Penthara Technologies has successfully completed a cloth donation drive - Mission Do Garmi, with the help of volunteers and donators. This blog showcases our contribution to helping a few slums survive this winter in a better way.
After two years of complete lockdown and hosting virtual events due to covid, we kicked off our first in-person Event, M365 Saturday Bangalore, on 3rd Dec 2022 at Microsoft office, Bangalore. It was a smashing and huge success. The kick-off phase is always energizing and informative, but the enthusiasm and excitement were beyond our expectations this year. We crossed over 200 attendees for the first time.
Every year Penthara Technologies sponsors M365 Event. But it was my first-ever opportunity to contribute to the M365 community events and work closely with such knowledgeable and thoughtful people. It was a wonderful experience. My teammate, Aman Bhardwaj, and I were fortunate to have this opportunity.
The event opened with warm gratitude and appreciation for all the organizers, sponsors, learning partners, speakers, and especially attendees who joined to make the M365 event remarkable:
Deepak Rajendran, an esteemed India, South Asia, and Middle East Lead of Microsoft’s MVP and RD programs, delivered the welcome note. He spoke about the significance of the M365 event and reminded everyone of the purpose and benefits of being involved in a community.
According to him, the main aspects of a community that make it so vital are –
His articulation inspired everyone there and sustained the audience’s attention and excitement throughout the event.
The sessions commenced with a very new and trending topic, Microsoft Viva Pillars, by the keynote speakers, SkandaRamana (Sr. Technology Architect at Microsoft) & Manoj Mittal (Sr. Consultant at Microsoft).
They explained all the pillars of MS Viva. And I could see why this is one of the trending topics nowadays. It is the first employee experience platform to bring tools for employee engagement, learning, well-being, and knowledge discovery, with new experiences to integrate with the productivity and collaboration capabilities in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams.
After the keynote, sessions were divided into two tracks for the audience to attend according to their interest. Each track had eight sessions of about 45 min. From Microsoft Viva to SharePoint, a wide variety of M365-related sessions were delivered by speakers from various industries. You can see our featured sessions and speakers here.
Our speakers were:
All speakers delivered their sessions in a commendable way, so much so that they received impressive participation from the audience.
The speakers were a great source of motivation throughout the event. They not only shared their great visionary and hands-on session, but some also attended the sessions of fellow speakers.
Through this, they gave an important message to everyone proving that people are not intelligent because they know something but because they keep learning and sharing.
And the M365 community always motivates everyone to come and learn with like-minded people and gives new people opportunities to share their knowledge and contribute to the community.
It was a one-day event; lunches and unlimited refreshments were there for everyone.
Attendees networked with one another and discussed business issues and changing technologies with the speakers and organizers personally during the lunch break. - This is the best part of attending community events; you get to meet like-minded people. You talk to them, discuss & resolve many issues, learn from each other & grow your network which benefits you and your business for a lifetime
After the lunch break, I saw that the audience was more energetic and participative. A full stomach and good food always show their magic.
At the end of the sessions, a thrilling and heated quiz competition was held using the Konfhub platform. Over a hundred people participated in it.
The participants were in high spirits and very competitive. The scoreboard was constantly going up and down, and it was hard to predict the winner for everyone through it. In the end, the top 3 participants who answered the most number of questions in less time became the winner of the day.
The first winner, Anshika Upadhyay, won Lenovo M10 FHD Plus (2nd Gen), and the second and third winners, Pratyush Kumar Patnaik and Pavan T S, got JBL Tune 125TWS and boAt Wave Call Smart Watch, respectively.
Along with the quiz, Penthara Technologies (one of the sponsors) also conducted social media giveaway, where the top 5 participants were awarded Penthara branded goodies. All the attendees got AzConf (one of the learning partners) branded t-shirts to attend the event.
At the end of the event, the organizers - Jasjit Chopra, Jenkin NS, Bijay Kumar, and Kamlesh Rao awarded speakers, sponsors, and learning partners momentum and Developers Road Ahead, a guide by Karthikeyan VK.
The appreciation and feedback from our speakers, sponsors and attendees paid off all the hard work of organizers, and critical decisions, an enormous and beyond-the-expectation success.
On behalf of all the organizers, I would like to show my generous gratitude to all the sponsors, speakers, learning partners, and a few others who joined to contribute to the M365 event and made it a bliss.
M365 Saturday Bangalore 2022 was a remarkable event. Everyone had a great time learning, having fun, and meeting many old and new people.
Microsoft Saturday Bangalore user group is the best platform for tech geeks to join as members, attendees or even speakers to learn, grow and share knowledge with others. It organizes free community events every year to contribute to society; anyone interested can join this community.
This year the M365 event was blissful. But we always try our best to make it better every year.
Thank you to everyone who joined us, and we hope to meet you again soon next year with the same energy and enthusiasm.
Penthara Technologies has successfully completed a cloth donation drive - Mission Do Garmi, with the help of volunteers and donators. This blog showcases our contribution to helping a few slums survive this winter in a better way.