Speaking & Being Interviewed at Microsoft Future Decoded 2019

Speaking

On Tuesday and Wednesday this week (2nd & 3rd of October) I attended Microsoft Future Decoded at the ExCel in London, UK.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Future Decoded or haven’t attended one before, I’ll give you a brief overview of the event below:

Microsoft Future Decoded is a 2 day event that is hosted in the ExCel in London, UK. The event is focused around enlightening business and technical decision makers about what the future looks like for themselves, their businesses and potential customers they work with or for. The event is not as technically focused like other events Microsoft host like Ignite/Ignite The Tour. This years focus areas where around AI, ML and Tech For Good.

Generally the event is a great chance to network with others in the industry, vendors and partners; let alone attending sessions and absorbing all of the latest a greatest announcements!

Why Was I There…?

This year I was attending both as an attendee, to see some of the keynotes and the breakout sessions, and also to assist with “stand duty” (as it’s often referred too) for the company I work for; CDW UK

Stand Duty @ Future Decoded 2019

I also had the privilege of presenting a talk this year in one of the expo breakout theatres for fellow attendees.

My Talk

As mentioned above, I was also presenting a talk this year at the event. I was actually asked by my company if I’d like to talk a few weeks ago at this event and I jumped at the chance.

This year Microsoft wanted the talks to be focused around the key points of this years event, AI, ML & Tech For Good. However these areas are not something I felt I could create a talk on in the time I had, so I took a different approach.

My talk title this years was “IaaS & PaaS – The Perfect Partnership”.

My approach for the talk was to explain why Azure is still the best place to run those IaaS & PaaS workloads, due to all of the AI & ML that Microsoft invest in and use to deliver the various services under these areas. I covered things like:

  • Project Tardigrade
  • Live Migration in Azure Compute
  • Azure SQL Offerings
  • Much more…

I was set to talk on the second day of the event, Wednesday, at 15:15 until 15:40 in one of the expo theatres. As it was near the end of the second day, I wasn’t expecting a lot of attendees. But to my pleasant surprise, there was only standing room available as one of my colleagues and friends, Anthony, tweeted about:

The 25 minutes flew by and all of the notes I spent hours refining and putting with my PowerPoint, I never even read! Amazing how the brain engages when you are in the moment!

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many people wanting to hear what I had to say about Azure. Also it was great to see so many people getting involved and coming to ask questions after the talk; this is something I highly recommend to all talk attendees, us presenters honestly don’t mind and generally are really happy to help answer/clarify any questions you may have. So next time you attend a talk, go say hi or ask a question to the presenter/s, networking is key in this industry!

Here’s me presenting:

Jack Presenting @ Future Decoded

My presentation can be download here, if you are interested.

Channel Partner Insight Interview

Near the end of Day 1, Nima Green, a reporter for Channel Partner Insight asked if id be happy to be interviewed and provide my insight into the event so far and also the Microsoft Partner world based on recent announcements etc…

I will just provide the link to the video below instead of detailing the interview. So click here to see what I had to say.

CRN Interview