At MobiLab, we support our colleagues in career development through various activities based on individual areas of learning. As part of this, we like to offer MobiLabbers the opportunity to attend a conference to gain technical knowledge and subsequently publish their key learnings in a blog post. Below you will find a blog post by our colleague Michi (26), who wrote about his conference visit to Denmark last year.
– João Rodrigues, Head of Cloud Adoption
Introduction
I am starting this blog by saying “Vi ses” which means “See you soon” in Danish. It was just a pleasure for me to visit Copenhagen for two days and be able to attend European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference 2022 (ESPC) and I am hoping to be in Copenhagen as a tourist another time.
In this blog, I want to share some insights and learnings that I had from my trip. As a small spoiler, I can already say that it was very worthwhile and I feel that I could take great advantage of my visit.
ESPC 22
Before I jump into my experiences, I want to explain the reason for my journey and why I selected ESPC in particular. At MobiLab, I am working in the Cloud Adoption domain as a Migration Engineer. My team and I focus on executing successful Cloud Migrations. I started my IT career as a Windows System Administrator and completed several tasks throughout all the different products and services on-premises. Joining MobiLab, my role underwent a transformation, providing me with valuable first hands-on experience in the field of Cloud, with a particular focus on Microsoft Azure.
Migrating workloads to the cloud might sound easy and quite straightforward but believe me – it isn’t. This process has a lot of technical implications which are sometimes hard to predict. With every issue occurring, you start to learn a lot about how things seem to work in Azure. As there are sometimes a lot of issues, it leads to a rapid learning curve. All in all, this role was a great achievement and I am thankful for all the different challenges that we had to tackle together as a team during migrations.
On top of doing Cloud Migrations, I started to draft my first architecture designs and got familiar with the architectural considerations and concepts. In the end, this led me to decide I want to be a Cloud Architect in the future. Of course, this is not an easy task and requires a lot of study but also hands-on experience while doing some actual work. By providing a career development plan, MobiLab supports me on my way to this new role.
One part of the career development plan is the chance to attend one conference to strengthen one’s knowledge. Long story short, I researched a suitable conference and found ESPC22 which was taking place in Copenhagen from 28.11.2022 – 01.12.2022. At the heart of this conference were Microsoft 365 products accompanied by a strong focus on various security-related topics, including governance and compliance. As someone preparing for the Microsoft security exam (MS-500), I could not have asked for a more perfect fit than this conference.
Conference Day One: ESPC22 at Bella Center
When I arrived at Bella Center, I received a warm welcome from the hosts. They provided a welcoming package and some baskets of fruits along with some tea and coffee. Bella Center is a huge conference center that also has a connected hotel to it. The center has a big event hall, some auditoriums and also a bunch of meeting rooms.
The event started with a thrilling performance of the Copenhagen Drummers. In the end, they even used burning drumsticks! After the welcoming keynote, all presentations were open and optional to anyone interested in a particular topic. I believe this is a good concept, especially as no forced agenda had to be followed. Between talks, there was a quick break to change rooms if required. An expo with booths of different vendors and an offering to meet the experts was offered, too. So you could have an intensive chat about the topic you were interested in with them. In addition, there were three longer breaks including one lunch break. Each of them had either snacks or a lunch buffet offered. Overall, the event was very well organized.
As part of this conference, some Microsoft representatives were invited to give some introduction keynotes every morning. On day one, the latest products (like Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Syntex or Microsoft Loop) and features (like Microsoft Teams) were mainly moderated by Jeff Teper who is the President of collaborative apps and platforms at Microsoft. One of the most exciting features for me was to see the introduction of so-called mesh avatars in Microsoft Teams. Your avatar can be created and used during online meetings where you don’t want to put your camera on but still want to be visible to others.
