2022 wrap up and looking forward for 2023!

The year 2022 is taking it’s final steps before yielding to 2023. I will be taking some time off to spend quality time with my family and recharging from quite a hectic year. But before I do that, I want to of course have a short summary of the year 2022 and look ahead what 2023 is going to bring to us and to me. I have created myself, finally I should add, a linktree page to easily maintain my all links: https://linktr.ee/vesanopanen. You can use that to easily catch up my various social media and other public information.

Big Thank You to everyone reading, following, referring, sharing, linking or enjoying this blog and / or attending any session or event where I have been speaking, organizing or involved with!
It was also a true pleasure to be able to meet so many people in person throughout this year!

With this post I had written 458 posts to this blog! Cumulative I have over 2 million views!

During 2022 there was a huge number of people I have been working with in the work and in the community. You all rock! Most of everyone I need to shout out for the Metaverse One, Teams Nation and Teams Community Finland crew and friends as Chris Hoard, Adam Deltinger, Chris Webb, Matti Paukkonen, Paul Dredge, Karoliina Kettukari, Marijn Somers, Chiraq Patel, Kevin McDonnell, Zaid Zam, Christian Glessner, Nicole Enders and numerous numerous others.
There are so many people at Microsoft like Jeff Teper, Karuana Gatimu, Laurie Pottmeyer, Jesse McCulloch, Pouneh and everyone else out there – you all matter big time! Thank you for everything during 2022!

One of my favorite Christmas Tree decorations, which I purchased at Kennedy Space Center 2017, when I attended Microsoft Ignite 2017.

My 2022 in numbers

I planned to have perhaps 25 public speaking sessions for my 2022. I failed that miserably. Looking at my history, I counted 45 public speaking occasions for 2022. This includes both community and company speaking’s like events and webinars. This is a bit less than during 2021, where I had 53 public speaking occasions but much more than I intended to have during 2022. I was part of organizing two amazing events: Teams Nation 2022 and Metaverse One 2022.

Sessions and talks in events / communities (in person and virtual)	32
Sessions at in person events	15
Keynote speaker in events	2
Events organized	2
Webinars	13
Blog posts written during 2022	69

What I am really happy about 2022 that this year got me a great opportunities to meet and connect with my friends in the community – and also to co-present together on the stage with them! I was able to speak in person at Microsoft Build, Microsoft Ignite, GITEX, South Coast Summit, Scottish Summit, ESPC, Microsoft 365 Conference, Finnish M365 Conference and many more. I was also part of Modern Work & Security tour & Day in Finland, which was organized by Microsoft Finland.

I think 2022 was the year of the community coming back together – we got to meet face to face in multiple events around the world.

Looking forward for 2023

My year 2023 will be looking filled with the Metaverse. My, so far, first in-person speaking engagement of 2023 will be at the Metaverse Discovery Day on February 23th 2023 at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Other significant event during 2023 will be the Metaverse One 2023, which I am organizing . It is 100% free and 100% community event that is going to be held online on September 20th 2023. Check out site for the first wave of featured speakers. It won’t end to these 14 names, stay tuned during first half of 2023 for lots more what will be happening at #MetaverseOne!

It will be good to Save the Date already in your calendars!

You can (pre)register to Metaverse One 2023 in our Meetup group. The event is 100% Free and 100% Community, so there are no strings attached. Just community and sharing knowledge.

What else my year 2023 will include?

Awesome work with customers, family, speaking in various events (fingers crossed to which ones I get accepted to), , friends and I know I will try to squeeze in time to have some me-time with gaming as well. Compared to my year 2022, I will really try to do a bit less speaking than I did. There needs to be some balance. And of course new (& exisitng) tech and ideas such as Metaverse, Microsoft Teams, Meta Quest Pro and various others are included in my year 2023.

A few collected readings for you:

Four workplace tech trends to watch in 2023

Nicole Herskowitz, Vice President at Microsoft, wrote this article about Four workplace tech trends to watch in 2023. As with my own predictions (below) I find myself fully aligned with her regarding Artificial Intelligence and Metaverse. And I agree fully with the other two trends she pointed out:

Work will become more flexible and inclusive
The role of the office is changing
AI is here
The metaverse is coming to work

I strongly recommend to read her article.

