The celebration of the 5th conference anniversary is over and Experts Live Europe 2017 is history. Time for a quick recap! Well, community conferences are like a big family get-together. When I jumped into the plane to get to Berlin for the big show, I was really amazed and excited. After all the hard work during the last months the conference week finally started. Seeing so many well-known faces and saying hello to friends from all over the world is just amazing and exactly what motivates us to run this conference every year again. But what happened in Berlin? Read on!

Conference Facts

• The conference was held in Berlin-Germany
• Almost 400 people from 28 different countries
• 50+ presenting experts, 31 of them Microsoft MVPs
• 16 sponsors
• 100 sessions in 6 parallel tracks

• Welcome Note

  The conference welcome note was (and always is) the official opening of the conference where attendees received some general information about the upcoming days. The goal was to warm the audience up for the conference and especially for the keynote.

   

  During the conference welcome note I always run something I call the “country rundown”. In a 1-minute countdown I showed the different countries that were represented at the conference. This year we had 28 different countries represented, just awesome!

  

  Sessions

  We had 100 breakout sessions and discussion panels in 6 tracks that have been presented by top notch speakers. The session feedback was amazing and the presenting experts did a fantastic job as always! Thanks a lot!

   

   

   

  Parties

  No conference without networking parties. Experts Live Europe is a conference that brings together experts, ISVs, partners, SIs and many more. In our networking parties, we brought the parties and individuals together and everyone had lots of fun!

   

   

   

  Closing Note & Closing Drinks

  For the conference closing note we put together some funny stories of the last 5 years and asked the audience to answer some questions around them. It was really fun and brought back some good memories. I also asked how many people in the audience did attend all 5 conference we organized so far: 10 persons came on stage – wow! After the sponsor prize-giveaways, the show was over. Almost.

   

   

  After the closedown of the conference, we met for some beers in a local brewery to start the weekend and finally say goodbye to everyone.

   

   

  Pictures

  Michael Seirer (Michael Seirer Photography), the man behind the camera, has taken lots of awesome pictures during the conference. You can get to the pictures on the Experts Live Europe Facebook site.

  Slide Decks & Videos

  The video recordings of the sessions will available in approx. 2 weeks (mid-September).

  What’s next?

  The planning of the next conference will start very soon. Berlin was a great host city for our last 2 conferences, but as mentioned during the closing note, we are looking for a new place. Any inputs are welcome. We will make sure the new location will have good accessibility from Europe and will communicate the final decision by the end of this year – latest.

  

  I had a great time in Berlin and am looking forward to the 2018 conference!

  Cheers, Marcel