My take aways from Build conference 2017

From Stockholm to Seattle

So, my journey to Build ′17 started out with the hard-to-avoid longhaul flight to Seattle from Stockholm, Sweden, via Amsterdam. We (me and my colleagues) arrived at 11 pm in Seattle on the 9th. The rest of the day was spent dealing with jetlag (20 min snooze turned into 4h sleep), along with catching up on emails and other work-related tasks.

10th of May (Day 1) - I got interviewed!

The morning started out with a 3-hour keynote session, presenting a lot of cool new stuff, among them, the new Presentation Translator was introduced, and used, throughout the entire keynote. The cool thing about this new product is that it captures speaking voices and translates them to almost all written languages automatically!

But above all, I think, as an avid Azure user, that the coolest new release was Azures new cloud-based bash shell

Other cool stuff included the new Visual Studio for Macs and the new Cosmos DB, a new multimodel database service! But above all, I think, as an avid Azure user, that the coolest new release was Azures new cloud-based bash shell. It is very useful to be able to get a cloud-CLI in Azure!

I also went to a bot-Session with Mat Velloso and Ryan Volum. They talked about Microsoft Bot Framework and showed what is possible to create at the moment. Among other things, talking to a robot, asking questions and getting answers is a function.

Another thing that happened on day 1, was that got interviewed by Microsoft! I got to express my opinion on the initial keynotes, which I really thought were quite good, you can really tell that Microsoft is catching up to a lot of other vendors on the developer-side.

11th of May (Day 2) - Mixed Reality

I started the second day out with a keynote on the all new Mixed Reality framework. Mixed Reality I think is best described as an HTC Vive, with some AR functionality, but with you not having to put out markers in a room to be able to move around in a room, in full VR mode, unlike the Vive. Its a really cool new step in the development of VR/AR.

At the session we got a customer example on how to use  Mixed Reality, and some concrete advice on how to start working with it.

• Brainstorm ideas
• Prototype early and often
• Get involved in community forums
• Use detail example 360 audio.
• Have designers and developers work together.

More closely related to the AppliedGroup business, I went on a lecture, discussing how to run AI in Petabyte Scale with Cognitive functions in the Azure Data lake. Really interesting stuff. The lecturer went through the different AI products and how to use them in a bigger scale.

I went on a lecture, discussing how to run AI in Petabyte Scale with Cognitive functions

To finish off the day, I went to the big party Microsoft had arranged at the Centurylink Field. It was really cool, we got to move around on the arena floor, crazy event!

12th of May (Day 3) - I tested the Mixed Reality headset!

The final day was mainly spent getting to know more about the emerging AI stack in Azure. The lecturer at the presentation I was at discussed what both the past, and the present Azure AI stack have looked like, and developed into, but also where it is going. It was really interesting to see best practices on how to use GPUs in Azure.

I also got the opportunity to try out the all new Mixed Reality headsets. I got to build an animation with a dragon and a magician, build a 3D unicorn (which is funny because my name means unicorn in swedish), and test hololens. Mixed reality was at its coolest when I was up in an air balloon and could see things disappear under my feet.

Overall, the Build Conference was really cool. It′s an amazing opportunity to get, to be able stay at the forefront of all these new tchnologies, many of which I am going to be using in my daily work. You can really tell that Microsoft is transitioning into an all new cloud-based, developer friendly company. Everything from det new dotnet core to the developments in Azure indicates a new approach to the developer community at large.

See you next year hopefully!