakers where there's almost like a Well, here's an example a couple years back at Ignite one of the things that they I was a community reporter the in Florida and One of the things that they asked from the community reporters is for us to put together kind of a you know What are the sessions you're interested in and there's a few of us that went in and put together Spread across the week said hey if you are really I can't remember who did the project management But said basically if you're a project manager focused Here is a track of topics that I think will really be well positioned for your role And it's harder to do with a smaller event Like a SharePoint Saturday that that kind of tailored experience And so as you say there's an Azure track there might be a power platform track a teams track a SharePoint track You know things like that and then kind of a general special topics in another room We generally have five or six tracks depending you know for for a room But then you only have five or six sessions in a day and people you know inevitably they say Wow, you know for a live event you know a man and there's so many great topics I had to decide you know which to go and do and that's we're coming in and saying well based on your role We think this path across the day might make the most sense And so it's great to be able to provide people with options You do have people that just kind of whether online or in person that just kind of like I don't know what looks good And one of the things I always say as far as selecting what content you're gonna sit in as an attendee Or participate in it if you get five ten minutes in and realize this is not for me leave go to another session That's yeah, it's there you're either it's either free and it's there for you or you're paying for it And it's there for you So don't don't feel like I'm stuck with the selection that I made here You know just yeah, I totally agree you get some people like we did a we had a beginners flow session and flow You've never seen it before not flow power automate you've seen it before power or to make is actually quite complicated Even out the box for a non Person as a come from a programmers background is must be mind-blowing for them So it did begin a session and I thought it was a really nodding beginning session But now we've got quite a few people saying that's too far advanced But you can only go so far can't you it's like these beginners and if you were coming into this It would be perfect for you, but you do need the basic prerequisite Knowledge of a logic you need a logical brain effect to reach pick power or to make the pie I think I do like when when When events they they are you know present of mind to think about that is to ask you hey What are what what is it's not just a level and some sessions some events? They don't even ask the level anymore and you should put on their 100 level which is for beginners 200 which is some knowledge of some Interactive tool 300 which is advanced and then for should be like specialty you're looking at the code You're breaking something fixing something or wiring up a Something you're different. You're you're you're customizing that that solution Yeah, we are trying to do that more and more. It's just it does get tricky because you kind of It's not always your your beginner isn't everybody's begin a session effectively and the speakers begin the session is always the same So we are starting to put labels on there, but we don't really want to totally disappoint. I I think the description is the most important part Exactly, and then just don't be shy about getting up and leaving the room if it's if it's too much for you and go and You know if it's not the right topic the fourth fourth question and this is more of a tactical question So what is your PR and communication strategy with community events? So not so much about the tools as it is like the timing like How many emails is too many emails to send out to your list? Everybody asked that question. I'd love to get your your thoughts. Yeah, we It's a tricky one because our model is and it goes on to the next one Which is around sponsors. We don't really work too heavily with sponsors anymore We used to and our events always used to be about sponsors So obviously you've got costs you need to buy ads for starters You've got production costs you need to raise a seed amount of capital in order to run a decent event and so It's tricky. It's a I was gonna say I was tricky for us from a point of view that When you start off, what was the question? So email is What we do effectively an email is when people register We send them a series of five beginner emails and it's all done in active campaign So you're ready to and then to get you prepared we send you a beginners guide to I think we do somewhere Laura We do something around teams you do some of our automates just to get people prepared so that when they come They don't go and we don't have a beginner session. They don't go. I haven't seen the beginner session I don't understand any of this is too much so we send them that and So that's that big p.m. But the reason I was mentioning the lack of sponsors is we've got a slightly different model because we don't We don't fund it with sponsorships and we'll go on to that the next question So we fund it with the all-access pass and the all-access pass