This past week, I had the opportunity to attend Microsoft Ignite as a community leader. This is by far one of the best things that have ever happened to me this year. Over the last few years, I started my career in tech I've always wanted to attend an international conference I just didn't know when I'll get the chance to.

Microsoft Ignite is an annual conference put together by Microsoft with over 25k attendees ranging from IT Professionals, developers, architects, and data professionals who want to expand their proficiencies. The event features learning paths providing unmatched opportunities to explore the latest tools, receive deep technical training, and get specific questions answered by Microsoft experts.

The conference ran for 5 consecutive days and I had a lot of sessions scheduled but all I was looking forward to is Learn, Explore and Connect while at the conference.

Day 1 (Vision Keynote)

The first day of the conference was insightful I had first-hand experience attending Satya's keynote session where he made a couple of announcements of new products and improvements to other Microsoft products. One of my favorites was announcing Visual Studio online and Live share support.

Other announcements include:

Azure Stack Edge
Azure Arc
Azure Synapse
Autonomous Systems
Azure Quantum
Microsoft Edge announcements

I also got the chance to attend other sessions which I found interesting so much content to digest with a wide range of topics and interesting sessions to attend. I was able to attend these sessions as well.

Travel the world, meet the community - Elaiza Benitez
Creating an inclusive community event - Lars Klint

The Partner Expo area is also one place I liked visiting because I got the chance to learn about products from Microsoft's Partner on the work they do and how they are leveraging Microsoft in their products and another perk you get is free swags who doesn't like free swags right??

Day 2 (Developer Keynote)

The developer keynote themed "Application development for everyone" was one session I was looking forward to and I was not disappointed because the keynote speaker was Scott Hanselman and oh well we know he's an amazing speaker.

Here are some of my takeaways from the Keynote:

• Visual Studio Online - You can create a dev environment in minutes just online and it works the exact way as Visual studio with access to the full extension marketplace.
• Azure functions now have new languages support .Net Core 3.0 and Powershell.

• Intellicode AI-assisted IntelliSense saves you time by putting what you’re most likely to use at the top of your completion list.

• Live share support which lets you do real-time collaboration.

We had several other demos on stage from other amazing speakers.

Another session was an AMA with Scott Hanselman put together for the community leaders and that one was certainly one of my favorite I have a lot of favorites sessions you know! We got the chance to ask Scott any question we had in mind and he also shared his story with the entire room.

The last session I was in was something I was looking forward to listening to and it was another session from Scott Hanselman you can say it was a Scott Hanselman dedicated day! 😆

Day 3 & 4 (More Sessions)

The following days were really busy as I tried to attend as many sessions as I could. I missed some interesting sessions I scheduled but the good thing is it's all recorded and available to watch after. I prioritized meeting people from attending the sessions because I know I can always go back and watch them.

I also had a short interview with the channel 9 team and I talked about what community means to me and how being at Ignite this year has impacted me.

I also met Brian Holt omg!! 🤯

A lot of interesting places in the hub worth mentioning but one of the best was the therapy animal area with a lot of pets to play with. Trust me I spent some time there.

Day 5 (Explore)

This was the last day of the conference after a long week I got the chance to explore since this was the last chance I had. One area I loved was the Diversity and Inclusion Lounge.

It had pictures and videos telling stories of people and the impact of Diversity and Inclusion. I think this is great to have this sort of thing at a conference because it creates a safe space for people not knowledgable in this area to learn as much as they can.

I made two recap vlogs during the conference on my YouTube channel check that one out as well.

This conference was a big win for me because I got to learn and make connections that I never would have thought was possible I'll like to thank the following people for helping out in one way or another Simona Cotin, Nitya, Piyali, Sarah, Adam, and Meghan.