Microsoft Charity Trivia Night Thursday 9^th August 2018

Microsoft Office Level 28 400 George St, Brisbane

Timing:  From 6.00pm & Closes 8.30pm

The Microsoft Brisbane Branch is running an End of Year charity event supporting cancer research QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute. The event will be trivia night, with raffles and prizes. Microsoft has committed to matching all monies raised. The event is open to Microsoft staff and general Public.

SCHEDULE:

Arrive, socialise, drinks and food – 6:00pm-6:30pm

Trivia: 6:30pm-7:30pm

Break: 7:30pm-7:45pm

Trivia: 7:45pm-8:15pm

Close – prizes: 8:15pm-8:30pm

DETAILS:

A small donation will be required to attend the event. This will cover entry, food, and trivia entry (please advise any dietary requirements asap). Trivia teams will be created on the night.

A small donation for alcohol will also be required.

REGISTRATION:

Please register HERE

CHARITY DETAILS:

QIMR Berghofer is one of Australia’s most successful medical research institutes. QIMR Berghofer is focused on improving health by developing new diagnostics, better treatments and prevention strategies, specifically in the areas of cancer, infectious diseases, mental health and complex disorders.

Map

Find it on Maps here

SPONSORS:

Enquires for corporate donations should be directed towards Aaron Whittaker awhitt@microsoft.com

Should you have any additional requirements/queries regarding the event, please contact Aaron Whittaker.

For any questions or lift access for late entries, please contact:

Aaron Whittaker – 0490074501

Meli Kaplan – 0404 805 724

We look forward to seeing you.

Regards, Aaron

 

Precision Agriculture

As the population increases the amount of arable land is not going to keep up at the same rate.

Does anyone ever consider where their food comes from, what it takes to grow, or the technology behind the new age farmer?

There is now large farm equipment such as tractors that cannot be serviced without a laptop with propriety connector cables and customised software for diagnosing. This can tie the farmer to a particular tractor company for the life of the product. Farmers need to service their own equipment as they have done for generations. Recently farmers have even resorted to running hacked Russian firmware just to service and run their Tractors and other equipment. Who owns the software on the tractors on board computer to keep it running? A recent exemption to the Digital Millennium act made it legal for farmers to hack their tractors solely for the purpose of repair. Microsoft and Apple were both in attendance at a recent hearing in Nebraska to understand a ruling on this very question. Why would Microsoft and Apple care if a farmer in Nebraska can service and repair their own tractor? Because it would affect all tech companies, not just John Deere. A right to repair.

What is the impact of GPS.

Precision technology such as GPS and Internet of Things (IoT) helps lower the total price goods of which most consumers are oblivious to. Recently during a meeting with local farmer Mark Williams I wanted to understand the impact of technology within his business. All of the measurements on the right can be done right from 1 screen without having to exist the cabin of his harvester. Traditional manual ways of obtaining these measurements results resulted in down time/outages. He stated that a GPS on a tractor/harvester saves on average 10 laps of a paddock from unnecessary over laps. This adds up to thousands of dollars in savings of wasted products, seed and diesel. A farmer may work a paddock 4 or 5 times each year, that is 40-50 laps saved per paddock per year.

How accurate is GPS?

When a farmer sows a crop, the GPS keeps the tractor unbelievably straight. The next year the GPS will be able to remember exactly to the cm where the machine was and what it did last year and move each row over exactly 4 or 8 cms to ensure that you are not planting a seed directly where a seed grew the year before. This technology has mind boggling accuracy with significant yield increases! This is incredibly powerful. A harvester may spend 40% of its life harvesting at night time in the dark, this is now easier and more efficient thanks to GPS, saving on fuel and wear and tear.

Farmers Edge is partnering with Microsoft’s Azure IoT to monitor moisture content across a farmer’s land. Understanding specific weather patterns via a weather network and the different micro-climates to measure heat, wind direction, rain, and other metrics. This will help ensure that correct amount of fertilizer/spray is used in each region of the land and paddocks.

As the world’s population continues to grow this and other technology will be very important to ensure there are ample crops.

