Microsoft Ignite & Microsoft MVP - Regional Spotlight

[Guest RieMoriguchi]

As we reported in our previous post Microsoft Ignite & Microsoft MVP - Global Experience, Microsoft hosted a hybrid Microsoft Ignite event in October 2022. This year, the event hosted six Regional Spotlight events and added local flavor to the global conference in the UK, China, France, Germany, Japan, and LATAM.

 

 

 

In this post, we featured the MVPs in the Regional Spotlight events in the UK, China, France, Germany, and Japan.

 

 

 

Spotlight on the UK

 

 

M365 Apps & Services MVP in Finland Karoliina Kettukari joined three sessions as a speaker: Learnings through the career journey of a (female) leader in IT (delivered in English) was one of the Connection Zone sessions in the Spotlight on the UK, and two sessions, Microsoft Teams Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from our experts and Spotlight on Finland were part of the Global sessions. She says “Ignite is the place to be - online or live - if you want to get a great snapshot of what's happening in the Microsoft world. It brings together consultants, customers, and Microsoft enthusiasts around the world. The social aspect of the live events is priceless, but even when attending online, you can get in on the hype on social media. Sharing news and discussing hot topics with the community makes it for me.”

 

 

 

She also joined this event as an attendee to catch up with the latest technologies about her focus area. “This year I appreciated the focus on Employee Experience and Well-being at work. It shows that modern work is so much more than a technical product. It's about the people who use the technology.”

 

 

 

Making a great effort as a speaker of three sessions and taking her time to explore new updates as an attendee, Karoliina might have been so busy in this event. “Time goes by so fast! Check beforehand the sessions you want to see. If - and when - there are multiple interesting sessions going on simultaneously, check what recordings you could watch later. Reserve lots of time to talk and chat with colleagues, Microsoft people and vendors,” she provided her tips to improve event experience. She also gave us a pro tip. “Attend some sessions that's totally out of your comfort zone. You might learn something new!”

 

 

 

 

 

Spotlight on China

 

 

AI and Microsoft Azure MVP, Hao Hu, delivered one of three Chinese Learn Live sessions, Learn Live: 60分钟全面掌握Azure MLOps (delivered in Chinese-Mandarin), and explained how to apply the design concepts and best practices of Azure MLOps in 60 minutes. He expresses his excitement of being a part of the Spotlight session in China, “With the continuing unprecedented disruption of the pandemic in China, we cannot attend an technical event this year in person. However, we are still very excited that we could meet communities virtually and get resourceful updates from Microsoft - Not only technology updates, but also envisioning Microsoft’s cloud business and many other solutions. I’m so lucky to be selected to present the Learn Live session on the Ignite Spotlight China to lead the audience to learn with hands-on experience. It helps Microsoft Learn to demonstrate its feature and new interface.”

 

 

 

AI MVP Yuxiang Wang participated in this session as a co-presenter says joining Microsoft Ignite is one of the most attractive events for all Microsoft developers and users to learn about Microsoft's business strategies and the latest products. He adds, “The reason why I like Ignite the most is to promote the community spirit with communication and learn more about Microsoft's products through this activity and share the harvest of this year,”

 

 

 

Learn Live is an online hands-on session with a specific topic selected from Microsoft Learn. Hao emphasizes the importance of ‘Empower everyone and gives us his insights about Microsoft Learn, “Its new user-friendly interface shows us that Microsoft Learn is rapidly growing. It enables us to explore new learning paths and modules easily every day. We are glad to see that Microsoft invests lots of resources on it, and we are honored to share these study experiences with communities as MVP. It will benefit the next generation that we can guide students to learn more by organizing Cloud Skills Challenge.” Yuxiang is placing high expectations on Microsoft Learn, “Microsoft Learn has made rapid progress. In the future, I hope it will have more elements that can be integrated into social communication so that more people will like learning with Microsoft Learn.”

 

 

 

 

 

Spotlight on France

 

 

AI and Data Platform MVP Paul PETON and AI MVP Nicolas ROBERT delivered one of the French sessions. They love this local experience in the global conference because they can reach local audiences and provide their information in local language. Paul says, “What I liked most about Ignite 2022 was the local and native-language sessions which made a wider audience easy to learn about new announcements and talk to experts,” and Nicolas adds “Followed by Build in May 2022, we had the opportunity to deliver content in French for local audience. I was happy to share the stage with another MVP and hope to have additional opportunities in the future!”

 

 

 

They were MVP speakers on Votre modèle de Machine Learning est disponible sur étagère (The Machine Learning model you need is on the shelf). Paul saw the evolution of technology, “Speaking of content, many of the announcements showed the increasing integration of Large Language Models (GPT-3) to make writing code easier, especially for the citizen developer population.” He also explains how this conference means to users, “A long-term view of the evolution of our technologies is fundamental to making the right decisions. Ignite is one of those important events that contributes to this.”

