Microsoft Teams can be used for large scale events. We did an event with 22 concurrent Live Events with 50 producers and 355 speakers for 416 sessions. With an audience over 10,000... we couldn't be happier. In this session we look at Microsoft Teams as a case study and talk about what went well and how to navigate some of the challenges.

1. MICROSOFT 365
Virtual MARATHON
May 27 & 28, 2020
36 hours / 2 days
Producing Live Events with Microsoft Teams:
MICROSOFT 365 VIRTUAL MARATHON
How we did it and you can do it too!
Broughtto youby:
TheGlobalMicrosoft Community
M365VirtualMarathon.com| #M365VM

2.  Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon
 How we did it and How it went Metrics
 Producing Live Events
 Live Event Architecture
 Q & A
Agenda

3. Live event architecture
Cloud delivery
Azure Media Services
Content Delivery Network
Network delivery
(3rd party eCDN)
Produce using app/device
Producer
RTMP Device
Schedule
Organize
Organizer
Presenter nPresenter 1
Produce using Teams
Presenter(s)
Going Live
Produce
Producer
Watch on desktop, web, mobile
View
Watch
Audience

4. Core Team: Executive Producer Organizers

5. Language Track Leads
French – Patrick & Serge
Korean - OliviaPortuguese - Rodrigo
Japanese - Ai
Spanish – Juan & Vladimir
German - Hans

6. Teams Live Events - Service Limits
 Audience Size - Up to 20,000 attendees (all services)
 Recommended: Contact the Live Assistance Support
team at least five (5) days before to set up live event
 Maximum event duration – 16 hours
 Number of concurrent events across a tenant – 50
 Audience Size – 10,000 attendees
 Maximum event duration – 4 hours
 Number of concurrent events across a tenant - 15
Teams Limits as Stated
(Before COVID19)
Temporary raise in limits
(During COVID)
Live Assistance Support:
https://resources.techcommunity.microsoft.com/live-events/assistance/

7. Goals and Values A true community event by the
community for the community
An inclusive event where
anyone who desires to speak
can speak
An exclusive event that anyone
at Microsoft would want to
speak or feel left out
Accessible & Global far
reaching embracing
differences language based
“Microsoft Communities”
around the world
Technology showcase,
Microsoft desires involvement
as a prime event for
announcements

8. 5
#M365VM Session Stats
 415 Sessions from 355 Speakers
 Microsoft Keynote ever 4 hours
 Session breakouts for 3 hours following
 50 Minute sessions with 10 min break
78
71 66 61
42
9 5
SESSION
Audience Session
Breakdown
Business Admin Dev Power User
End User Exec Diversity

9. Technology Stack
Attendee RegistrationEventbrite
Speaker Management & SchedulingSessionize
Event site, Speaker bio, Schedule, click to joinGitHub Pages
Marketing Community outreachTwitter, FB, LI & SPSEvents
Session Delivery PlatformTeams Live Events
Ask the Experts, Vendor Booths, Backup of failed Live sessionTeams Meetings
Feedback SurveysMicrosoft Forms
Twitter Sentiment and ReachtyGraph
Community ZoneAltSpaceVR

10. DEMO GitHub Pages – M365VM Site
 Demo by Ryan Schouten

11. https://bit.ly/m365Marathon

12. Attendees
 12,774 attendees
 115 different countries

13. M365VM Roles
Organizer
•Sets up the event, sets Live or Meeting & Configures event options & manages reports
Executive Producers
•Technical production focus on ensuring all Rooms are started, stay “Live,” producers are present, presenters start on time
•Fill producer gaps ensuring speakers have shared presentation and will self start on time.
•Close out sessions, fill some Q&A where requested
Track Owners
•Track ownership. Coordination with Executive Producers with ability to manage producers and speakers.
• Ensure cohesive and smooth production, producers are lined up with speakers. Strong dual leadership for foreign tracks
Producers
•Coordinate with Speakers PreLive, Show Producer Slides & PreLive information, Play Music & Intros and Provide “MC” Mediated Q&A
•Chat with Speaker and ensure audio, video, and desktop or other sharing
•Troubleshoot and provide error response as needed
•Session Cancelled | Choose another session
•Technical Difficulty | Please Wait
•Session will return/Please be Patient | Waiting for Speaker
Speakers
•Experts. Presents audio, video, or a screen to the live event, or moderates Q&A.
Attendee
•Watches the event live or on-demand, either anonymously or authenticated, mobile or desktop
•Can participate in Q&A

14. How We did it… ROLES
 Executive Producers: Ryan, Galen, and Joel
 Each Executive Producer connects each laptop to 4 different Live Events
 Focus on gaps, chat and ensuring “start” and ongoing “live” status across all sessions.
 22 Sessions Simultaneous| 14 English | 2 Japanese | 2 French | 2 Spanish | 1 Korean | 1 German | 1 Portuguese
 Each Executive Producer connects each laptop to 4 different Live Events, 10 additional virtual producers simply
connect and keep rooms “open”

15. Producers
 5 Exec Producers
 50 Producers
 5 Producers did 9 sessions (11 hours!)
32%
68%
Producing Sessions
Organizer Producer

16. How we did… M365VirtualMarathon.com Site Stats (Azure Site)
M365VM Stats
Registered Attendees 12,750
Teams Events Attendance Views 31,701
Users on Web Page 26,894
Speakers 350
Sessions 410
Languages 7