Mark also stated that he has previously used weather modelling tools that show yield but this requires manual entries. Previous to this Mark recorded everything manually. Mark is currently assessing what IoT could do for his farm to digitize and increase yields while saving costs. To learn what you and your customers can do with precision farming to increase your yields with Azure IoT click here.

Aaron Whittaker @aaronw2003

Reproduction of this content is unauthorized without prior approval

Introduction into Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with Microsoft Azure

Here is a break down of the essentials needed to plan and implement your solutions on @Microsoft Azure IaaS. This 7-minute intro covers compute, virtual machines, containers, networking, storage and management options including Azure Site Recovery (ASR) and Security Center in Microsoft Azure. Presented by Global Black Belt in Azure Stack Matt McSpirit

What is Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin, COs, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency?

Tonight I was lucky enough to attend a Bitcoin/Etherium user group in Sydney with the following people on the panel:

Craig Wright- an Australian computer scientist, businessman that challenges the world with visionary ideas. Speculation remains that he is Satoshi Nakamoto (the creator of Bitcoin).

Lasunka Perera- 10 years’ experience in financial markets as a trader, investor, advisor, and media commentator.

Tobias Abbey – investor in cryptocurrency projects, including seed and pre-sale stages background in derivatives trading and financial markets.

Tobias fisc investor. Ico. why do you need a token.

Bok Khoo – quantitive software developer specialising in Ethereum.

Robert Allen – PWC payments and fintech consulting practise in Australia with responsibility for advisory servers in both traditional payments systems and emerging technologies.

Robert gave us a great introduction to Bitcoin and Blockchain for all newbies in the room.

Craig first started with a basic answer to the simple question, describe how Bitcoins works. You can see his response to this question here. He also touched on the potential for compromising coins. Craig is not interested in alternative coins. Craig says his development group is now patenting ideas to help Bitcoin stand out from the crowd rather than providing open source code. Craig is not interested in funding for further developments and says that they have plenty of funds.

Craig made some great points responding to the question, Why is Bitcoin better than fiat and gold? Gold standards are manually manipulated, inaccurate, only 20% of all owned gold is actually physically real, Gold was historically used to settle debt, and thus a store of value follows. Fractional reserve banking system is broken. To ensure less risk you can peg a currency on colored coins. Craig then touched on Bitcoin cash and proof of stake, free and low cost transaction. Bitcoin trade costs were built on the Coke model. The public make very small amounts of profits over high volumes. International trade with all countries including financial inclusions will increase prosperity in poorer countries. They are currently prevented from international trade.

Craig said that he went through the motions of trade 10 million pounds to USD and the trade costs $10. Bitcoin is not for rich people. Rich people have a means to send vast sums of fiat money with low risk internationally. The general public however can expect to pay $10 to send just 200 pounds. Bitcoin allows Inclusive finance for general public and people from low income countries.

House insurance can be turned on its head, smart contracts could be used to buy a house. People can buy 100 shares in each house instead of 1000 shares (100%) to reduce their risk.

Craig says that we stopped teaching good mathematics and computer science skills 20 years ago.

Bitcoin is not a mesh.

One day Bitcoin could handle 1 million transactions per second, it has been tested in a private lab. Constraints on blockstream satellite transactions on Philippines sim cards include: It is very easy to sensor, satellite blockers only cost $50 and they can block these transactions.

To avoid any censorship we can use sms or Twitter as plumbing for Bitcoin transactions.

Now that we can use IPv6, we can Cryptographically assign addresses that periodically change; it is now near impossible to ddos. Craig says attack attempts would now millions of years.

Lasanka spoke about some of his investing tips including taxation considerations.

Tobias spoke about the various platforms ICO’s are avaliable on and some of the technics that he has used to invest, and buy and dump.

Bok said he was impressed by the many use cases for smart contracts based on the Etheruem platform. The many ICO’s allow ideas to be funded. Bok’s greatest lesson learned so far, on reddit there is an Ethereum thread they were arguing in 2015 and they are still arguing now (joke).

See Craig’s closing remarks on Bitcoin development critisim here.

You can also watch the full session here.

