{"id":1360,"date":"2021-08-23T00:06:59","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T06:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/?p=1360"},"modified":"2021-08-23T09:23:58","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T15:23:58","slug":"sps-events-shutting-down-events-will-continue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/2021\/sps-events-shutting-down-events-will-continue\/","title":{"rendered":"SPS Events Shutting Down&hellip;  Events WILL Continue"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Overview<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>SPS Events, the organization behind many SharePoint Saturdays, is coming to an end<\/li>\n<li>The events, however, will continue \u2013 as \u201cSharePoint Saturdays\u201d or under new and evolving names (like ours, see below)&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Details<\/h2>\n<p>Last week &#8211; Friday August 20th, 2021 \u2013 the SPS Events crew posted announcements on their Facebook page and web site that the SPS Events entity as we know it will be shutting down this coming Fall. Check out the details here:&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/116019685496\/permalink\/10165925206835497\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook post<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spsevents.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SPS Events site<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This is certainly the end of an era \u2013 the end of an amazing legacy built and managed by awesome people. Eric Harlan, Susan Lennon, and a ton of folks and organizations behind and alongside them created a community like no other.<\/p>\n<p>SPS Events did a LOT, but two things for me stood out:<\/p>\n<p>They maintained a \u201cmaster schedule\u201d for our community of events. This was, and is, hugely important and useful. It helped with visibility to folks in a city, in a region, in a geography to find local events. It helped speakers and vendors with locating events outside of their usual regions. It also helped prevent overlaps and confusion in some cases. All of this was good for the community. I\u2019m not sure where this master schedule will be maintained going forward. With SPS events alone this was a pretty big list. Now with SharePoint Saturdays evolving (as we are) to different names, to physical events, virtual events, hybrid events, etc. it seems like a challenge without an owner at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>They also provided a platform, a framework, and support for new and smaller events to get a foothold when they needed it. This is such an important part of our community. Helping new folks, new speakers, new organizers, etc. across the board where and when we can is a cornerstone of what we do. I\u2019ve never seen it in any community \u2013 technical or otherwise \u2013 as much as I have in our SharePoint, Office, Microsoft community.<\/p>\n<p>There will likely be a lot of chatter and reminiscing about SPS Events this week. A lot of us have \u201cgrown up\u201d through this community, found our paths, built careers, and so much more. A huge thanks to Eric, Susan, and all who have been and continue to be a part of this community. I count myself lucky to be a small part of it in our little corner of the world.<\/p>\n<h2>SPSTC \u2013&gt; M365TC<\/h2>\n<p>We\u2019ve already had folks reach out and want to get ahead of the rest of it\u2026 <strong>We aren\u2019t going away.<\/strong> Our local organization here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, the Upper Midwest \u2013 is still here. As we mentioned a few months ago, we\u2019re in the midst of renaming and rebranding. That rebranding effort will continue and we do plan on returning to events as you\u2019ve known them as soon as is practical with the pandemic and all the repercussions of it.<\/p>\n<h3>Latest on events<\/h3>\n<p>I\u2019ve been holding out hope for a Fall\/Winter event in 2021, but between COVID\u2019s Delta variant and venue limitations, an event similar to what we normally do twice a year is not looking likely this year. Normandale is closed to events through 2021. My interpretation of this is that we will look to early 2022 for a bigger event \u2013 with all the usual \u201cit depends\u201d that comes with pandemic details. We might look at doing some smaller events in the meantime, but that is very TBD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Overview SPS Events, the organization behind many SharePoint Saturdays, is coming to an end The events, however, will continue \u2013 as \u201cSharePoint Saturdays\u201d or under new and evolving names (like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sharepoint-saturday"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgWQ1-lW","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/SPS-Twin-cities.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1364,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1360\/revisions\/1364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}