Impressions

On April 21st, this year’s Global Azure Bootcamp took place in 244 locations in 68 countries. We were happy to follow the invitation of coding-club-linz who – as in the last years - organized the community event perfectly in Linz in Austria. With 5 tracks and about 200 attendees the #GlobalAzure event in Linz was a full success – thx to the organizers, speakers, community members and all helping hands! The world wide community event (global.azurebootcamp.net) is a cost free, one-day technical learning events for Microsoft Azure, organized by leaders from the global cloud developer community, see also #GlobalAzure Bootcamp 2018 and Sunday Surprise: Global Azure Bootcamp 2018. We were part of GAB in 2017 as well, see Global Azure Bootcamp 2017 Austria. This year, from our Vienna Azure Meetup Group, Martina Grom, Christoph Wilfing, Christoph Wille and I, Toni Pohl, joined the GAB2018 event. ...

In the mid of March, Microsoft’s MVP Summit took place at Microsoft’s headquarter in Redmond and in Bellevue in Washington. For us, this was a great week for getting the latest news about Microsoft products and technologies and for networking and meeting friends. MVP summit is an exclusive event for all active MVPs and Regional Directors (RDs). Microsoft trusts their community-leaders and the content is strictly confidential. We used the week for learning, building relationships and giving feedback which is simply great to directly interact with the product groups. ...

Being in Seattle during #MSBuild brings the advantage to have a first look at the brand new Surface Laptop that was announced on May 2nd by Microsoft in real life. You can preorder Surface Laptop in the Microsoft Online Store today. Delivery date starts at June 15th, [](https://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_us/pdp/productid.5102691100?icid=en_us_homepage_hero1_surface laptop_5.2.17 “image”) We visited the Microsoft Store in Bellevue and had a look at the Surface family. See some snapshots here… Well, besides the technical specifications, the new Surface Laptop seems to be a very nice (but pricy) device. On the other hand, you get a beautiful designed notebook with a long battery life. I like it more than the Surface Book (which is too heavy), but as always, this is a matter of opinion. ...

We are very happy and proud that our CEO, Martina Grom, has been re-awarded as Microsoft Regional Director (RD) this April! The Microsoft Regional Director Program consists of 150 of the world’s top technology visionaries chosen specifically for their proven cross-platform expertise. RD’s must be nominated by Microsoft and this is a very exclusive program. Find out more about that exceptional business and community leaders at the Microsoft RD website rd.microsoft.com. ...

Recently Microsoft published an article about “Giving CISOs assurance in the cloud” with nice visualized “internet user maps”. By 2015, the internet user map looks as here: Source: Microsoft Secure Blog That’s an interesting map showing the most heavy internet users in the dark green boxes. Summarized, these are North America, Northern Europe, South Korea and Japan. The dark green regions will include the south in the next years… So, if you are internet addicted (as we are…), you can choose your travel destinations by that map.

Last week Martina and I have been speaking at Unity Connect in Haarlem in the Netherlands. Unity Connect is an IT conference about Office 365, SharePoint, Exchange, Skype, Yammer, and Azure and took place from 16th to 18th November 2016 in the beautiful city of Haarlem. We arrived on Tuesday evening and entered the stunning inner city of Haarlem with so many cool restaurants and bars. The banner picture of Unity Connect just gives a brief impression of the beautiful buildings in that small town. The conference location was in Philharmonie Haarlem which is actually a concert hall but a very cool event location. With the inner city and the hotels around the corner, this event is - besides the conference offerings - one of my absolute favorite places to go in this region. ...

Today, one day after the US presidential elections, there’s an interesting read about coming together in IT industry in blogs.microsoft.com by Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft. Moving forward together: Our thoughts on the US election (My) very short extract: “…And like so many Americans, regardless of who we supported through our vote, we strongly share the view that this is a time for the nation to come together…” ...

Last week, our third IT/DevConnections conference took place in Las Vegas. We had the pleasure to have several sessions there. The IT/DevConnections conference took place from 10th to 13th of October in the luxurious Aria resort that is located right in the middle of the famous Las Vegas strip. That’s a very cool location for obtaining KnowHow transfer during the day and enjoying the nightlife of Vegas. Besides the networking at the conference, there were social events and parties. ...

Gestern fand das erste Treffen des Azure Meetup Vienna statt. In dieser Gruppe geht es um Wissensvermittlung und den Erfahrungsaustausch zu Microsoft Azure für IT Pros, Entwickler und Entscheider mit Themen aus der Community. Die Meetup.com Website bietet die Online-Plattform zu den regelmäig geplanten Treffen: Azure Meetup Vienna Wir haben einige Snapshots vom Event auf der Event-Website hinzugefügt… Alle Details zur Azure Meetup Vienna Gruppe, den Terminen, Themen und allem organisatorischen Rundherum findet ihr auf der Meetup.com Website. ...

Letzten Donnerstag, den 16. Juni, fand bei Microsoft in Wien das Build 2016 Redelivery Event statt. Microsoft hatte eingeladen, sich persönlich über “Das neueste zu Windows 10 und anderen coolen Dingen – Zusammenfassung von der //build” zu informieren. Es gab drei Tracks, gefolgt vom Sommergrillen im Garten. Hier gibts ein paar Snapshots vom Event! Die Agenda bot Programm für IT-Pros und Open Source Enthusiasten (siehe hier) und für Developer (siehe hier) war bunt gemischt. Die Sprecher waren von Microsoft DX und Mitglieder aus der Microsoft Community (MCTs, MVPs, RDs). Die Themen reichten von Azure (Stack) bis HoloLens und Augmented und Virtual Reality. ...