If you have enjoyed this content, please send me a few Satoshi’s to show your appreciation BTC 1BqRBxkdpSRPtbKWF2WqkpWg8y78r294VU

   Aaron @aaronw   

Microsoft Brisbane loves User Groups

Here in the Microsoft Brisbane office each week there is usually at least one User Group that you can attend. Sometimes two are on at the same time. The topics and subjects are varied.

Power BI – enable you transform data into rich visualizations. They focus primarily on Microsoft Power BI and other related Data Analytics technologies.

CRM – Topics focus on Microsoft Dynamics365 business, technical and end user. We also love discussing the latest industry news and exciting new trends. (Great food at this one!)

QLD ALM – Application Lifecycle Management, Microsoft Visual Studio and its associated products, technologies and practices

C# Mobile Developers – For those of you with Xamarin Studio, or Visual Studio with Xamarin and are building for iOS/Android/Windows mobile/Watches/HoloLens stories.

Brisbane Infrastructure Group – The original and biggest (members) user group in Brisbane.

Brisbane Cloud User Group – My user group, focusing on all things Microsoft Cloud.

Azure User Group – This user group has more of a developer focus.

.Net User Group – Focused around software development in the Microsoft space.

SQL User Group – Users of Microsoft SQL Server dedicated to sharing knowledge with each other

Office 365 User Group – The group aims to share Office 365 + EMS knowledge and best practice in an open and supportive environment.

Women in IT – A passionate group building the next generation of Digital leaders in Entrepreneurship, Digital Marketing, Design, Strategy and Technology.

Now, I know I missed a few, you can find even more here.

If you would like to sponsor, present or attend, please reach out at the above links. If you have any trouble, please DM myself.

Some of these user groups even have special all day events. These varied User Groups are exciting for the IT community. Most of these groups are free and appreciate the support from Microsoft at all levels, theaters, catering, but most importantly great guest speakers from time to time.

See you at the next User Group…

Aaron Whittaker @aaronw2003

 

Making your Azure Virtual Machines go faster

Everyone always wants everything to go faster. More RAM (Memory) and more CPU.

There are two simple ways to do this with an Azure Virtual Machine. Simply select your VM in the Azure portal

And adjust the size up/down. If the desired new VM size is supported on the current hardware cluster hosting the VM, then the resize operation is a simple reboot operation.

More information on this can be found here.

The same can also be done via PowerShell

Stop-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName RGName -Name VMName -force # we need to stop VM for all list all available options

$vm = Get-AzureRmVM -Name VMName -ResourceGroupName RGName

$vm.HardwareProfile.VmSize = “Standard_D1_V2” # specific the VM size needed

Update-AzureRmVM -VM $vm -ResourceGroupName RGName

Start-AzureRmVM -ResourceGroupName RGName -Name VMName # start the VM if needed

Aaron Whittaker @aaronw2003

Largest FREE Microsoft eBook Giveaway!

Microsoft Director of Sales Excellence – Eric Ligman has just announced the Largest Free Microsoft Ebook Giveaway.

This is exciting news, the topics include Windows 10, Office 365, Office 2016, Power BI, Azure, Windows 8.1, Office 2013, SharePoint 2016, SharePoint 2013, Dynamics CRM, PowerShell, Exchange Server, System Center, Cloud, SQL Server and more!

1. How many can you download? ANSWER: As many as you want! This is a FREE eBook giveaway, so please download as many as interest you.
2. Wow, there are a LOT listed here. Is there a way to download all of them at once? ANSWER: Yes, please see the note below on how to do this.
3. Can I share a link to your post to let others know about this giveaway? ANSWER: Yes, please do share the good news with anyone you feel could benefit from this.
4. I know you said they are Free but whats the catch? ANSWER: There is no catch. They really are FREE. This consider it a, Thank you,for being a customer or partner of Microsoft.
5. Ok, so if they are free and you’re encouraging us to share this with others, can I post a link to your post here on sites like Reddit, FatWallet, and other deal share sites to let them know, or is that asking too much? ANSWER: Please do. In fact, I would encourage you to share a link to this post on any deal site you feel their users could benefit from the FREE eBooks and resources included below. Again, I WANT to give away MILLIONS of FREE eBooks!
6. Are these time-bombed versions of the eBooks that stop working after a certain amount of time or reads? ANSWER: No, these are the full resources for you to use.