 

 

 

This session format was Table Topic which encourages attendees to join the conversation to share their ideas and learnings with other attendees. Microsoft MVP is the key person who facilitates a discussion. Paul defines his position of how he engaged with this conference, “As an MVP, we have a dual role: to be a technical expert reading the announcements and to tell our analyses to as many people as possible. An event like Microsoft Ignite is a catalyst for our MVP activity. In fact, I hosted a public meetup during Microsoft Ignite where we were able to talk about the announcements.”

 

Moreover, Nicolas mentions that it offers more proximity to attendees and open more discussions, “For more than 2 years now, events like Microsoft Ignite needed to be reinvented. Every edition in this difficult period has been the opportunity to test new formats between digital and physical spaces: it was once again a good opportunity, and it showed again how direct interaction was important for me.”

 

 

 

 

 

Spotlight on Germany

 

 

Microsoft Azure and M365 Apps & Services MVP in Germany, Raphael Köllner, joined the Microsoft Ignite Regional Spotlight on Germany and hosted two online sessions, Table Topic: Microsoft Purview – so wird der Arbeitsplatz 2023 datensicher (delivered in German) and Learn Live: Mithilfe von Netzwerksicherheitsgruppen und Service-Endpunkten den Zugriff auf Azure-Ressourcen sichern und isolieren (delivered in German).

 

 

 

He brought a unique experience this time when he hosted these sessions from Seattle. He visited Seattle during the Ignite week and took part in four in-person Expert Meet-up sessions in the Seattle event. He covered a wide range of technologies, Identity and Access Management, Data Protection, Azure Synapse Analytics, Microsoft Purview, and Windows Update and Device Management, and shared his knowledge with the in-person attendees as an expert.

 

 

 

Raphael might have been one of the busiest attendees at this Ignite. In addition to helping a lot of attendees in the world through his sessions as above, he visited the Microsoft campus every day for his private appointments to meet engineers, Product Managers, and CVPs in Microsoft.

 

 

 

Raphael not only contributed to the global and local community through his sessions in English and German, but he also shared valuable event feedback that he collected from his communities and customers.

 

 

 

Raphael says ,“Thank you very much for the speaking opportunity to help at Ignite. It was my pleasure, and I love it! I hope our feedback helps making next event better.”

 

 

 

 

 

Spotlight on Japan

 

 

Microsoft Japan hosted the hybrid Regional Spotlight in Tokyo and online. This Microsoft Ignite was a brilliant opportunity for Japanese people who were waiting for joining the in-person event.

 

 

 

Not only attendees, but speakers were also excited about in-person speaking opportunity for a long time. “I haven't had a chance to attend in-person event for a while. I enjoyed this speaking opportunity at the event, feeling strongly that I was sharing my knowledge with the attendees in my session,” says Data Platform MVP Masayuki Ozawa.

 

 

 

Masayuki talked about the updates of Azure SQL Server in his Table Topics session, Data Platform MVP から見た、Azure Data Platform 最新動向 (delivered in Japanese) (From the point of view of Data Platform MVP: The latest trends of Azure Data Platform). It was a joint session with Japanese Data Platform MVP, Ryoma Nagata, so Masayuki learned a lot from Ryoma, “He has different expertise from mine, so I was lucky to have an excellent experience to learn from his ideas as a professional from our preparation phase.”

 

 

 

Security MVP Yuri Takeshima co-hosted another Japanese Table Topics session with Enterprise Mobility MVP, Suguru Kunii. She loves in-person technical conference with full of live feeling and attendees’ energy and curiosity.

 

 

 

Her session ハイブリッドワークを実現する “Windows 365” のセキュリティ (delivered in Japanese) (The security of Windows 365 for hybrid work). In her trainings as a professional trainer, she was feeling that there were a very small number of engineers who knew Windows 365. She looked happy to join this Ignite as a speaker because “This Table Topics session was a great opportunity for me to have many people know about Windows 365 which is a suitable service in this hybrid work era.”

 

 

 

Yuri explained what she learned about Microsoft Cloud security and how Windows 365 security aligns with the local guidelines of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan. She is looking forward to future opportunities, “I would like to continue to learn and promote the directions of Microsoft and the technologies fit with the times through delivering my messages at technical events.”

 

 

 

 

 

To learn more about Microsoft Ignite, please visit the following websites.

 

Microsoft Ignite (Official website)

 

Microsoft Ignite 2022 Book of News (Stories)

 

 

 

Microsoft Ignite 2022 (Events on Microsoft Learn)

 

Ignite on Microsoft Learn (Microsoft Learn)

 

 

 

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