⚜️ What the hell are you waiting for ?
Free sessions. Free lunch. Porto.
Another CollabDays Portugal is coming… and this time we’re going back to Porto, 16 October 2026, at ANJE.
I’ve been involved in community events for quite a few years now and there is still something about this model that makes me stop and think…
Where else can you simply register, show up in the morning and spend an entire day listening to people who normally speak at some of the biggest Microsoft conferences around the world… talking about Microsoft 365, Azure, AI, Copilot, Power Platform, security, agents and whatever new thing Microsoft decided to release three days before the event 😁 … and pay absolutely nothing for it?
Seriously… some of these speakers travel around the world delivering sessions at major conferences. They are MVPs, architects, developers, consultants, people actually building this stuff and breaking it in production so you don’t have to 😁… and because sponsors help us make the whole thing possible, we can bring them to Portugal, put them in front of you, and basically say… “there you go… ask questions." for free.
Think about it: the same person you’d normally have to pay a small fortune to bring in for a private workshop is now standing in front of you, coffee in hand, happy to argue about your architecture decisions for free. Sponsors pick up the tab specifically so that exchange can happen without a price tag attached to it. There’s no upsell hiding behind the slides, no lead-gen form standing between you and the answer you actually need. You just… ask, and somebody who’s actually been in the trenches answers.
That's a little bit insane when you think about it, no?
Collabdays Portugal is a community event !
It’s not one of those “free events” where someone traps you in a room for eight hours and spends six of them trying to sell you something. The sessions go from practical stuff you can probably use on Monday morning to properly deep technical sessions where at some point you start wondering why you didn’t bring a notebook… and possibly aspirin 😁. The current programme is built around real Microsoft cloud work, from Microsoft 365 and Azure to AI, Copilot, Power Platform, Teams, security and identity, and whatever other corner of the Microsoft cloud someone felt like poking at this year 😁
You’ll find beginner-friendly sessions sitting right next to deep architecture rabbit holes, and nobody judges you for picking either one. Some talks will hand you a script you can copy-paste on Monday morning, others will just quietly change how you think about a problem you’ve been circling for months. There’s no single “track” you’re locked into either, so you can hop between rooms as your interests shift throughout the day. And if a session isn’t landing for you, the hallway conversation happening right outside the door is probably just as good.
… then you have the other bit that, for me, has always been at least as important as the sessions…
People
We bump into a speaker during the coffee break and continue the conversation from the session, you find somebody fighting exactly the same ridiculous problem you’ve been fighting for three months, and someone else turns out to be the person behind a blog post that saved your production environment at 2am. Someone introduces you to somebody else. We complain about licensing together, argue about tabs vs spaces just to keep it interesting, and by the third coffee nobody quite remembers who came with who
… and friendships are born 🤣.
The event is entirely non-profit, run by volunteers who do this because they genuinely enjoy it, not because there’s money in it. Attendance costs nothing, and there’s no catch hiding behind a fake “free” badge waiting to sell you something at the door. Coffee breaks and a proper lunch are provided throughout the day, so nobody’s running on an empty stomach during the afternoon sessions. And yes, there are even giveaways at the end of the day, because apparently free knowledge and free food still weren’t enough 😁.
So let me understand this: you get international speakers, state-of-the-art technical sessions, a full day with the community, endless coffee, a proper lunch, good conversations, brighter ideas, new connections, swag you’ll actually use, a room full of people who don’t need Microsoft jargon explained to them, Porto as the backdrop for the whole thing… and the ticket costs 0€
At this point I genuinely don’t know what else we’re supposed to add…
Maybe someone to pick you up from home? 😁
CollabDays Portugal seats are obviously not infinite, though, and registration is already open !!!
So… what the hell are you waiting for?
Go register. Now !
Worst case scenario … you learn something, meet some very cool people and get a free lunch.
I’ve made considerably worse decisions with a Friday. 🤠
CollabDays Portugal 2026 - Porto Edition
16 October 2026 · ANJE, Porto
Free. Community-driven. In person.