These are available in multiple formats, for more details and downloads please check here.

Happy Reading.

Aaron Whittaker @aaronw2003

Source

Democratic Movement towards Blockchain political voting

** Not a political ad or sponsorship, but rather an interesting look at real world uses of Block-chain technology.

Part 2 of a 2 part series.

Click here to read part 1 first

Now to drill into the item which I see huge potential in.

Imagine a political party with no policies on Education, Taxes, Health, or anything else. Sounds crazy, right? So crazy that it just might work. No potential in-fighting.

The Flux voting system has been around for 18 months. The Flux Party is attempting to win enough seats at federal and state levels in Australia enabling voters to directly influence the outcome of legislation that affects them, through the Flux app that has been built based on the block-chain.

How does it work, once a Flux member is voted into parliament?

All registered voters of that region/electorate which the Flux member represents are able to download the voting app. Even if the public didn’t vote for a Flux member, if they are in the electorate they still have a right to vote through the App to influence the decision of the FLUX member when they are in Parliament. All sorts of policies and bills will be summarised to enable the public to make informed decisions and vote accordingly. Once a vote is in the Flux member table this response/result as his vote in parliament. Sounds easy right? The underlying technology that allows this is the Blockchain, with a publicly verified ledger. This creates a fairer democracy. How many people think that the last election results are 100% accurate? Phase two would be to bring the same voting technology for voting members as shown by Homer below in a booth (perfect for the elderly); in addition this could also be an App on your phone.

Other countries have already started voted in this fashion.

Advantages for FLUX political party:

• The majority of the electorate rule. **The larger part of the people who choose to vote in the electorate.
• Votes you can trust – The voting system is not running on a Server anywhere, it is distributed across a public network, much like how Bitcoin works. This is a public ledger where anyone can verify that every vote is above board.
• Stops backroom deals- Flux makes backroom deals difficult and ineffective.
• Empower voters- Flux lets passionate Australians become fully involved in the political process, and to focus on the issues they care most about, and are best suited to impact.
• Encourages criticism and debate- Flux encourages a culture of criticism. Voters examine new policy before it’s enacted.
• Ends corruption- Big banks and corporations will have to win over ordinary people, not just wander parliament corridors with brown paper bags to win over Canberra insiders, the way it should be.
• A launchpad for ideas- Flux encourages Australians to bring their great ideas for their communities to the political arena. You won’t have to be a powerful political organisation to innovate for Australia’s benefit.

So next time you are required to vote, ask all parties the questions that mean the most to you. Perhaps you will agree on Education reforms with one party, and Healthcare with another party. With FLUX you can have both. If you don’t agree with everything from your favored party, FLUX is the answer for you. All comments are welcomed on this new technology. But remember Technology isn’t what FLUX is about, it is about transparency. We now have the technology to remove all Parliament members, this is a step towards the future.

Aaron @aaronw

New uses for Block-chain (distributed ledger technology)

Part 1 of a 2 part series.

I watched this video on YouTube and started thinking about the new uses for Blockchain (distributed ledger technology) that will most definitely be coming in the future. The Blockchain makes things Transparent, Democratic, Decentralized, Efficient, and Secure

I have summarised the items discussed in the video. The 18 Industries that will benefit from Blockchain.

1. Banking- Access to banking, little fees, instant delivery.
2. Cyber Security- Although the data is public, it is also verified by all. Eliminate middle men attacks.
3.  Supply Chain Management- Documents in a permanent public ledger, remove resource waste, verify fair trade status and track origin.
4. Forecasting- Research approach will change.
5. Networking and IoT- Central location not need to communication.
6. Insurance- Remove reliance on trust, identity, real world data, crop insurance.
7. Private Transport and Ride Sharing service – Secure with no third party required (look out UBER).
8. Cloud Storage- Robust storage
9. Charity- to track donations and remove corruption
10. Voting- identity registration, votes not changing,
11. Government- reduce bureaucracy. Dubai aims to put all documents on the Blockchain by 2020.
12. Public Benefits- Assess and distribute welfare in a streamlined way.
13. Heath care data- Secure data, share with authorised people.
14. Energy management- Buy direct from the providers removing middle layers.
15. Music- Artists to get paid direct removing record label taking their cut.
16. Retail- Trust verified buyers and sellers removing the middle man (Amazon).
17. Real Estate- Remove bureaucracy, fraud, remove paper based documents, transferring property more easily.
18. Crowd Funding- Remove the need for a middle man services (gofundme), and smart orders can release funds only when certain achievements are met.

