South Coast Summit 2022! Where is it? And don't say the south!

Well...

That was an eventful event!

Hi all! I hope you're all well!

I...am not. Haha. I wish your body could say..."stop and chill out"...by actually saying..."stop and chill out", instead of...making you ill.

Even so, I did have the best time at the South Coast Summit 2022 and wish I could go to big Microsoft events every month. I love that I have a few personas now when I'm at them. I have Laura who wants to see her friends, Laura who wants to meet new people, Laura who wants to introduce people to people, Laura who wants to learn EVERYTHING, Laura who wants to present, Laura who is finding new Tech Trump Card role models, Laura who is taking notes for her blog, Laura who is taking photographs for her blog, Laura who draws for her blog, Laura who enjoys a good hotel, Laura who is thinking of fun new initiatives and things to create, Laura who wants to collect lots of swag, and Laura who likes to travel and see new places (only when the travelling is fairly smooth and not a pain in the...neck). I really really really really really love it. I love this industry and community. I love Microsoft. I love tech. Love love love.

I realise I said 'a few' and then listed like 15, but it just goes to show what one of these events can be for someone.

**This WILL be another BEAST of a blog post. It WILL be worth it though and I'm NOT sorry. You can't sum up one of these awesome events properly and give it the justice it deserves in a 5 minute read. I would suggest you have the browser read to you and imagine my voice with a different accent, that's always fun to do. I actually do that myself to check it over. And then I wish I had a more interesting accent, but never mind that.

It all began...once upon a time on Thursday 13th October 2022. It was a lovely day for a drive....

I smashed a glass before I came out...nope, two glasses. Awesome.

The journey was great! Lots of power singing to 90s/00s alternative/rock music. Nearly lost my voice.

The hotel have made it possible for people to check themselves in, but with a person standing by... could I do it?! No...he basically had to do it for me. I did not want to tell him that I was there for a TECH conference. I would have been super embarrassed if I hadn't been so tired.

Does anyone know how to alter the temperature of a hotel room? Seriously? I can never do it. I don't even know if are we allowed, or if it's even possible? Am I trying to do something that isn't possible? Are we allowed to determine the temperature that we want in our own hotel room? Or is that just the expensive rooms that allow that? I don't know. Thankfully the windows open in my room.

Every time I came out of my hotel room, I nearly walked into a wall. For some reason, my natural reaction to coming out of a hotel room is to go right. No idea why. I'm so weird.

Had room service...food was fab. They forgot my drink. Did I do anything about it?...no.

The next day...was Friday.

I asked where the breakfast was, and it was quite obviously right in front of me...in the restaurant area with lots of tables. Welcome to Laura Southampton!

Got to the venue, parked up, showed Carl Mosteckyj from Power 365 Solutions how to gain access to the Ageas Bowl after watching him for a minute look a bit lost. Then I spent the whole morning being completely lost myself. It was like karma for getting that tiny bit of joy out of smugly showing him I knew where the entrance was. For the next half hour, I was trying to find the right room that I was meant to be in for the Digital Contact Center workshop. I eventually found it. Everyone in the building, at some point had an encounter with me because I was asking every single room if that was THE room. Eventually a kind man looked it up and took me there. Thank you kind man!

This workshop was being led by Tricia Sinclair , Kai Stenberg , Mark O. and Sara Lagerquist . There was a good amount of slide deck, demoing and labs. We were also given a telephone number each, which was amazing. It's so hard to test Omnichannel properly without having a number.

The reason I chose to do this workshop was because I have opted myself in to doing a presentation at work on the subject, focusing a bit on Voice channel and wanted to fill in some gaps in my knowledge, like bots, PVAs, Azure stuff...Azure stuff still freaks me out though, I really need to have a deeper look into Azure in its entirety. I could do with a simplified diagram of Azure. Is that a thing?

Lunch was nice! Chilli and nachos. Mm mm mmm.

I had the opportunity to go and speak with my pals Simon Owen and Damien Bird , so that was good.

