Why Should You Attend CollabDays Bletchley Park?

There are hundreds of tech events every year. Most of them take place in identical conference centres with identical coffee and identical lanyards. CollabDays Bletchley Park is not one of those events.

This is a free, community-led Microsoft 365 conference held inside Block H at The National Museum of Computing — the world's first purpose-built computer centre, home of Colossus, and the place where electronic computing began. You'll attend sessions on Copilot, SharePoint, Teams, Azure, Fabric, and the Power Platform while standing metres from the machines that cracked the Enigma cipher and helped shorten a world war. There is simply no other event like it.

But the venue, as extraordinary as it is, isn't the only reason to attend. Here's why CollabDays Bletchley Park deserves a day out of your calendar.

Learn from the people who actually do the work

Every session at CollabDays Bletchley Park is delivered by a Microsoft MVP, a Microsoft Certified Trainer, a Microsoft employee, or a recognised industry expert — people who work with Microsoft 365 technology every single day, not just talk about it on stage. These are consultants who've migrated entire organisations to the cloud, architects who've designed governance frameworks for multinational companies, and developers who've built Power Platform solutions that replaced legacy systems overnight.

They're not here to sell you anything. They're volunteers who've travelled — often at their own expense — because they genuinely want to share what they've learned. That means you get honest, practical, unfiltered insight: what works, what doesn't, what Microsoft says versus what actually happens in production, and what you should be paying attention to next.

You won't find that level of candour at a vendor conference.

Take real ideas back to work

This isn't an event where you sit through three hours of roadmap slides and leave with nothing actionable. CollabDays Bletchley Park is built around practical content — sessions designed to give you something you can use on Monday morning.

Whether you're responsible for IT strategy, delivering solutions, or using Microsoft 365 day to day, you'll gain direct insight into how organisations are using the platform and AI to improve productivity, strengthen collaboration, reduce complexity, and deliver real business value. Expect sessions on Copilot readiness and adoption, SharePoint governance and storage optimisation, Teams administration and extensibility, Power Platform solutions for real business problems, data security with Microsoft Purview, Azure integration patterns, and Microsoft Fabric for analytics — all grounded in real-world experience, not theory.

The conversations between sessions are just as valuable. Breaks happen inside the museum, surrounded by computing history from the 1940s to the 1990s, and they're where some of the best learning takes place — comparing approaches with peers, asking speakers follow-up questions, and discovering that someone three rows behind you solved the exact problem you're facing.

2026 is a milestone year

CollabDays Bletchley Park 2026 carries extra significance. This year marks 25 years of SharePoint, 25 years of Windows XP, 40 years of the personal computing revolution, and 50 years of Apple. These aren't just anniversaries — they're milestones that trace the arc from the machines preserved in this museum to the tools we use every day.

There's something powerful about reflecting on that journey while standing in the building where it arguably started. Colossus was operational in this very room in 1944. Eighty-two years later, we're discussing how AI copilots can draft your board papers. The distance between those two realities is both humbling and exhilarating, and there's no better place to feel it than Block H.

It's completely free — and every penny goes to charity

CollabDays Bletchley Park is free to attend. No ticket fee, no hidden costs, no premium tier. Registration, sessions, lunch, refreshments, and full access to the museum are all included.

The event is funded entirely by corporate sponsors, and here's what makes the model genuinely special: every penny of sponsorship goes directly to The National Museum of Computing, an independent charity that preserves and maintains the world's largest collection of working historic computers. The organisers and speakers volunteer their time and cover their own expenses.

By attending, you're not just investing a day in your professional development. You're supporting the preservation of computing heritage — including Colossus, the Turing-Welchman Bombe, Enigma machines, the Lorenz cipher equipment, and the WITCH, the world's oldest functioning programmable digital computer. Your presence helps keep these irreplaceable artefacts alive for future generations.

Network with people who understand your challenges

One of the quiet strengths of CollabDays Bletchley Park is the quality of the people in the room. With around 200 attendees — a mix of IT professionals, consultants, architects, developers, project managers, and business decision-makers — it's large enough to offer diverse perspectives but small enough that you can actually have meaningful conversations.

There's no VIP section. The MVP who just presented on Copilot governance is standing next to you at the coffee table, happy to answer your questions. The Microsoft employee who demoed a new Teams feature is browsing the Enigma exhibit during the break. The consultant who described migrating 50,000 mailboxes is comparing notes with you over lunch.

These connections — between people facing the same challenges, working with the same tools, and trying to deliver the same outcomes — are where lasting professional value is created. Many attendees return year after year not just for the sessions, but for the community.

Experience a venue that makes you think differently

There is a reason this event keeps coming back to Bletchley Park, and it's not just because the building is beautiful (though it is). There's something about presenting and attending sessions on modern technology in a room full of machines that changed the course of history that recalibrates your perspective.

During World War II, nearly 9,000 people worked at Bletchley Park — 75% of them women — in one of the greatest collaborative efforts in human history. Mathematicians, linguists, engineers, and administrative staff came together across disciplines to crack codes that were considered unbreakable. The result shortened the war by an estimated two years and gave birth to electronic computing.

That same estate hosted the UK Government's AI Safety Summit in 2023, where 28 countries signed the Bletchley Declaration on AI governance. The thread connecting wartime codebreaking, the birth of computing, and the governance of artificial intelligence runs directly through this site.

For a conference about collaboration technology, there is no more resonant venue on Earth. And between sessions, you're free to explore it all — the rebuilt Colossus, the working Bombe, the Enigma machines, and galleries spanning eight decades of computing history. It's a museum visit and a professional development day rolled into one.

First-timers are genuinely welcome

If you've never been to a tech community event before, CollabDays Bletchley Park is an ideal place to start. The atmosphere is warm, approachable, and deliberately non-intimidating. There's a dedicated first-time speakers track for those testing the waters of public speaking, and the broader community actively champions newcomers.

Nobody will judge you for asking a basic question. Nobody expects you to know everything. The whole point of a community event is that we learn together — and some of the most valuable conversations happen when someone has the courage to say, "I don't understand this yet. Can you help?"

If you've been thinking about attending a Microsoft 365 community event but haven't quite made the leap, this is your sign.

What you'll walk away with

After a day at CollabDays Bletchley Park, you'll leave with:

Practical knowledge you can apply immediately — specific techniques, configurations, governance approaches, and strategies that speakers have tested in real organisations.

A clearer picture of the Microsoft 365 roadmap — not just what's coming, but what it means for your environment and how to prepare for it.

Honest answers to the questions you can't easily ask at a vendor event — the trade-offs, the gotchas, the things that look great in a demo but fall apart at scale.

A professional network of peers, experts, and potential collaborators who understand your world and are genuinely willing to help.

Renewed energy and perspective — there's something about stepping away from the day job, immersing yourself in new ideas, and spending a day among people who care deeply about the same technology that recharges your professional batteries.

A deeper appreciation for where computing came from — and a story or two about Colossus, the Bombe, and the extraordinary people who worked in the very building where you spent your day.

Register now

CollabDays Bletchley Park is free, but places are limited. Registration is handled through the run.events platform — visit collabdays.org for the latest details, the full session schedule, and the registration link.

Come for the sessions. Stay for the museum. Leave with ideas that make a difference.

We'll see you at Block H.