We do say from time to time in IT that this is something that you must learn and get your head around. I believe that this is the case with Block-Chain. Click here for my second part of the series where I look deeply at voting with Block-Chain.

Aaron @aaronw

Surface Studio demo today in Microsoft Brisbane Office

Want to learn more about Microsoft Surface studio/dial? We will be focusing on using the Surface dial with the Adobe suite Premiere, Photoshop, and also AutoCAD. Please contact me here for a free demo today at the Microsoft Brisbane office at from 1-2pm or 4-5pm with Patrick Burgess

Aaron @aaronw2003

Surface Studio – Redefining how we interact with Technology

The following opinions are mine, not necessarily my employers.

As various new products arrive in the near future it will change the way we interact with technology. Several of the ways that Microsoft is helping with this shift is with devices such Cortana, XBOX, HoloLens, Surface Hub, Surface Studio, Surface Dial and Surface Pen. Perhaps one day keyboards and mouses will be fully replaced by touch, pens, hand gestures, facial expressions, and voice controls.

Today I had the chance to see some AutoCAD power users (Design Architects) come and see what the Surface Studio could do to change to way they currently design buildings. One of the Architects actually had an RSI injury from his existing mouse. He was able to move the mouse to his other hand. The Surface Dial and the mouse were controlled by his left hand and the pen more comfortably became his primary tool. All three Architects could see how this device could change the way they design and create buildings of the future. They have registered their interests for further information at a forthcoming event.

Please reach out to me directly in Brisbane to attend an upcoming demonstration event (June 2017) on Surface Studio. Currently we will be deep diving into Adobe the products such as PhotoShop, Premier and AutoCAD.

Images credits here and here.

Aaron @aaronw2003

Office 365: Adoption – Accelerating Business Value

Today I was lucky enough to attend my customers Change and Adoption Workshops (Office 365: Adoption – Accelerating Business Value). This is a standard workshop under Premier.

The workshop started with participants from various parts of my customers organisation learning more about our modern tools and products; including how to have effective meetings utalising the full suite from Office 365, including Skype for Business, OWA (browser), Outlook, FindTime plugin, Mobile experience, OneNote. I even took away various features within Microsoft’s rich tool-sets I had not used.

Key Features and Benefits: During this two-day workshop, attendees will discuss the benefits of scenario-based approaches, review the capabilities of Office 365 in real time, work with their adoption team to make decisions to help them get started, and review reinforcement techniques and ways to measure adoption success.

Workshop Goals: After completing this workshop, users will know more about:

• Implementing Adoption and Change Management methodology
• Executing a scenario-based approach to drive adoption
• Using learning and readiness resources to drive adoption
• Identifying team roles and skills required to help you drive adoption forward
• Engaging active, end-user champions
• Measuring usage and adoption
• Reinforcing adoption

If this sounds like the workshop to help your organisation get the most benefits out of your deployed tools please contact your Microsoft Technical Account Manager/Service delivery Manager. Or if you don’t have one, contact Microsoft in your local region.

Image source

Aaron @aaronw2003

BYOD in action – Modern Desktops at Microsoft – Seamless integration.

How do you get a new PC/Laptop on the Microsoft network? At Microsoft we have the ability to obtain a new device/reimage a machine and add it to the Domain ourselves. What does this involve?

To join our machine to the Azure Active Directory AAD we simply follow these steps with a brand new build.

Now what, I have no apps?

Then I go to the Office 365 Portal and download the Office desktop app.

I then confirm that both of my corporate and personal OneDrive’s are connected and syncing.