Amusingly, some people (ahem Liam O'Brien ?? ) walked past me in a hurry several times without noticing it was me, and then messaged me to say, "are you here?...it would be cool to introduce myself properly". Made me laugh a lot.

It wasn't even the main conference day yet and it was such a nice atmosphere, makes me smile as soon as the elevator doors open, and you can hear the buzziness of techie people getting their hack on before you've even rounded the corner to the main room. I popped my head into the Hackathon and everybody seemed to be having a good time, focused and working really hard. It had a different atmosphere to when I was doing it last year. The room this time was dimmer, the tables were all laid out differently and the briefs were very different, but I expected that bit.

I enjoyed the workshop a lot and it was run very well with Mark, Kai, Sara and Tricia bouncing off each other and jumping in with additional things to share. I suddenly went from being quiet to joining in some banter and then panicked that I'd upset the room, but after checking, it thankfully wasn't the case haha. Phew.

We had a few technical difficulties with the phone numbers which was unfortunate, but I still learnt a lot of stuff- the information that you only really get from people who have a lot of experience in that particular area, rather than the stuff you can find online.

After the workshop I was knackered and ready for a nap. Others I bumped into were Patrick Byrne ???? and Kristine Kolodziejski ??? . And was also seen by Bill Irvine , although I didn't have the joy of clocking him unfortunately. Sorry Bill.

I went back to my hotel around half five, six-ish, got a little bite to eat and had a shower, laid down for a bit and then tried to dress myself up a bit, which I found stressful. I'm still not in a place where I'm super confident with my health and appearance, but this time next year I will hopefully be a few stone lighter and strutting my stuff with a spring in my step at the next SCS! haha.

I then got back out and drove back to the venue for the Oktoberfest party, which was a very interesting night indeed. People were dressed in lederhosen outfits, there was beer, bratwurst sausages in crumbly buns and a band. They started to play lots of typical well-known songs and got people up to dance and play games. The dancing involved swaying side to side, front and back and then touching the ground...there were games of stealing each other's hats, holding a jug of beer at arm's length for the longest time, marching around the room repeatedly and my favourite part was watching the lead singer go round with the microphone making everybody sing. I don't know if he meant to do it, but he kept pulling the mic away before the person finished the line and it was just hilarious to watch. Thankfully he decided not to keep going around the room just before getting to us. It was one of those moments where you knew that you didn't really want to do it (no one wants to hear me sing), but you'd have to, otherwise everyone will just think that you're no fun.

I got to meet Charlie Phipps-Bennett ???? in person and his partner in crime Alexandre Baker-Wong which was lovely, along with Andy O'Donnell , Damian Bell and Mo Islam . Really nice bunch.

Spider man showed up...as you would expect at an Oktoberfest Microsoft summit party, and he was very kindly taking photographs of everyone.

Selfie with Spiderman at the Oktoberfest party.

A question for you all...do I appear to look like someone who doesn't drive or own a car?

I had a conversation where several people joined in, who were trying to guess what car I drove and for some reason, the general response to hearing that I drive was..."you have a car?"

Why is that the response? haha. No lifts for you!

It made me laugh because the first person who said it likes to wind me up...and then it was asked a further 2 times by others!

It occurred to me at this event that Damien Bird and Paul Murana should be monitored at all times when together. They are a right pair of trouble makers!

One thing that really got me at this event, was that I was often recognised as the Tech Trump Laura! ("I didn't realise that you Laura, were the Tech trump Laura!") ...Yes it's me!

It was a very bizarre feeling having the knowledge that I am recognised by some in the community because of my blog when I still feel so new and unworthy of being noticed. I had some lovely messages afterwards by some fab people, telling me that they were talking about me with others at the event, about the work I do for the community. It really does mean a lot and I'm so glad I'm having a positive impact. It's so nice to be told that I'm valued in the community...and that's after only a year of being within it. I still don't quite believe it and it still doesn't quite sink in, but I'm working on that.

I aim to get to know everybody and with their permission, share their talents and stories with other people. This hopefully resulting in creating connections and a map to those that can support the community in different areas.

