After the Lightning Talks in May we're back with two full sessions in July.  We're looking forward to seeing you all there.

The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence

We're welcoming Gaving Payne for out first talk.  Gavin is the head of digital transformation for Coeo, an analytics and data platform consultancy, where he focusses on innovation and providing thought leadership.

These days, artificial intelligence is always in the news and on technology roadmaps, yet the idea of it is older than modern computing. So why the increased interest in it? Why has it suddenly become the next big thing and how should we expect it to make decision making easier?

This session:

• starts by looking at the history of modern AI, back to when Alan Turing first dreamed of machines
• considers why new data storage and processor hardware technologies are letting it take off
• suggests how it might shape the future of business analytics and the world we live in

Group vs Teams

Our second talk this month comes from Alan Eardley.  Alan is a solution architect at CPS (Corporate Project Solutions) with over 20 years' experience with Microsoft products and the design and implementation of web-based solutions.  Alan has a broad range of experience of collaboration, project management, development and data and reporting working with commercial and public sector clients to apply Office 365 and Azure technology to business challenges with a focus on the adoption of the solution. Alan's passion is trying to stay on top of the continuous stream of new and improved tools and technologies that are coming from Office 365 and Azure.

Microsoft have provided some great tools to enable us to collaborate in Office 365. We can use calendars, files, distribution lists, Skype, files … the list keeps growing.

With the release of Teams, we have a new way to work with these different tools.

In this presentation I will compare and contrast the capabilities of Office 365 Groups and Teams, and even some of the capabilities found in more traditional SharePoint team sites.

You will learn what the differences are, what the benefits are and even what some of the teething pains are, and be enabled to choose the most appropriate tool for your teams to use.