I then go to the store and installed the Expenses app (Dynamics) and the Company Portal.

Then I install a ‘follow me’ printer, Spotify and ITunes and I am good to go. Easy. ETA 20 mins or 35 mins with a full re-build. I haven’t had to call IT or the help desk once.

Why is this important? Companies can now pass this work to the end user who is comfortable doing this. My corporate data is still managed and segregated, all thanks the EMS and Office 365.

Aaron @aaronw2003

Changes ahead for Microsoft Australia events

Microsoft Australia’s GM Steve Worrall has announced today a new set of events coming this year. Microsoft Australia has created one flagship event over one week, for BDM customers, partners, IT pros and developers. We’re calling it the Microsoft Summit and it will be hosted in Sydney at the International Convention Centre (ICC) from 14-17 November this year.

The goal of the Microsoft Summit is: to deliver the connections, solutions and skills for individuals and businesses to engage, adapt and grow in the digital age. And it will cover the below 3 events across 4 days, targeting both existing and new audiences.

Microsoft Business Summit, 14 November

This day is targeted at commercial and public sector customers and prospects in C-Suite and BDM roles across industries. They will be joined in the morning for the opening keynote by the partner and tech community, to hear a world-class line up of speakers to be announced soon. It’s then into an exclusive experience to explore industry tracks and garner value from customers, start-ups, ISVs and partners, as they share the solutions and outcomes that are transforming businesses across industry and sector.

Microsoft Partner Summit, 14-15 November

This is the evolution of APC and there will not be an APC event in Q1 FY18. The Partner Summit will be everything partners loved about APC and more. They will join customers at the opening keynote and will benefit from being able to tailor a program across leadership, sales and marketing tracks, and into the Tech Summit (below) for their tech teams and decision makers. It will remain a deep learning and structured networking experience with actionable outcomes for growth and transformation.

Microsoft Tech Summit, 16-17 November

Aimed at IT pros and developers, this event comes to us from Corp as part of a world tour. It will have an amazing line-up of engineers and experts across our cloud technologies with focus to Azure, Windows 10 and Office 365. It will be two days of technical training up to level 400 and the team will create an incredible community spirit as has been consistently delivered for years across all our events for technical audiences.

What do you think about the new event/s? Please add your thoughts and comments below.

Aaron @aaronw2003

 

User Group – Automated Cloud deployment Desired State Configuration (DSC) WED 17th May 6pm

Apologies for the hiatus, the next Brisbane Cloud User Group will be after Easter.
We will have Microsoft’s Bernard White presenting on Desired State Configuration (DSC).

Agenda – Desired State Configuration (DSC) is a management platform in PowerShell that enables you to manage your IT infrastructure with configuration as code. Give me a few moments while I show you how you can use DSC to deploy workloads in the cloud and on-premises.

About Bernard White – Bernard is a Premier Field Engineer. He is passionate about automation because it allows IT Pros to focus on achieving business value. Hopefully he will share that passion with you and empower you to achieve more.

Come along and also see the Microsoft Brisbane Branches Surface Hub in action.

Register Here

Date/Time: Wednesday 17th May 6:00pm-7:30pm

Location: Microsoft Office Level 28 400 George st Brisbane

Food sponsored by Microsoft

Please contact myself to sponsor/present. All case studies welcome.

 

Thanks
AaronW2003

Unplugged with Scott Guthrie – Ignite Gold Coast 2017

Unplugged with Scott Guthrie at Ignite.

I traveled to Ignite as a Microsoft employee.

After already being on a high after seeing Scott’s key note earlier in the day; the first thing that was very refreshing as I walked in was a blank notepad being shared on the screen reading Scott’s agenda.

When Scott started, he asked for several questions from the audience to set the agenda. I was lucky enough to get one of the 8 questions.

Here are the questions and answers:

Q: Microsoft developer road-map vision 5 years out

A: Visual studio now working on MACs, helping developers be successful, an awesome way to build apps that didn’t exist 5 years ago.

Q: How do these piece (PaaS, IaaS, Containers) work together in the future?

