Looking Back on 2021

It's that time of year again. You know, the time where you start to question everything you are doing with your life, wonder if you have achieved anything at all - and desperately try to fill in your quarterly review forms with the words "What was my impact?" looming large in your mind. No? Just me then...

Thanks to the Metaverse there is no need to panic. Instagram is the pictorial record of my life (and the only evidence admissible in the courtroom of the future) and it allows me to recall all those activities I have undertaken over the year. I only use my cache memory these days, and with all the updates hitting my brain it's a virtual green field of new information, with a slow search on archived data.

In January we were finally able to return to Western Australia after 5 months locked-down and locked-out whilst I worked remotely in Belgium. Unlike many people who have lost loved ones during this pandemic, we were extremely privileged to be able to be with our family at this, the worst of all times. I was so grateful to be working for Microsoft who enabled and supported me in working remotely. I had the tools, the backing and the best customers. I've always said that Microsoft has a work from anywhere philosophy and that they don't care if I am working for Sydney, Seattle or Singapore. They don't ask me what hours I work. I just have to get my job done. During this time, they showed how well that works. #OutcomesNotHours #MicrosoftLife #TrustYourTeam

We returned home and went straight into quarantine. The hotel was good and our friends and colleagues sent us daily food parcels. The day we got out of the hotel the State had already gone into Lockdown. We returned home without seeing any of our friends but we found our dogs waiting for us and after some confusion, we were almost smothered to death with their excited kisses. I passed my AI Fundamentals, Data Fundamentals and AI Associate Exams in January 2021, and swore I'd do one of month for the rest of the year.

I started well, passing my Data Scientist Associate Certification in February. We also had the first She Codes event of the year and Global Diversity CFP Day, where I was on a cool panel with these legends - Bec Waters (Chair of DDDPerth and Vice Chair of ACS WA), Jess Dodson (GirlGerms - matriarch of all the security domains), Alanksha Malik - Queen of Data Science. Jia Keatnuxsuo and Amy Kapernick were on other sessions for the same event that day.

March - no certs. ABCN came into the office for one of our mentoring programs. It's been another strange year for students, difficult to get out and visit Universities or to get any sense of what the world will look like when we return to some sense of normality. But in WA we suffered less than most and my mentee Phoenix and I were able to go out and visit Murdoch Uni, and the WA Museum.

It was the 6th Anniversary of She Codes and they reached an exciting milestone of impacting over 5,000 women.?The one day workshops enable women to learn how to code, choosing from Python, CSS, HTML, Django and WordPress. It gives them a taster, but more than that, it introduces them to a supportive community, which an each-one-teach-one mindset where mentors will encourage you to learn and offer help, but so might the person sitting next to you, and you might help them.

We also celebrated International Women's Day with Dr Michelle Ellis from ECU, who arranged for students from a bunch of schools to come out and learn some Data Science and AI from Elizabeth Antoine - Data Science Blackbelt, as well as Jia and I.

Developer Meetups started to meet in-person from April and we went over to Bankwest to see Amy Kapernick present to the Female Coder Collective on how to use CSS Grid and build websites on Azure.

In May it was Data Science Month and we went out to see Sarada Lee and Liz Dallimore on a Panel about the Future of Data. It was also Big Day In at UWA and I got to Keynote to students about how no matter what their skills or interests, there are roles for them in technology. Introvert or extrovert, artistic, creative, problem-solving, collaborative or loner - all these skills are needed and we will give you plenty of time to learn on the job.

There was another She Codes at the end of May. It's a fantastic program to Mentor and I'm always there with Jia, Vanessa Ma, and Ben Curran from our office, but there are also so many MVPs and Partners and Customers that send people to support those workshops too. RAC WA and Bunnings, some of my favourite customers are also Sponsors and send squads of Mentors (which is smart - as they can recruit directly from the floor as they observe how the diverse students learn, collaborate, and pair-program).

In June the ACS Launched it's annual Digital Pulse and in my role as Chair I presented on how much demand there is for more people with the skills to work in technology and how much those workers could jump-start the economy bringing innovation and growth to the whole country.

In July I moved to a new role as a Developer Engagement Lead in the Azure Business Group. My focus is on emerging developer communities - Students, User Groups, Open Source, Data Science and AI. As always, I'd submitted a few Session Proposals for DDDPerth and was delighted to receive confirmation that my joint session with Jia had been accepted. It was a busy month for Developer Meetups too. Fenders Perth and Female Coders Collective, and the Python WA Meetup all ran in-person sessions.

Curtin University formed a new school of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences and I was invited to join their advisory board.

South Metro TAFE had a careers day and I went out with Antoinette Jago and her team of Security Specialists as well as George Coldham and his team from Empired.

In August I went out to ICRAR and met a bunch of Data Scientists and talked about setting up a new Institute of Data supported by UWA. Microsoft hosted an Azure Synapse Session for the Microsoft Data and Analytics Meetup. There was another She Codes Workshop (are you counting how many there have been this year?! Unprecedented!). The Perth Machine Learning Group had an awesome session on robotic fruit picking. I went out to the WA Data Science and Innovation Hub for a visit. Microsoft Codess ran 3 days of panels, mentoring and other student career activities.