is where you could come along to the event Free a charge of about 20 hours afterwards, but after that we take the sessions down. We make them available on our platform My time and then we also produce a load of ebooks And we pile in previous sessions a load of other goodies and some training and stuff And that allows us to actually sell the you know grays if enough people buy it We're able to cover a cart and so the tricky bit for us And it's the bit that I kind of hate is that you still have to do a bit of a selling job So you want to come on free that everybody's going to come to the event free a charge But at the end of the day you still have to go to the email list two or three times over three months Say look the all-access pass early birds gonna rise. He's gonna rise in price He's gonna rise in price and I kind of cringe saying it but then again I'm also proud of the all-access pass so I kind of enjoy saying it But I know if people aren't ever gonna buy the all-access pass They're just gonna think I'm not another email from these guys. I just want to attend it free And so it's a it's a tricky one I think there was some some commentary on the Tweet Jam of people like you know Not flooding the social channels as well and of course there's it's different I mean you can flood Twitter and no one will notice But you can't do the same frequency and inundate Facebook or or LinkedIn in the same way or Instagram Yeah, they all you it's one of those things the social channels is something you kind of need to do because they will bring Like a little tiny amount of traffic in and certainly the event time I tried to do them Kind of I honestly do think you could probably get away just with Facebook ads and never bother We do in any of the organic traffic stuff. I agree. If anything, I think it's a well with with with marketing Activities in general. It's not so much about like hey, that's the one message. That's convinced me to move across It's the culmination of all of those things and so a lot of those other things is just a reminder a branding reminder Oh, yeah, hey, I'm registered for that and I'm getting excited or I'm getting weary of all the messages that I'm seeing on Twitter it can it can get too much, but The thing that sticks in my head as an event organizer Is I want to do most amazing job for the attendees? I want to bring really good speakers and I want to give them a great platform Sorry do pre-record But the other side is I want to do the best I can for the speakers because the last thing you want to do He's running a big event to promote it The speaker gets really Excited and then there's just people in chat. It's just him. I don't like it I'm embarrassed because speakers like a good audience. So they like to be engaged as well And so yeah, I do what I can and if people call me sometimes they call me a spammer. I'm a spammer Yeah Just on the comments So one of the things that I do love about the pre-recorded model that you follow Because then as that video while I hate listening to myself Talk in a video Being able to participate in the discussion on the side The chat the way that you guys do that is fantastic And so and that's that is a huge advantage to the pre-recorded even for a, you know For any online event running the video and then being able to sit there and Do the Q&A over on the side as it's going and The last event that I did for you guys, I mean I made it clear like hey I'm watching along with all of you and so I was over there on the side You know, hey, I'm gonna address that point here in a minute You know, hey, there was that point that I made that was really smart, you know Yeah, yeah, I'm in the end of the day live. Let's face it live. There's a lag of 20 30 seconds Anyway, so we're not really live and I just find that you waste so much time life Because it's on your machine and you know, like It'll probably go down just now. You've got to come back and it's just it's just Exactly Well, let's jump to question five, which is uh, what is the role of sponsors in your community events? Well Yeah, it's saying it's unstable again, by the way, so apologies if it goes Is it saying it's unstable for you? No, it's just on your side And okay Let's get better internet somewhere but for sponsors for us as I mentioned in the tweet jam that we don't As in two years ago or three years ago. We don't really work with paid sponsors anymore We have started to do trades this time And the reason we don't really work with sponsors because I don't think we can offer the value what they want on Reason for that is I'm not sure if you know about it over there, but gdpr came in The gdpr came in about two months on 18 months ago now Probably two years and you cannot share your data now unless you get every single Sponsor is opted in on the registration form. You literally so in our point metologic sponsor here Your attendee has to say yes, they can market. Yes, they can market. Yes, they can market and so You can imagine everything sponsors were one of the most rally It won't leads effectively and that's what we used to be able to do You used to have a catch all opt in back in the sp24 days and you'd be able to give the leads over You can't really do that anymore So the only thing virtual events. I'm not saying physical physical is totally different Virtual events the only thing we can really offer is