IaaS Plans – Nested Hyper-V, and more goodness

A: Build stuff faster, enable to be more successful. How do you take advantage of infrastructure and cloud offerings together? The management api allows you to manage all of your resources together. 1 common audit log, and single solution. Scott also discussed nested Hyper-V virtualisation within 2016. We will start the ‘lightup’ of more and more features this year. Over 100,000 Azure hosts already run with 2016. Discussed managed disks. VM Scale sets, auto scale rules. We now support 1000 Virtual Machines in a scale set, it also works with Windows and Linux, and it takes about 6 mins to deploy all 1000 servers.

Q: Cloud Services – are they going away?

A: No but we will see a transition to vm scale sets

Q: IAM roadmap within Azure- how to go from broader scoped to more granular

A: This is currently happening

Q: Cloud penetration testing against the cloud apps- what is allowed and when?

A: You can now, but you need to let Microsoft know first. Need to sign a form. Who has used the Azure security center? It will tell you when you have things configured with not good security practices. This is free, we actively look at security issues/incidents that you may have.

Q: Can you tell us the secret locations you are going to next?

A: No, but you can look at a map and see where we don’t have regions, maybe that is a place we will next look at. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/regions/

Q: What is the most exciting thig happening this year?

A: I am excited about azure stack which will ship very shortly.

Q: What office does Microsoft have for students and primary education?

A: We have lots of free, discounted software

What advice would I give to people looking to grow the career?

What type of roles will disappear, and what new roles will emerge in 5 years?

Traditional developer role will be key, Internet of Things, Never stop learning, growth mindset

Emerging – opportunity to be able to be able to understand how tech can make something better, in the future, it is often what my business wants. Translate business needs based on that capabilities, what can make a customer better, graphics and the move to augmented reality, getting bored with the apps in the phone, got 1 bot like system to interact with.

Aaron aaronw2002

Meetup Madness on the Gold Coast

   Hello and happy new year.

Microsoft is planning something new this year at Ignite. “MeetUp Madness” is a free event on the Monday 13^th Feb evening at the Gold Coast Convention Centre. Microsoft opened early last year on the Monday afternoon to try and get people to register before the event starts on Tuesday and we actually saw a big take-up. So this year we will take the opportunity to facilitate some community meetups at the Gold Coast Convention before the event officially kicks off.  With so many like-minded tech people coming in for the event, it’s a good opportunity for people with similar interests to come together from all over.  It will also help promote community groups in general. As always there will be food and drinks and some cool SWAG.

For those that wish to attend please email me here and you will be added to a mailing list with more information.

FAQ: If I am not attending Ignite can I still attend this meetup? Not sure but I will find out.

Aaron aaronw2003

 

Who is off to Ignite Gold Coast?

 

Did I hear you say ‘we want a discount’?

Ignite Gold Coast is just around the corner; 77 days in fact. Scott Guthrie will be in attendance and you have the chance to personally ask him a question in his unplugged session. Need to convince your boss, try this template.

Perhaps a User Group discount code is of interest? If you would like to attend please email me here with your name, company, and company email address to get your golden ticket. I look forward to seeing you there and sharing in the learning experience. Follow us at #MSAUIGNITE and @msautech

 Aaron @aaronw2003 #IWorkForMicrosoft

Whats inside a Microsoft Building?

What’s inside a Microsoft Building? Well in Redmond there are quite a few buildings, around 80 in fact. Microsoft even has a dedicated recruitment building. I have taken a few trips this year to different offices, and here some quick clips in and around Microsoft buildings. All videos below have been vetted and approved by our Communications team.

Let’s take a look – Kula Lumpur Office 360

A sneak peek inside the Redmond Microsoft Office that create Microsoft band software

Outside Microsoft Azure Identity building

Inside the Microsoft Visitor Center in building 92. Outside building 92.

Outside the Azure Compute and Storage building.

Thanks for the views, let me know if you want to see inside the Azure Compute and Storage building.

Aaron @aaronw2003

Great Lync non default setting- Reopen your conversation

Ever had you machine reboot and you loose your Lync conversations? Here’s a great non default setting to reopen your conversation which has been around for years.

Aaron @aaronw2003