2023 My Year in Review

I started January 2023 with an award from Sessionize, Top 3% Most Active Speakers, which made me really proud and keen to keep it up. I started the year strong from that perspective by speaking at NDC London. I had a couple of sessions, a workshop with my bestie George Coldham, and my session on Responsible AI Principles, Azure Object Detection and the Modern Trolley Problem.

In February we did a She Codes Australia Event, as a ThinkUKnow event, and we did the first of the EDU Bootcamps - I don't even know how many of these we have done this year. I mostly do the AI Fundamentals prep classes, but this year we started doing demo sessions as well, to bring the content alive - so I had a lot of fun showing of Azure Open AI Services and Custom Vision.

In March we celebrated International Women's Day with some students from Bob Hawke College and Joseph Banks Senior College. Showing them Open AI and Bing Chat.

I also went over to Perth Presbyterian College for an event in the evening where I talked about careers in technology.

I got to do a guest lecture out at Edith Cowan University on... you guessed it #Azure OpenAI

There was also a She Codes Workshop where I met one of our youngest attendees who was only 13 years of age.

We also did #OpenSource day at the #Azure User Group. I talked about Community and we had a couple of other MVPs present.

微软 Perth went to South Metropolitan TAFE for a careers day, those are always super fun.

We also did 10KWahine in New Zealand, to get more women into #technology careers.

It was also Microsoft Learn #StudentSummit which I got to deliver a session for with my friend Renee Noble

There was also the Women in Data Science event out at The University of Western Australia with the UWA Data Institute

I celebrated my 10 year Anniversary at #Microsoft.

I also did a tech employability bootcamp with upskilling in AI for the ACS (Australian Computer Society)

On the 10th Anniversary of my TEDxPerth Talk I got to do a Panel on (yes, you guessed it) #AI

Also in April we went out to St Mark's Anglican Community School to do an #ImagineCup Junior #hackathon

Joseph Stephen and I did a massive guest lecture for 澳大利亚迪肯大学 in India - I mean we were online, but the students were in India. On Chat Bots and #Azure #Cognitive Services.

I was issued a #MCT Award and officially became a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

In May I spoke at the CyberWest Summit - I don't consider myself much of a cyber nerd, I'm more about the developers and AI, but my bestie George is a #Security guy, so some of his expertise rubs off on me and he ends up doing some AI with me and I do some cyber with him.

I spoke about GitHub #Copilot and #Codespaces for Female Coders Collective (FC2) and did more Deakin University Guest Lectures.

It was Data Science week and Jiaranai Keatnuxsuo (???????? ?????????????) and I were out and about helping WA Data Science Innovation Hub (WADSIH)

It was Global Azure Bootcamp and we started doing the #GitHub Copilot workshops around ANZ. Graeme Foster and I taught one of them and had a ball.

In June Jiaranai Keatnuxsuo (???????? ?????????????) and I went out to teach a guest lecture at The University of Western Australia on #PromptEngineering

We did another 10KWahine event with 400 women at it.

We also did Microsoft Build in Sydney and recorded a bunch of sessions for on-going simulive events later in the year.

In July we had another Winter Bootcamp and I spoke about GitHub Copilot at the #Python WA Meetup.

I went out to South Metropolitan TAFE for a PD day, and taught them about #AI and we did a Regional She Codes Australia event down in Mandurah,

Arian Nevjestic and I spoke at the Return to Work Program for Mums that Renee Noble ran

In August we went to Kubernetes Community Day. Jorge Arteiro and Regina Lin did an excellent talk and we had a stand. We started a #Rust Community Meetup in Perth.

I got to judge a Curtin Computer Science Students Association (ComSSA) #Hackathon at 澳大利亚科廷科技大学 and I went out to The University of Western Australia to give a guest lecture to the Masters Program Students.

George and I went to the Wongy GoSH #Hackathon and presented on #AI and what the next generation could build with it.

We hosted GovHack at Microsoft Perth in the same weekend as BSides Perth

In September YOW! Conferences came to Perth and I got to do some track hosting before going off to Copenhagen with NDC Conferences for their #Developers festival. I did a couple of certification training workshops with George Coldham and my Responsible AI Session.

I went out to 澳大利亚科廷科技大学 to do a Panel for the Advanced Science Course.

We started recording Season 3 of New Breakpoint. The first episode was with Michelle Duke (aka Mish Manners Hackathon Queen)

I got to teach some sessions for Azure Bootcamp.

It was also The BiG Day In in Perth and they always let me Keynote that with a talk called "This is IT".

I taught a couple of sessions at #GeekReady - those are our internal readiness training sessions.

I went to Singapore to judge another Curtin Computer Science Students Association (ComSSA) #Hackathon for 澳大利亚科廷科技大学

It was DDD Perth - largest developer conference in the country. 1400 attendees. We had a platinum stand next to a gold one for GitHub. We had several days of GitHub workshops aligned to the conference.

In October, I did a guest lecture out at Edith Cowan University

We had another She Codes Workshop.

We had several Microsoft Student Accelerator ANZ events throughout the year, both online and in person

I went out to Murdoch University to do a Guest lecture on Generative AI.

I recorded more sessions for New Breakpoint with Graeme Foster and then Lars Klint and then Kate Kirwin and Amy Kapernick

I went to #NDCPorto where I did my Responsible AI Talk

I went to Malaysia to meet my new Asia Team.

In November/December I went to Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney for YOW! Conferences - we had a stand, and they let me do Track hosting as well as the morning announcements and acknowledgement of country.

I also spoke at DDD Brisbane on Codespaces, copilot and azure web apps.

I judged the The Game Changer Awards had some more #Rust MeetUps

We made Ryan J. Salva do an event at the Reactor as well as doing his YOW Tour events. But he was awesome and they loved him.

We did a Code without Barriers event in Perth

We brought some swag to BeerOps Perth and Brisbane.

José Valim did a YOW! Nights event in Perth.

There was a final #SheCodes Workshop

We did a final bootcamp with demos

So much more I could have said about the people I met, the stories they told and the lessons I learnt... but I'll start with this - and hopefully, if you follow me, you'll read more of the stories along the way.