Traveling 2023

Personally I think Booking.com article rings bell for me when I consider travel outside business: I would love to visit the place in advance in the Metaverse (or virtual reality, but Metaverse would surely be even more interesting) to gets more details and visuals where I would want to stay or visit. I also wrote about this already in August 2022, and I hope it takes steps forward during 2023.

Read about Booking.com travel predictions for 2023: https://www.booking.com/articles/travelpredictions2023.html

Microsoft Teams Premium

Of course one big enabler for organizations is Microsoft Teams. They announced Microsoft Teams Premium at Ignite 2022, and now the preview for Premium is available – expected GA will happen during February 2023. You can learn a lot about Microsoft Teams Premium in Tech Community article. Or just watch their video.

Of course I am expecting and hoping that Microsoft Teams will have immersive meetings available during 2023. Fingers crossed that we can use them at Metaverse One 2023 event!

My top three picks for tech and trends for 2023 are

Artificial Intelligence

We will be seeing Artificial Intelligence to continue driving the disruption for various domains. The year 2022 broke this through with ChatGPT, Dall-E, Stable Diffusion for consumer (or visible) side, but the use in enterprises will leap up a few levels. Especially when you consider Cognitive Services or Industrial Metaverse. The usage of speech services / AI voice, language understanding, routine automation and machine learning will be taking big steps forward. AI will be very commonplace.

We are also seeing AI embedded in hybrid meetings and devices. Think intelligent speakers and cameras, auto-framing, smart noise cancellation and image quality enhancers. These features will be much more common during 2023 than before: in software and hardware alike.

Augmented / Mixed Reality

While Virtual Reality has it’s uses, we will be seeing Mixed Reality being used more than before. This depends much on the available devices, but hopefully HoloLens 3 and other Mixed Reality headsets will be announced / published to the market during 2023. Meta Quest Pro has some mixed reality capabilities, but it is up to apps to take use of new tech – on all devices. HoloLens 2 and apps like Dynamics 365 Guides and Teams Integration will be gaining a big time momentum during 2023.

Microsoft Mesh and Metaverse at the office

Microsoft Teams will enable 270+ million monthly users to access immersive meetings and the metaverse easily and securely. Without having to install a new application, create new identity or worry about the security or information governance you can join immersive meetings directly from Microsoft Teams user interface. I have high hopes and fingers crossed that during 2023 we can finally see Microsoft Mesh integration in Teams: Mesh for Teams.

And with that we can also use Meta Quest devices to join Microsoft Teams meetings. Using our favorited Virtual Reality headsets ( Meta Quest Pro for me! ) we can collaborate and meet with out colleagues to innovate and work together crossing physical world boundaries – in a much better way than we do today. And our colleagues without VR headsets can also join us directly from their Teams clients.

And I think that is just the start – Microsoft Mesh platform will enable us to create our own worlds in the future. Is this happening 2023 is the big question. Let’s get Mesh for Teams in first.

2023 – Year of the Metaverse with Microsoft Teams

During 2023 we can make hybrid meetings truly hybrid by connecting physical, digital and online attendees to work together!

It looks very strongly that 2023 will start materializing more Metaverse at work. We have seen already various first steps during 2022, but as tech evolves it becomes mature enough to enter workplaces and expand consumer use as well. No, we don’t see the “One Interconnected Metaverse” yet, but we will be seeing more 3D content in mixed and virtual realities than before. New tech – devices – will also be emerging soon from various vendors. I surely hope that my Meta Quest Pro doesn’t become outdate too soon. The speed of tech (both software and hardware) evolution is not going slow down – but totally opposed. Metaverse will gain momentum and it will disrupt the old during the process.

Tip: Use Viva Insights Quiet Time to silence Microsoft Teams & Outlook

When and if you have a break during holidays, don’t forget to set your Quiet Hours / Days so you don’t get notifications that would break your off-work time. The easiest way to do this is to visit Viva Insights and set Quiet Days. It will take care of those for both Outlook and Teams mobile.

I also have set my mobile to automatically to enter do not disturb mode at evening – and also to enter automatic night/sleep mode for the night. Let’s all get some proper rest!