Community events: community run, community attended, community benefits. These events are fantastic learning and networking opportunities, but they can’t happen without the support of sponsors.
Our event
- We’ve been running successful local events for over 15 yrs.
- The Twin Cities is an established and engaged Microsoft community
Our next M365 Twin Cities event is on November 11, 2023. Aside from the recent COVID hiatus, we’ve been running successful events since 2008 – covering topics from SharePoint through the range of M365 products and anything that integrates with the platform including Azure, Power Platform, 3rd party products and services, and more.
Our audience includes folks from the Twin Cities metro area and across Minnesota, as well as lots of folks that come from across the upper Midwest and Canada. If you’re from Minnesota, you’re already familiar with the business and organizational landscape here, but it includes a rich variety of Fortune 500 companies, some of the largest private companies (including the largest) in the world, and government folks from all levels.
Pre-COVID we were getting 600-700 registrations (which translate to email reachable folks) and 300-400 onsite. That’s a typical registration drop off, but wonderful attendance. Our first event back post-COVID had not quite 400 registrations and over 200 people on-site. We were content with these numbers as a return event but are working to grow towards our previous numbers – though a lot has obviously changed in the past few years.
People were excited to be back in-person. Our sponsors in January were thrilled to be able to talk to folks again. There was a lot of excitement in the community.
We’re aiming to build on that.
Sponsorship Levels
We’ve got a handful of different sponsorship levels, but we’re mainly aiming for Company Sponsors and Track Sponsors where we can. If these don’t fit, let me know and we can look at other options that might fit.
Take a peek at our sponsor info sheet here.
We’ve got room for 6 5 track sponsors – who also get to present a session as part of that track.
Tracks include: Viva, Teams, AI/Copilot, Power BI, Power Platform, and Development
The best opportunities are face-to-face – being on-site for the actual event, meeting attendees, and talking about your products and services firsthand.
Sponsors have tables set up in a wide-open space where attendees register and food is served – so attendees will know where you are and have reasons to hang around. We’ll also have plenty of time between sessions for you to visit with attendees.
Where does the money go?
Funds from sponsors go primarily to pay for the venue and food costs. The rest of the budget is for various operational expenses (insurance, printing costs, etc.) and thanking our speakers who volunteer their time and expenses to participate (speaker dinner, etc.). We don’t make money doing this.
Other Notes
Our local (‘ish) community is blessed to be large and involved. We have multiple larger events that happen throughout the year and plenty of smaller more niche groups as well. As part of Microsoft’s MGCI effort – we’re working to expand where we can, strengthen where we’re able, and aim to support users at all levels through community events.
If you’d like to talk with organizers and community members, join us for our M365TC #CoffeeCrew meetups that happen more frequently throughout the year. We try to move around the metro area so more people can participate easily. Join our mailing group.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the sponsors we’ve had over the years. Please consider returning this Fall. New folks also very welcome to join the club. 🙂