Microsoft Future Decoded

For the last two days I’ve been attending Microsoft Future Decoded at the Excel in London.  Microsoft Future Decoded is a 2 day event focused on the digital business of tomorrow. It is aimed at decision makers, developers and IT pros and provides a path to learn how digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud and digital skills can drive business success.

It provides a great opportunity to get exposure to new technologies and emerging trends as well giving you networking opportunities, a chance to connect with potential new customers and partners and strengthen existing relationships.  It’s also free, meaning if you can spare the time (and you should) it will be a great investment.

I split my time between deep dive sessions and hands-on labs, with the latter giving me the opportunity to spend time trying out technologies that I wouldn’t necessarily get as much exposure to as I’d like.  When you’re here to learn you’ve no excuse not to jump in and invest the time that’s often not available during the working day back in the office.

Hands-on Labs

I managed to fit in quite a few hands-on labs that covered Blockchain, ML, Azure FileSync, Bot Framework, Power BI with Stream Analytics and Advanced Threat Analytics.

Of those Azure FileSync and Power BI with Stream Analytics probably grabbed my attention more than the others.   The Advanced Threat Analytics was also very interesting as it walked you how you can use pass-the-hash to gain access to privileged accounts, while showing off the power of ATA which tracked and alerted on the suspicious activity in near real time.

I’d definitely recommend Future Decoded to anyone with an interest in technologies and will certainly be looking forward to attending again next year.

If you’re interesting in trying some of the labs, visit Microsoft Hands-on labs at https://www.microsoft.com/handsonlabs which provides a really broad range of labs for free.