And of course, it was DDD Perth. Microsoft were a Gold Sponsor, and this meant I was able to host a stand, build a robot to showcase on it and get lots of swag to give away. Martin Abbot ran the stand for me on the day whilst Jia and I also had our Conference session to deliver. I managed to find him a whole bunch of friends to help. Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors, MVPs and Microsoft Partners, Cloud Solution Architects, Account Technology Strategists, Customer Success Account Managers, Interns, Grad Hires and more all pitched in to hand out Tshirts and stickers. They also demonstrated the Azure Percept LEGO Mobile that Goran Vuksic (original designer and MVP) and George Coldham (LEGO lover and Microsoft Partner from Empired) helped me to build. What made the stand so much fun wasn't just the cool demo that utilised Azure Machine Learning with Custom Vision, but the range of team members you could chat to about careers at Microsoft. Jia and I talked about Black Box Data Science Models and how it is possible to know what the AI is thinking. Click Here to check out the recording of our session here if you are at all intrigued.

In September and October I did some careers Panels for RMIT. We were talking about career choices, choosing mentors and why working in technology is cool. Check out the on-demand sessions here if you need some tips: Hot Industry Careers and The Future of Work

I also talked to Students from Curtin University about the power of LinkedIn and how building brand and network using tools like this in combination with showcasing your work through contributing to the Open Source Community on GitHub are critical to success in both finding a job and building your career.

I started a series of events with ICRAR and UWA around building and supporting the Data Science Community. We ran a LinkedIn Session, a Pathways to Data Science Careers Session and a Data Science Panel, where Elizabeth Antoine, Liesel Hughes and Jia Keatnuxsuo shared their journeys and answered questions about how to get into roles in Data and AI, and what those roles might look like.

We also decided to add a little augmented support to the Microsoft Traineeship Program running in WA, by inviting the Trainees and their Microsoft Partner and Customer Organisation Managers to our office, to build community and hang out with us and our Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors on a weekly basis.

I went back out to South Metro TAFE with MVP Ashlee Culmsee and her team from Seven Sigma Business Solutions, as well as Kiri Mews from With Precision PTY to teach students how to build an App in a Day using Low Code/No Code Solutions on Power Platform. We went out again in December to teach their Lecturers during their PD day.

Microsoft Garage ran the annual Microsoft Hackathon. I always like to join the Nuevo Foundations Anyone Can Code Team to help build content to enable students into STEM Careers. My friend Beatris Mendez Gandica has inspired me since the moment our Mentor Dr Theresa Devaux introduced us, and the annual hackathon is a chance to reconnect and build something together.

YOW Perth also ran and I got to be a session host for the tremendous Felienne Hermans who taught us how to read complex code. Maybe you have never thought about it, but reading code can be confusing in many ways. Code in which you do not understand the variable names causes a different type of confusion from code that is very tightly coupled to other code. It was cool to unpack some of the thoughts behind how we can make that easier for others to understand.

I helped out at Perth Games Festival. It's always interesting to see how our local independent games developers are doing and what they are building. Many of the AR/VR/MR developers working in the large end of town build games in their down-time and the skills they perfect for fun are invaluable to industry. Digital Games is a 100 Billion dollar industry, it makes more money than Hollywood - but lack of investment is holding back what could be an enormous source of wealth for Australia. In the afternoon Jia and I went over to NIT for a Careers Day.

BSIDES Perth also ran, and I spent the weekend watching Security sessions with Antoinette Jago and George Coldham. Much as a prefer Developer Conferences, this is always a really good one and it doesn't take much pushing for me to give up my weekend to attend it.

I also had Sorielle Smith come in and do work experience with me for a week. That was very handy as she built the first version of the Percept Mobile Ultimate Robot 2 that I wanted to have ready for Latency Conf at end of Nov. She also got to spend time with people throughout the office learning about what different roles there are in technology and what the key differentiator is between them. On Day 1 she learnt it wasn't enough to understand what their mission was, because every Microsoftie would say the same thing with slightly different words. She would have to get out of them what they needed to deliver in order to convince their boss they were smashing it. A harder nugget to get out of most people than you'd think...

In October I did an Episode of New Breakpoint with a Data Scientist called Andrew Jansen from The Supervising Scientist Branch of the Federal Government. Andrew talked about how they used Azure - Microsoft's Cloud Computing Platform #CustomVision and #MachineLearning to monitor fish populations and track the impact of pollution.

DataEngConfAU ran over the course of a week, Sergio, Jia and Sabrina taught an Azure Synapse Workshop and Elizabeth Antoine and some of her colleagues delivered a session talking about their creation The Albero - Decision Tree which helps you know when to use what – the full Azure data estate. Galina Polyakova talked about Modern Data Warehouses.

UWA launched its Institute of Data and I sit on the Industry Advisory Board for that. We had a really interesting roundtable discussion to hear what keeps most people awake at night when thinking about data. And we asked the question: What is standing between you and the data you need to make decisions?