So, thanks everyone.

Right! So, the conference!!!

Accessibility and Inclusion – UI/UK PowerApps – Charlie Phipps-Bennett ???? and Alexandre Baker-Wong

My first session of the day was by Charlie and Alex from Ingentive , and they did a talk on accessibility and inclusivity for PowerApps. I really enjoyed this talk because the subject means a lot to me.

A photo taken by me of Charlie and Alex presenting at the South Coast Summit 2022.

I myself, have an anxiety disorder, difficulties with my hearing, have a tendency to suffer with depression and also seem to have some kind of difficulty absorbing information and communicating clearly. When I see a screen or a page that has got lots and lots and lots of text on it, close together tiny font, or even lots of cornered shapes and lines, it makes me uncomfortable and almost panicky. I can't deal with information that way or learn much from content set out like that. I do know that when I've found a way around it, I'm golden.

Some of the things that Charlie and Alex spoke about, I already knew. However, this is still something that people don't incorporate into their work, sometimes me included. Talking about it will hopefully really drum into people that it needs to be considered more and incorporated into design right at the start of projects.

I know that I've felt very frustrated on several occasions when there is a horrific looking policy that has to be read, learning content that is just streams and streams of words, or heavy design documents or contracts that need to be created or understood. This particular example actually freaked me out when I entered this community. I panicked and was thinking...oh my gosh, how am I going to be able to keep up or do this? People are going to think I’m incapable!

Thankfully I’ve found tools to help me, and they are a godsend, such as ‘Read aloud’ on Edge browser, recording meetings when the purpose is to learn, listen to instructions or do brainstorming. I also use speech to text apps to start off my writing process so that the blank page doesn’t seem so daunting, and I can get my initial thoughts out in any state that they may come. I even wear glasses whilst looking at screens that block blue light, because I get headaches and then feel stressed.

So, I am going to give a summary of this session but first, I want to say well done to Charlie and Alex for working on this topic and doing this session. And also, thanks to Dona Sarkar for being involved too.

There was a little irony in this session, as the slides were not super easy for everybody to see…including the speakers. It wasn’t their fault however; the screen was quite small. The slides were very good, I thankfully sat right at the front and could see them. I very much enjoyed seeing Charlie ordering Alex to point to the screen on various occasions like he was giving the weather report. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of that, but I wish I had. They have a really nice rapport going between them and present well together.

A photo taken by me of the slide that Charlie suddenly recruited Alex as a weatherman.

Takeaways:

• Use Live to announce changes to content (label control only) - Live.Assertive | Live.Off | Live.Polite
• Use Role to announce the type of label (label control only)- TextRole.Default | TextRole.Heading | TextRole.Subheading
• Use ClosedCaptionsURL to add captions and add a description for videos
• Use Creator Kit - has a theme designer - deploy to tenant
• Remember that system colour themes – default, dark and light– are linked to the MS Teams theme settings
• Pick accessible colours (company /marketing colours)
• 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women are affected by colour blindness. And there are several types. red-green | blue-yellow | no colour
• Use 12 + pxls font
• Controls:

-???????TabIndex

-???????Logical control order

-???????Grouped controls don't work well with the default order when being announced. Grouping controls in containers is better.

• Get User feedback
• Add meaningful screen names
• Include accessibility in your test cases
• Connect with an accessibility expert
• Avoid complexity - Less is more
• Embedded content can be accessible too
• Use Accessibility Checker
• Limitations:

-???????Dialogs and overlays - not supported

-???????Use Data tables and not galleries to present data in rows and columns.

-???????Keyboard users can't scroll forms, scrollable content and containers without interactive controls inside them.

A Selfie with Charlie and Alex - top duo! Please ignore the crazy looking greys showing up quite prominently on my head in this photo.

So that's it, that's what I can pass onto you on this session! If you ever get a chance to go to one of Charlie and Alex's talks or to any talk regarding accessibility and inclusivity, go, because it is really important. A lot of people have at least one difficulty to deal with and if they are anything like me, they will often feel like they have to force some unnatural adjustment in themselves or just make do because everybody else seems to get by fine with the way things are. That shouldn't be the case.

