Presenting Microsoft Tools to a Defense University
This week I had the opportunity to present Microsoft’ Cloud Platform to a education/university customer. The challenge was that this particular customer wasn’t your average K-12 school or even secondary college, it was an institution that caters to the US Department of Defense. My normal demos for enterprise customers just didn’t have the right context and most of my education resources were aimed at K-12 situations so I rolled up my sleeves and put together this series of scenes. Now keep in mind the audience asked to see “cool stuff”; things they could use in the classroom, new learning experiences, etc.
Scene 1: Professors Lounge

My opening scene was using Microsoft Teams for the faculty. I created channels for many of the expertise areas that are referenced in the school’s courses, topics like Biosecurity, Cyber Terrorism, Gaming & Simulation, Nuclear Issues, etc. Within each of these channels, I setup the Bing News connector to funnel in relevant articles that the faculty could comment on and possibly include in their lessons. The files tab was for class presentations and lesson plans. And I had even pinned the student orientation schedule in the General tab for comments.
The other main focus of Scene 1 was a professor creating a presentation. I chose to highlight the Intelligence Services in PowerPoint such as QuickStarter, Design Ideas and Smart Lookup. Before delivering the presentation, I ran the Accessibility Checker to make sure my content was appropriate for all learners. And for delivery, I used Presentation Translator so that guests that I had invited from other countries as speakers could follow along in their native language.
Scene 2: Student Group Research Project

Scene 2 in my demonstration was also very Microsoft Teams focused but this time for a group of students working on a research project. In this section, we discussed/demoed:
- the benefits of persisted chat
- Co-authoring on our research paper
- Taking notes in One Note
- Using Planner to keep track of project deadlines and responsibilities

This scene also included a demos of Power BI for analyzing data, and Microsoft Stream’s advanced processing of videos. We also shows a research tool built using Azure services. This demo shows a cognitive search pattern for processing large quantities of paper records. The actual demo was related to released files about JFK, but in our scenario we presented this as historical military records. You can read more and access this demo at this location http://aka.ms/jfkfiles
Scene 3: A Virtual Meeting
Our third scene highlighted that fact that for this institution there is a lot of remote learning. Not just students but also experts from other countries. To show off what Microsoft could do in this space we showcased a Microsoft Surface Hub running Microsoft Teams. While using the hub we demoed:
- Clipping applications on to the whiteboard
- Co-whiteboarding with other devices such as a Surface Pro
- Live video, meeting experiences
- Wirelessly projecting to the device
And lastly we ended this scene by showing off the future of these technologies by showing videos of the Surface Hub 2 and Microsoft’s vision for Next Generation AI powered meetings.
Scene 4: New Experiences
Our last scene highlighted new experiences (and a bit of a catch all for things we couldn’t fit into the normal story easily). We started with highlighting an assessment solution from a partner QuestionMark. This solution is used by many government agencies and runs in Microsoft’s Azure Government offering.
This scene also brought the HoloLens into play. We realized that this customer often needs to teach about devices, weapons, and areas of the world that could benefit from being experienced as holograms instead of just looking at pictures.

The first HoloLens app we demoed was one called HoloMaps from Taqtile. It enables you to bring maps to life in 3D and layer data into the experience. We also showed the HoloAnatomy app which in a military context may be used to show devices or vehicles that are historical and don’t exist or not easily accessible to the students.
Lastly, we ended discussing how Microsoft is working to deliver these cloud capabilities in new form factors. You can read here about the work we’ve done with law enforcement, first responders, etc in relation to cloud powered, intelligence vehicles.