17. Total Views Teams Attendance Report
Session Views (first full block) Attendee Views
VM 1-1 1235
VM 2-1 935
VM 3-1 837
VM 4-1 780
VM 5-1 417
VM 6-1 931
VM 7-1 610
VM 8-1 1103
VM 9-1 246
VM 10-1 1016
VM 11-1 430
VM 12-1 720
VM 13-1 458
VM 14-1 1125
French 675
Japanese 1 & 2 1189 & 567 / 2463 Overall
Portuguese 107
German 145
Spanish 1 & 2 221 & 71 / 486 Overall
Korean 220
Total Teams Attendee Views 31,701

18. DEMO M365VM - Producer Experience & Guides –
 Discussion by Galen Keene

19. How we did it… English ES FR
ES
PT
KRJPN
FRPTGE
ES FRPT

20. May 27

21. May 28

22. Teams Meetings and Teams Live Events
Teams Meetings
Think rich, interactive, impromptu or reoccurring, simple
 Good for small to medium group conversations
 Good for impromptu meet now
 Max 250 attendees (plans to increase)
 Great for video. Attendees control audio and video
 Record to Stream
Teams Live Events
Think webinar, broadcast, structured and scale up
 Live large scale video “webinar” style solution for the enterprise
 Role based: Organizer, Producer, Speaker, Attendee
 Connects thousands of participants
 Browser or Mobile App
 Meant for one-to-many communications
 Video and interactive discussions across Teams, Stream, or Yammer

23.  Broadcasts are fantastic for Executive engagement.
 Easily scale up to 20K
 Easily reach audiences with updates and training
 Powerful AI features
 auto-transcription
 closed captions
 Facial recognition
 Speaker recognition
 in-video search
Attractive Live Event Features
Broughtto youby
M365Conf.com| #M365CONF

24. Attendee Experience:

25. Teams Admin Center – Live Event Policies

26. Supported Platform
Desktop Web Mobile
Producer Yes No No
Presenter Yes No No
Attendee Yes Yes Yes (Mobile Authenticated only)
 Teams and Skype Room Systems and Surface Hubs can only support live event presenters.
 Mobile will turn any other roles into attendees
 PC and MAC no problem. Android and iOS in mobile app for attendees. Linux isn't supported for live events.

27. Only Producers or Teams Admins can download the files including recording, Q&A, Attendee
engagement, and localized translation for stream.
These files all have the same name so be aware when downloading you’ll need to rename them.
Note: Recordings are currently not saved in Microsoft Stream. Need to download from meeting details
and upload manually.
Live Event Recording and Reports

28. FEEDBACK

29. Guest Challenges
1) The Guest account created for the presenter or the presenter’s guest account must be added to
at least to one team in the tenant hosting the live event
2) The Guest user MUST BE CONNECTED to the tenant of the event in their Teams client *before*
they click the link to join.
(If you try to connect from your Teams Calendar in your own tenant it will fail because you don’t
have a Teams calendar as a Guest)
Allowing guest users as presenters in a Teams Live event (5/27)

30. Live Event END is Permanent
There is no ability to restart a Live event that has ended.
 If a producer Starts an Event and doesn’t realize there is another event in the same room and clicks
END it will end Forever.
 If you START a Live Meeting as a producer and leave and later come back to it the event will time out
and automatically END the meeting. There needs to be at least one producer or speaker to keep the
room/event “alive.” Attendee count does not matter for live events ending.
 We had an unfortunate performance issue which knocked out the speaker and producer and the
event crashed. It ended it for all users. This rare occurrence reinforces the need to keep multiple
speakers and producers in events.

31. Lesson Learned
 Clicking END too final
 Pre and Post Live experience is very poor for users
 Staging experience for speaker 2 is poor. It looks like you can stage content, but it goes live.
 Need easier backchannel conversations and queueing / for second speaker ability to talk to them.
 Need scripting or PowerShell/Graph APIs for creation and management of live events
 Speakers/producers need accurate Attendee and attendance info during event
 Chat – yes people want attendee chat option.
 Attendance Reports & Recordings – difficult to work with the recordings files to split them and to download them (all
have the same name). Very manual process to download, crop and upload.
 Need ability to share files to attendees like slide deck, handouts and even recording
 Comment sentiment from producers to exec producer

32. Questions: Contact Us
 Jeff Willinger – Jeffwillinger@outlook.com
 Joel Oleson – Joel.Oleson@perficient.com
 Ryan Schouten – Ryan@sharepointknight.com
 Galen Keene – galen.keene@butterflytech.net

33. Virtual Community
Launch Party
Aug 27

34. Choose Your Own Adventure
Music
DJ Joey Snow
Summertime Mix
Music of Keith Richey
Talk
Lightning
Talks
Panels
Geek Out
Cosplay
Trivia

35. SharePoint spaces 3D/360 Launch Party Lobby
There’s always something fun going on!

36. Cosplay:
Jana & Joy
Portuguese Host:
Rodrigo
Community Zone:
Jeff Willinger
Spanish Host:
Haaron
French Host:
Serge
DJ & Trivia Master:
Maarten Visser
Future Lightning Talks & Panels
Christian Buckley
Live Event Production:
Joel, Galen & Ryan
Party
Central
0
1
3
3
2
Arabic Host:
Mai & Ahmed
Hindi/Urdu Host:
Adnan