I know it makes a little extra work for everybody, but it really really means the world to people who need it and can benefit from it. The wider picture here also is that it helps everyone in the long run.?I hope to do talks about this subject in the future also.

Check out their YouTube channel - The Power Platform Duo - YouTube

And here is a link to MS Learn pages on the topic - Create accessible canvas apps - Power Apps | Microsoft Learn

Next was...

Cloud flows debugging and error handling - Tomasz Poszytek

Tomasz did a talk on debugging flows and error handling. I really wanted to go to this session because I know that whenever I've done a flow in Power Automate, and then an error has come up, I don't always understand what the system is telling me the issue is. So, I was looking forward to getting some tips on how to understand that better.

A photo taken by me of Tomasz during his session - I liked this slide.

I enjoyed the session and especially enjoyed Tomasz’s enthusiasm throughout, partly demonstrated with the use of several memes.

Some of the things that were explained, I already knew about, such as some places to look when there is an error. Flow checker being the obvious one, the run history too being one of the first places that I go to check how things went.

The error details section is the bit that I find difficult to understand. And to be honest, I still don't understand what it's telling me a lot of the time, that probably won't change until I've had mountains of practice with lots of different flows.

The bit that I hadn’t previously known about or had ever thought to try before, was editing the columns in the run history section, so that you can see more information. That was a good shout, and I will definitely be doing that in the future.

I also didn't realise that you could test various stages of the flow rather than the whole thing which is cool AND that you could also add in actions that can run after a particular action has failed. Such as actions that only run if the flow has failed and can let you know that there's an error.

Some things to try when fixing logic:

• Replace existing trigger with a manually created trigger – it’s easier to modify.
• Resubmit flow rather than re-triggering it manually.
• Use the ‘Run after’ command to turn off larger pieces of logic in the flow.
• Use the ‘Terminate’ action – insert after the point that you want it to stop at, so the whole flow won’t run during checks.
• Use ‘static’ results – fake execution of a problematic action.

Tomasz also went into some detail about ‘Try, Catch, Finally’. I don’t think I’d do it much justice trying to explain, so I'll finish up this summary here with a link to post that Tomasz created in 2019 but is still relevant today regarding Try, Catch and Finally: Try-Catch pattern in Microsoft Flow ? Tomasz Poszytek, Business Applications MVP

If you would like to try out this process yourself, here is a link to the template: Try, Catch, and Finally Template | Microsoft Power Automate

Tomasz YouTube channel - Tomasz Poszytek - YouTube

Next up...

Is the intranet dead? - Kevin McDonnell

Kevin McDonnell did a talk titled...Is the intranet dead?

Now, I might love Power Platform (I really really do), but I also absolutely love SharePoint (I can just hear the groans in the air). I love web design and besides the websites I've created in the past for my artwork, SharePoint has been my only other opportunity to build webpages and organise and create content for others to refer to.

This talk by Kevin wasn't to prove to us that the intranet no longer exists. No, it was to explain the ways in which the use of an intranet has changed and how it can be improved and appreciated again.

A photo taken by me of Kevin introducing himself during his session

I really wanted to go to this session because I have always appreciated the purpose of an intranet. A central source of information, that is accessible, maintained, and refreshed regularly, provides alerts, news and central storage for shared documentation.

My takeaways from Kevin's talk:

• The elements that seem to be coming in and changing the way we use intranets: social media channels, chats and more apps being created. This is making the need for an intranet seem out of date, static, not relevant to people's roles or what they want or need to see.
• Kevin explained that the intranet started off as a tool for sharing news and information > Then work tools and apps became available to add to intranets > then collaboration tools > social tools > then the ability to personalise the intranet for each individual or team.
• Kevin and CPS believe that the root of the problem regarding intranets is that they're unstructured and messy.

-Overworked comms teams get more requests capacity allows to process.

