While waiting for the opening keynote at the M365 Community Days, the man beside me turned and said, "Hi." "Do I know you," I asked. "You look familiar." We had worked together fifteen years ago, and he was a fan of my show. These are the interactions one has at community events like this one held Saturday in downtown Chicago. I miss the days when we had many technical community events from which to choose, so I was happy to assist the volunteers in hosting the M365 Community Days in Chicago on July 20.

This event grew out of SharePoint Saturday - a conference held worldwide before the pandemic. Dozens of attendees decided to forego a beautiful Saturday in Chicago and spend the day indoors. Speakers arrived from all over the world, including Singapore, Alaska, England, and India - many of them at their own expense.000

Adam Hecktman kicked off the day with a talk titled "AI for Good," which highlighted ways that Artificial Intelligence is making the world a better place.

Ashish Rana gave a presentation titled "Build and Extend AI-powered Copilots with Copilot Studio," giving an overview of Copilot Studio. I heard a lot of useful information, but I hoped to see a demo.

In his session "How to Fake Being an AI Expert: An Evil Consultant's Guide to AI," Hugo Bernier pretended to be his evil twin, Oguh Reinreb, who gave bad advice about implementing and using AI. He did so to highlight the best ways of using this technology.

Heather Cook closed with her keynote presentation, "Delivering Business Value, Trust and User Satisfaction in the Era of AI." She talked about how AI is changing the world and how to use AI to your advantage. She invited Tammy McMiller, co-founder and CEO of Plan Heal, a startup that uses AI to predict health risks, onto the stage. Tammy told us about her company and how Microsoft for startups is helping them. She demoed a chatbot her company developed to collect relevant symptoms from a patient.

With Fourteen tracks, I worried that the crowd would be spread so thin that some sessions might attract no attendees, but this was not the case. I enjoyed learning something new and interacting with folks in the tech community.

Just like the old days.