brand awareness So we can put a sponsors logo on the registration page We can also we've got the ability to play an advert before the session But the last thing people want to do is what we found is and we've done virtual sponsors booths as well before The last thing people want to do is they're excited about your event They don't want to go somewhere else to read about sponsors product And that's the thing and then also the value you can charge To be honest if you know what you're doing with facebook ads You're far better off just buying any facebook ads campaign as a sponsor rather than sponsoring like ours If leads is what you want, right having said that we are doing a trade this time Where we are offering brand awareness in return if the sponsor can help us promote the event So it's just a friendly trade. There's no contract. No restrictions And so we're only seeing companies like quiz companies are doing an amazing job They're bringing some new ideas for us in it And I think it really adds to the weight even event if you've got some of these big brands actually You know shouting alongside you. No, I agree and I so I mentioned that during the in the tweet jam One of my responses was that You know If you can if it makes sense, but even include in a sponsorship agreement I mean, they're looking for leads. They're looking for new customers that are out of there What you and I both understand and we've done enough of these events whether online or in person That the sponsors that do well It's the ones that are have multiple modes of engaging that start conversations with people It's not just about having your logo up there and then send me a list of people That registered for your event and then I'll go spam them via email. It's where you know people Want to engage with that that sponsor where they're going to get the most value And so as an organizer, it's Figuring out what is the sponsorship offering that's going to provide the best the biggest benefit And that might be like you said it might be bundling with the paid advertising so that they do get the lead gen But it's also more refined more personalized for that that message It's great to have Downloadable information so product information for those sponsors and make it more readily available And I like how you guys do it where you can have You've had sponsors of a track or sponsors even of a of a specific speaker or a topic During an event And so then they go get in there and they can participate again where it makes the most sense if they're participating if they're sponsoring I'm speaking for an hour on microsoft teams governance And there's uh, you know, somebody in there like sharegate has a governance product They want to market they want to sponsor that Session what that means is their logo is up there the whole time I'm never going to bring up and talk about the sponsors because I just I don't do that. That's all educational But in the in the conversation that's happening on the side when it's relevant You know that sharegate person could be on there and they could be like well actually Hey, we do have we have a solution that does this and here's some of the things that we've seen So they're engaging in context in that conversation And the likelihood will be that much greater that somebody will click on stuff And then of course the resources Have something to send to people as well be ready if people wanted more information To give something out as part of that let them read more let them follow up Like I said, we're trying a few more things with the trades this time where you can play the ad before And we'll invite the sponsor to come into the session and you know I'm a little sponsored mention in the chat at the start sponsored mention in a chat at the end and also we'll Outside of the event will also help them promote on our social channels Uh, and potentially we're going to do a rap or p email which says thanks to the sponsors Uh, he's he's they have great offering and check this out. Check that out So we might do something like that as well, but yeah, for me gdp. I've changed everything Which is a bit gutted and he's made it hard, but it's also to be honest made It's made us be more creative And I think for people that can't make the same sessions and can't save I'm really proud of the old access pass and we've never had to do that We just got to ship more Well, the I mean the other benefit of that and and I'll just I'll shill for you Really really quick that is the fact that you do then collect all of those other resources a part of the all access pass It's not just that you're selling entrance into the event is that you're providing those huge bundles of exclusive content That that company There is a compelling reason So you get to the recording so you're you're at the event which you can go and do free You get access to all the recordings afterwards, which you don't just get and then you get all of the ebooks and white papers and and other material that come from those those speakers. So that's That's a pretty compelling bundle Yeah It kind of works out one is one and we we're going to do a little bit more with that in the future because Some of the feedback we've got is that our delivery of the all access pass after the event could be better And we kind of know that so we're building a new environment called fact 365 is Which is