-There's a lack of training materials, and lack of governance

-There's mixed engagement from content owners and legacy content on there.

-And generally, it seems like a static impersonal intranet.

• Kevin and CPS believe that the way to make intranets relevant for employees is to get them integrated with apps used, understand role, location, colleagues and personalise the intranet to the employee. Get them integrated with social tools and built into the flow of work.
• The solution and answer that they have come up with is that the intranet should be built with Viva Connections. And this will make it more of an intelligent intranet.

-Doing this will get it embedded in the flow of work in MSTeams.

-Give it a powerful search across MS 365 and beyond.

-Give it audience targeted content, personalised feeds, better navigation to where employees need to go and an engaging and easy to use platform.

• There also needs to be and I believe this too, there needs to be champions, federated content creators and governance. And these roles need to be properly handed over when people leave.

I think that sounds like a pretty good idea.

I really liked this session and I really liked that there was a session about intranets in the first instance. I've not looked into Viva Connections, but I will do now.

So, thanks Kevin.

Blog - Mcd79 Blog

Automate Environment Creation with ??Michael Roth

I went to Michael's session which was based on automating the creation of environments. I always like it when there's a way to do something easier and quicker. The environments that Michael was focusing on for his session, were the production, sandbox and trial environments, so not the developer or default environments.

A photo taken by me of Michael's session

He had a few ways that you could automate the creation of environments and the reasons that he gave for wanting to do this were:

• to put in place an environment strategy if you don't already have one
• to give makers something to try and develop
• and if you are doing training or labs with customers or with employees, this is a good way to get environments created quickly for a group of people.

So a few of the ways that Michael talked about:

• Landing zones for power platform
• Environment request process from the CoE starter kit

Below are some links that I've found that give an overview of these two things.

Set up environment request components - Power Platform | Microsoft Learn

Power Platform Landing Zones (2022) - YouTube

Annoyingly, there was a chunk I missed of Michael's talk because I was eating popcorn at the same time, and a bit of popcorn went down my top which distracted me. I know...ridiculous right. I had to leave the popcorn down there for the rest of the session so that I didn't distract anyone else or look very weird and inappropriate throughout the session trying to find it. So so sorry about that Michael. It was a great session, I'm annoyed at myself for letting popcorn get the better of me and making me miss parts.

Michael's blog - Homepage Full Right (michaelroth42.com)

Let's design a data model - Andrew Welch

Andrew Welch is a fantastic human. Andrew's session on data models I needed to go to because I find them quite boggling. Not because I don't understand the concept, because I do. The thing I think I find challenging with data models is that there's no set way of doing it, which I find very frustrating. I like having processes to follow. I like being able to learn something and know that it's correct. Even Andrew burst my smug bubble by saying at the end that everybody has their own preferred way of doing this. My face dropped and I was screaming NOOOOO in my head, that's not what I wanted to hear. I just want there to be ONE way! ONE!

Photo taken by me of Andrew crushing my dreams of having just one way to do a good data model

In my mind, I think you would need an ERD for different parts of the project. So one really simple one that just has the entity name and then the one to many relationships. This would be for the customer to understand what will be created. And then have another one for the developer who is creating the data model and that could be more precise and detailed, showing the attributes, keys, schemas and types, so that they can build it.

I felt at the end of the session like there was a lot more I could learn from Andrew re data modelling. I actually asked him if there was any chance he would consider doing a workshop at like the next South Coast Summit because I would definitely go to that and I imagine others would too. I enjoyed the way he did the session. What I think I personally could do with, is Andrew helping me find my way of doing ERDs and then I could just stick to that.

Selfie with Andrew after his session

I believe Andrew is doing a session like this again at the following event: 17th November – UK Dynamics 365 and Power Platform User Group Meeting - London - UK Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Group (d365ppug.com)

Definitely go if you can.

Andrew's blog - About — Andrew D Welch

And last but by no means least...

