I had the opportunity to attend the 2024 Microsoft Ignite conference last week. In exchange for a ticket to the event, I volunteered to participate in the “Ask the Experts” area, sponsored by Microsoft.
Our partner Ignite hosted a pre-conference meetup on Monday evening in Chicago’s Motor Row neighborhood. I delivered a presentation on Copilot Studio while Elastic’s Greg Crist spoke about their Elasticsearch product. Many people from my organization attended.
Ignite began Tuesday morning with a keynote presentation led by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. The keynote lasted almost three hours and included many speakers. Although there were no earth-shaking announcements, the keynote emphasized Microsoft’s commitment to Artificial Intelligence tools and improved security. You can read my summary here.
The conference set up the “Ask the Experts” area among the sponsor booths in a room dubbed “The Hub.” I worked in the AI section, answering questions about AI Search on the first day and Azure AI Fabric on subsequent days. In answering questions, I had a chance to learn more about these products. Azure AI Fabric is a rebranding of Azure AI Studio with related features added to the user interface.
Between my shifts, I found some of the partners with whom my organization works, asking them to describe their relationship with Microsoft. I received some valuable positive and negative feedback that I intend to bring back and use to improve.
Our partner Splunk asked me to co-present at their session on Wednesday afternoon. Splunk had just released its Cloud Platform on Microsoft Azure, so I described the advantages of this partnership.
Due to my volunteering commitments, I could only attend a few sessions (other than the one at which I spoke). I attended sessions on configuring security in Azure AI Fabric, Copilot Pages, and GitHub Copilot.
This week was very busy. In addition to Ignite, I delivered a presentation on Microsoft Copilot tools at the INFORMS conference at DePaul University.
I also hosted two MVPs at my home. They were traveling from far away, and i was able to provide a nearby place to stay without any financial burden.
The most significant advantages of attending were networking with Microsoft partners, customers, and MVPs and connecting with old friends. Because I live close to the convention center, two MVPs stayed at my home during the conference.
Although conference organizers promote the session content to entice attendees, I typically gain the most value in talking face-to-face with attendees, speakers, and partners. This conference provided the opportunity to learn about new technologies and how others apply them.