where you're going to get all of the the undemand content afterwards That's actually a good segue because the next question number six is if you've conducted a community event postmortem What were your key takeaways? So I know you guys done this because I remember after the first sp24 When there was the big wrap up and some of us in the community where that were speakers Were able to kind of provide some feedback like what worked what didn't work here Do you do that generally after each one of your events? We haven't done recently but the earlier days fact we have done. Yes In the earlier days where we used to do live The the number one takeaway was I couldn't see the session in my country The speed could quality of the session was terrible And that's why we made the big moves to pre-record because we couldn't take it anymore because it's not fair on the speed It's not fair on the attendee either. So that was a big takeaway and Yeah, like Trying to think why I put in a tweet jam now. There was another one as well. What what have you seen yourself in your events? Well, I think you know the there's always a lot of feedback on uh getting the word out there, you know people want to um You know one of the biggest complaints is hey, you know if there were three sessions happening at the same time That I wanted it to participate in Yeah, you know, so what can you do and that that again is another reason why the pre-recorded and making content Um, even if it's only available exclusively to paid people for the 30 days afterwards And then after that maybe push it all out to youtube to promote for you know, the the The event brand going forward There needs to be some exclusivity there But the the other takeaways, um, I mean we get the same stuff that everybody gets So it's the it's the problem with the post event survey Is that either you get the this This glowingly happy That was the best thing i've ever experienced in my life Feedback or you get the it was horrible and I hate you died Um feedback there's nothing in between and there's rarely anything constructive Um, do we don't need to hear about the room was too warm because when you say it's too warm Somebody else was freezing cold The lights were too bright. It was too dark. I mean all those kinds of environmental factors that Are normal and you're just extra whiny about no if there's legitimate feedback like you didn't have Any of these topics I was expecting these or the topics this presenter it didn't match The abstract or you know things like that that make us go and look and say Well, you know what that speaker we thought did all right, but apparently You know and people just dislike this speaker or they pitch their product or services Didn't provide educational content. Yeah, we'll never select them again kind of stuff Or we know for next year, you know here we also want to cover these topics Yeah, and you just think it back about it now one of the things we've had to change is because we're doing four years We're doing global con one two three four and then do the same again next year We can't do beginner sessions every single time because it's just kind of ridiculous because we've already done Power apps beginner session. It doesn't make sense to do one next time So some of the the feedback we get is again why we've tried to fix it with the email series I mentioned is when people come to the next one and it's a bit more of an advanced power app session I'll go well. I don't understand about power apps. Where's the beginner stuff? And like I say you can't keep doing it So the way we've addressed it is we drip the the previous beginner stuff out via email and ask people to watch it And then I think they don't they don't but at least we've got to say we asked you to watch and we have watched it So that's our comeback. So I think for us. Yes, definitely level and pitching of session and Quality of the agenda is something we've had to look at quite closely Right. Are you also doing surveys out in advance to see if there's any topics any subject matter that you've you've missed Yes, it's all beginner It's nearly all beginning. I don't know if it's our audience, but we go out on facebook ads and we do we do survey them People just are beginning in so many of these technologies nowadays. Yeah, but you look at it Teams has had like an 800 growth You know in this q1 something like that and most of those people are exactly they're beginner So they're they're just finding out about events like yours for the first time. So that makes sense to me It does it does make a lot of sense, but it's kind of yeah, it's a tricky one And that's why I like five days because you can have a beginner day and you can push out content to them at a time And then they're coding by day five. That's what you're saying Yes, by day five it starts to get a little bit advanced Well, so the last question that we talked about today. So following the community event What steps do you take to keep the community connected? You kind of just said that you're trickling out the content Is there anything else that you do from a community building standpoint? We do quite a lot. So we've got facebook groups and massive for us like our teams group has grown I think it was 10,000 only four weeks ago and it's now 20,000 Wow, there's a lot of beginner on there and it's that's grown massively We tried to