The closing keynote was done by Dona Sarkar - How to delight 8 billion humans

Dona is just a fantastic speaker who works for 微软 . She has such a presence that just illuminates the whole room and she comes across as a woman of power and conviction and I love it. She says stuff, and you listen.

She made me giggle just before the session started, because she asked Simon Owen who was sitting next to me to time 20 minutes and then to give a signal to Dona. She then got Simon to practice it so that she knew what it was, and it was hilarious. Waving his finger around. I feel like every time I see Simon now, I'm just going to want to do that signal. It was just lovely.

Dona told us a bunch of stories. She said originally that she had nearly 50 stories that she could tell, but she only told the ones that were relevant to particular audiences. She chose around 10 of them for this session which was called 'How to delight 8 billion humans' which is always a great title for me because I like to delight people.

Photo taken by me of Dona giving us homework

Her talk involved inclusion, proactively including and excluding people, people with disabilities such as visual impairments, hearing impairments, cognitive impairment, speech impairment, mobility and neural impairments.

Dona went through some of the tools that can be used to proactively include people with disabilities. Tools such as plainlanguage.gov and Grammarly.

It wasn't just disabilities Dona wanted to talk about but people too. People in different locations, different regions, so people who don't have great access to Wi Fi and networks or have financial issues. How can we make our software, platforms, and content accessible offline so that those people aren't so heavily affected by the lack of wifi or electricity.

Dona's homework was for us to think about three questions.

• Who am I intentionally excluding?
• Who am I unintentionally excluding?
• And how can I shift left one step in my inclusion?

This is the process that she is referring to > research, ideation, design, development, testing deployment, customer feedback and version next.

So, I think what she's saying is, in the phases, how can you think about inclusion before you would usually start thinking about it?

Dona told us all to be an inclusion Control Freak because older you will be very grateful you did.

Below is a checklist of things to consider when being inclusive:

I plucked up the courage to ask Dona for a selfie at the end. Dona held my phone and then got me to press the button. So that was almost like an inclusive process in itself.

So, thanks Dona.

A selfie with Dona after her session at the SCS 2022

Dona's site - #DoTheThing (donasarkar.com)

So that's it!

Some other memorable moments...

• Ending my weekend with a wonderful dinner with Paul Murana, Rebekah H. , Liane P. , Nina L. and Alexio Tonderai Chandiwana

This was the first-time meeting my colleagues Liane and Rebekah face to face. I have the pleasure of mentoring Rebekah at work, and I'm tempted to ask Liane to mentor me! Both such fabulous ladies and I've just found out we live super close to each other! Win!

Photo taken by Nina of Rebekah, Liane and myself at the SCS 2022

Paul Murana telling us at dinner that he basically spent a large chunk of the summit playing Pacman to win the xbox at Avanade stand (which he did win by the way). Me then asking him...'well did you learn anything?'

Paul's lessons learnt were - "prudence outperforms bravery and...patience outperforms skill".

• Paul then actually walked off with my swag bag after we all said our goodbyes. I was getting up to leave and realised my bag is no longer there...he came downstairs with nothing! And left with my bag. I would have left it, but it had my cardigan in. Sly devil. He came back...it's all good.
• And seeing Nina again! Haven't seen her since our graduation of the CIT program! Such a nice way to end the weekend! Seriously!
• It was great to catch up with Dave Burrell , Carl Cookson , Gulshan Khurana and young Pranav Khurana too!
• So many companies exhibited which is fantastic.
• So many great talks.
• I love the fact the event is spread across a few days.
• And the socialising aspect is one of my favourite parts.

Two requests for future South Coast Summit - A Microsoft Cloud Technology Conference s...

1. Could there be a Halloween theme party in the future please?
2. And please could the workshops be on a separate day to the hackathon so that I have the opportunity to do both? haha - me me me.

I know this was a long one guys, but I hope you liked it. Next blog post will be the Tech Trump Cards of two awesome ladies! Keep an eye out for that!

Photo taken by Simon of myself, Paul, Damien and Mo at the Oktoberfest party

Photo taken by me of the Microsoft sign at the summit.

Thanks for reading!!