After each morning keynote, the breakout sessions started. Mainly, I was trying to focus on all security-related topics even though they were mainly centred on Microsoft 365 products. Nevertheless, there were also some interesting talks about Azure governance and security, especially also showing relatively new products (e.g. Microsoft Purview) providing best practices. The main benefit for me was that these presentations were mainly held by consultants, which have already a lot of hands-on knowledge. Especially now encountering that sometimes the official guidelines are not helpful enough.
I also joined a few talks for Microsoft 365 products even though my role doesn’t currently consider them. Still, it was quite helpful to see other solutions (e.g. migration of on-premises SharePoint to SharePoint Online) as it could be of interest in the future, too. As an example, a SharePoint Migration Assessment Tool (SMART) is existing which scans the content of a SharePoint farm to predict the potential impact of a migration. Once the assessment exists, a SharePoint Migration Tool (SPMT) is provided to migrate from on-premises SharePoint to Microsoft 365.
No matter what topic was discussed, the key takeaway from day one was that especially security is a key to success in the cloud. It shows how important it is to maintain and secure the environment, mainly due to the rapid development of solutions that can be implemented.
Overall, there was a collaborative vibe and an overall enjoyable atmosphere at the conference. I think the pandemic two-year break of this conference made everybody rethink and let not take such an event just for granted. On the official website, it is possible to check out upcoming events. Maybe it will take place in a city nearby.
Admittingly, I would not have thought it would be so exhaustive, I was quite tired in the evening. Sure enough not surprising, to be honest. However, it was time to head to the hotel and find something nice for dinner.
Even though I was a bit tired after the event, I was eager to get to know the city of Copenhagen. Everything was lightened by Christmas lights and also Tivoli looked pretty even though I did not go inside there. Overall, it was just worth seeing the city – if even for a tiny bit only.
Once dinner was completed, I realized that it was quite late already and that I should consider returning to my hotel to have at least a few hours of sleep. Especially due to the next day that was awaiting ahead. Copenhagen is a great city that I would recommend everyone to visit, just make sure to not forget your scarf and gloves like I did!
Conference Day Two: Time to Discover
It was time to start a new conference day – motivated and fully empowered! On day two, the morning keynote of Microsoft (Six Steps to Prepare for the Metaverse) was held by Karuana Gatimu who is a principal manager at Microsoft. As I didn’t hear about Metaverse before that, I was not sure what to expect. Afterwards, I was quite thrilled to see the vision and expectations in economic development and IT challenges that are foreseen by that. For example, Microsoft anticipates the Metaverse as a secondary, digital twin of our physical world. Meaning among other things, machine learning and VR (virtual reality) will be used to even further optimise processes and products.
After I realized that the main sessions I wanted to join on that day were held by the same guy I joined for one talk the day before, I was quite excited. The reason was that his main focus is on security topics in Azure which was at that time the same area I was trying to complete a certificate. So this was helpful for me as it was almost like a recap and study. Especially hearing from someone who already made some hands-on experience is truly valuable. The key takeaway from day two is the future of Metaverse and its vision behind.
The second day was not as crowded as the previous day. I had the impression a lot of guests were only coming for one day. However, it was great to see that it was international with guests from various countries. During breaks, it was never too crowded and there was always space to visit the expo or just grab something to eat or drink.
As mentioned earlier, there was also the chance to ask questions to experts who also led some sessions. It was nice talking to them and seeing what predictions they have about all the features and products that exist.
Time To Say Goodbye
Time flies by too fast always, especially if you have such an amazing experience as I had. I like travelling and seeing new countries and cultures so this was another great opportunity. I recommend visiting Copenhagen, especially as you can reach it from various locations in the EU quite easily. But please make sure to head towards the airport early enough as it is rather big.
All in all, I learned a lot and I am taking a lot of notes, thoughts, learnings, and inspirations back home. I will try to leverage every takeaway on my day-to-day work trying to make our MobiLab Cloud Adoption framework and what we can deliver to our customers even better.
I want to thank MobiLab for this opportunity and investment. I appreciate this opportunity and will not forget any of my impressions 🙂
“Vi ses” Denmark – hope to see you soon!