moderate the hell out of that but not always easy But that's and the people in that group have been amazing. So like really helped each other out And it's one of the groups are most proud of more more amazing than the microsoft The recently rebranded microsoft 365 community in facebook I know I got beat up a bit for spamming that But but you know, I see what the clarified for those that don't know too if you go out to facebook So I don't participate as much in the teams one honestly Just because I forget that it's there because I use the m 365 community And and I go in there looking for questions because like i'm doing the office hours now That's one thing that it's not specifically tied to an event But we push everybody to go to that m 365 community and we We're just a bunch of mvps that get together every monday at 8 a.m. And 6 p.m. Pacific So we hit, you know, amia and apac And then answered questions and we look to that community to see what questions have been discussed and then we discuss them on that those calls Yeah, um, but what's the membership like in that one? Uh, that's smaller about 3000. Oh, that's a lot smaller. Okay. I need to The biggest one we have is azure, which is 39,000. Wow But the the best one is teams by a country mile That's that's the one where people are really diving in a deep I think it's just the timing and teams have grown but people are really helping each other out Well, that's always the the hard thing. It's like, I mean obviously post an event You send out kind of the follow-up email or email campaigns and and, uh, let people, you know You're doing stuff quarterly now. So you're letting people aware be aware of that for what we're doing for like since we have our Formerly known to SharePoint Saturday, Utah event every February the in-person event But we also have our virtual event, uh, like the azure The global azure event, which is like just about to happen or whatever. I don't I'm on the committee but i'm not Actively participating in that one event, but I help put on like the dev boot camps the the the windows Insiders event every fall And a bunch of these so we're we're trying to Cross promote the many there's 14 different Microsoft related user groups here in northern Utah And so we try to cross promote across those for the physical events Through the webinars and then we promote kind of the next quarterly event that's having here in region So that's what we're doing. We're trying to get better about Coordinating and promoting even if we're not involved if there's a relevant event within the community We're putting our weight and our resources behind like promoting those other activities Whether or not we get that back that help back because some of those user groups They don't help at all with the rest of what what we're doing but It's the benefit of the of the users of the participants to be aware of what's happening in the calendar And so we're trying to set up we call ourselves that we do this under the banner The umbrella organization called the microsoft user group utah mug it and And so we we it's all about cross promoting so we get nothing out of it It just sucks up our time and promoting all the stuff But uh, it helps it because look at you know a rising ocean floats all boats So that's the the idea so that we want we want to see this approved And we want people to be more aware of All of the stuff that's happening outside the community. I love that saying I've never heard that before Yeah, I don't know where it comes from. It's an old one. But yeah, I really like that Rising tide it's a rising tide floats all boats There's a I should use and say it's mine Yeah, there you go. They're quoted. You know Mark Jones Yeah So that's one of the things and then just to recap that label behind me What we're doing is we're trying to make a bit more of a community for people who bought the oil access pass And so we're going to introduce a mobile app and give people a way to a bit of gamification thrown in there Some extra courses to take and certificates. So It's taking a lot of building but we're going to get there with that hopefully this year That's very exciting. Well, looking forward to that. I mean looking forward to that event. Um, So I know that uh, I think the call for speakers is all closed or is it this week But it's still open. Yeah, it's still it's still open. We're still we're up in the air about we're actually thinking about making it Because we're just single track per day. So one track per day We're actually debating over to make it two tracks because we've got loads of session submissions. Yeah. Oh, I've got I've got some quite exciting news from microsoft, which really surprised me actually Hopefully to announce it in the next day or two. Oh, very cool Well mark really appreciate you taking the time to help uh come in to summarize. Thanks for participating in the tweet jam today And uh, thank you. We'll see you uh next week. We're next week next month We're doing the topic is around uh takeaways from that uh community driven post of that that You know sure point conference online community event thing that's happening before yours But we'll do in the tweet jam at the end of may the last day of may and uh, we'd love to have So but thanks a lot Thank you so much and thanks for doing the tweet jam christian. Nice to speak to you. Nice to speak to you