Data Science itself is not the solution to all our problems. It's the combination of data science and domain knowledge that leads to the answer

I went out to ECU and deliver a guest lecture on the Modern Trolley Problem and the algorithms governing self-driving cars. It meant I could talk about philosophy and responsible AI Principals, as well as dive into some of the tech around custom vision and object detection.

In November it was the WiTWA Conference and Microsoft bought a table and it was super-fun to build LEGO together thanks to Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie's Session. We loved seeing Liesel Hughes take to the stage to talk about diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It was Microsoft Ignite on the same day and I facilitated a panel with an MVP, a Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador, and a Grad Hire, now Associate CSA. Definitely one of my favourite events and you can catch the replay here.

I was a judge at the Game Changer Awards, inspiring STEM innovation in WA Schools. There were student teams from schools all over the State entering students in years 3-10 to showcase their innovative solutions to world challenges. I was astounded to see a team of students in the youngest category demonstrating a solution that involved object detection, obstacle avoidance and machine learning - exactly the kind of thing I demo at adult developer conferences. I was delighted to hear that they won, not just their category but the overall competition. The older students could definitely have learnt something from these young women.

I met a wonderful teacher who invited me down to Mandurah to visit a Neurodiverse Coder Dojo group of kids and see what they were building in Python and Minecraft. I brought my husband and dogs to visit them as we drove south for our holidays in December and it was the perfect way to start our trip.

There was another She Codes Workshop in November, check out their Impact Report if you are interested in sponsoring them.

Now more than ever we are seeing the need to double down on investment in STEM education, by building the pipeline of talent to fill the technical jobs of the future. Since the pandemic started in 2020 we are seeing a 30% increase in salaries in tech and a skills shortage is already evident in many locations in Australia.

We ran an Innovate with Azure Skills Bootcamp and I was able to host a panel with Data Scientist Jin Yu, Blackbelt Elizabeth Antoine and Cloud Solution Architect Liesel Hughes where they answered a lot of questions about working in Data and AI careers.

We ran a Sustainability Hackathon with groups made up of Microsoft Student Learn Ambassadors, Microsoft Trainees and Microsofties. Microsoft Intern Vanessa Ma co-hosted that event with Jia and there were some judges from the senior leadership team and account teams.

I went out to North Metro TAFE to see their end of year Projects and the prizes being awarded. This is always a highlight for me and I was pleased to see a few She Codes alumni also there to lend their support.

Then it was finally December - and we kicked off with Latency Conf. I'd been excited for this one for months. George Coldham and I had rebuilt the LEGO Percept Mobile. Sorielle Smith had built a camera trolley robot with a new kit we purchased, but George determined it would be better balanced if we tried to integrate the Azure Percept device into the frame, with the Raspberry Pi and the Super Pi on top. So we spent a weekend rebuilding that. Well I say we... George worked on the robot frame, I trained the Percept to recognise Cones and Lego men from its higher viewpoint. We also had code to edit, and the main issue was the Pi needed to use Python 2, also George told the robot to kill the LEGO men not avoid them - the results were disturbing... I built a Progressive Web App for Sarada Lee and I to integrate with Custom Vision (classification this time, instead of object detection like the Percept) and demo during our conference session. That session is not yet available in replay, but I'll post the link as soon as it is. That was a fun app as well. You can try it here. It uses custom vision and Azure Machine Learning to judge if the furry creatures living in your house are Shihtzus or Ewoks (pets or predators). If you want to argue about how cuddly Ewoks are, I'm prepared to fight you on this one...

I wrote an article for the Microsoft Developer Blog about coding for good, which is something we should all do to make the world a little better.

I haven't talked about the Microsoft Student Accelerator which I picked up in the 2nd half of the year. The Microsoft Interns and the Student Learn Ambassadors ran the program really well, with 1500 Students starting, 150 graduating, and the top 20 getting some focused mentorships with MVPs or Industry people (most of those have started, but we will continue them into the new year). In 2022 we are planning a more connected student journey using that program as the integrated framework. It will have a choice of 3 fundamentals certifications (you can do 3 but only need 1 to graduate), choice of 3 portfolio projects (build 2 out of 3 - so you have evidence to show industry of what you can do), career panels, and Industry sessions, plus learning bootcamps, Protégé and finally Imagine Cup. It's a pathway that will set students up for success and I'm looking to integrate more MVPs, Microsoft Partners, Industry and Microsoft staff to mentor and guide students into their careers. I'm going to need a lot of Microsoft Student Learn Ambassadors to help too. So if you are a student who wants to lead, do apply!

So, here we are, back in December - and I realise my pledge to complete a Microsoft Certification a month died back in February 2021. I completed 4 this year, not 12... so, in an attempt to end the year well, I have my AZ-220 booked and if that goes well, I will book 2 more in January. Here's to an impactful new year, with renewed focus and fun in learning.

What will you do?

TLDR: Get the TikTok recap (turn the music up loud)