At the beginning of this semester, Microsoft hired a new Student Partner at Indiana University. A Microsoft Student Partner (MSP) is a college student responsible for helping promote the Microsoft platform on campus. Part of that responsibility involves hosting technical events.

This new MSP invited me to campus to co-present with him. He reserved a room, ordered pizza, invited students, and brought some giveaways. We decided to present on Project Oxford - a set of web services that use machine learning to analyze images, videos, and voice. A day before the presentation, Project Oxford was renamed to Microsoft Cognitive Services, so I had to rush to update my slides and re-test all my demos.

The event was a success. Students studying computer science and related fields attended, students who were curious about the technology attended, and one Informatics professor attended.

For me, it was a rewarding experience - in part because it was a chance to connect with students and to share a cool technology that Microsoft is offering;

But more importantly, I was excited to work with the new Indiana University MSP - Tim Giard.

Tim is my son and a junior majoring in Informatics at IU. This was our first chance to work together professionally and it was one of the highlights of my year.