Ignite | The Tour Amsterdam: I’m All-In On Bots 🤖
This man from New Netherland is thrilled to have been asked to speak at a world-class conference taking place in the moederland, Old Netherland. The (upstate) New Yorker in me knows lots about the lower countries-based history here: New Amsterdam, Fort Orange, Beverwijck (“the beaver district” — we did love that fur trade), and the origin of the Van Rensselaer domination that provided its namesake to many local things, including my alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
I am an unabashed colonial New York history nerd, sorry. My hometown regularly hosts a replica of Henry Hudson’s Halve Maen (Half Moon) sailing ship, which in 1609 made it all the way to Albany (not, oddly, to the town of Half Moon several miles upstream). While we decidedly took on plenty of English terms and institutions around Albany (including that name), the Dutch influence is everywhere, from the city flag — based mainly on Prince Williams’ flag, the Prinsenvlag — to the annual spring Tulip Fest held in Washington Park (Queen Wilhemina named Orange Wonder as the official Tulip of Albany in 1948). We like our Dutch history here.
Which gets me to the main point: I’ll be speaking at Microsoft Ignite | The Tour Amsterdam in March. I hope you’re planning to attend, but if you’re not, here’s my effort to drag you downtown to the Amsterdam RAI to learn everything there is to learn about Microsoft 365, Office 365, Azure, and plenty more.
If you’re not familiar with the Ignite | The Tour concept — if I don’t use the | I get disbarred from the conference, I think — it’s basically a mini (and free!) version of the annual Microsoft mega-conference, Ignite, which took place in Orlando in September 2018. A great way to save money, stay local, and still have access to an excellent collection of experts, Microsoft product group reps, and fellow customers to discuss lessons learned and strategy experiences.
For this conference, I’m going to be doing some deep dives into Azure Cognitive Services, chatbots, artificial intelligence, and Microsoft Teams. So if you’re interested in the Microsoft AI stack, make sure to stop by one or all of my sessions on chatbot and AI best practices in Azure.
If you haven’t already, be sure to register now for your free ticket. And keep an eye out for free dinners and parties each night. If you need help on where to find them, give me a shout in DM on Twitter, @thatmattwade. I’ll connect you with some folks who might be able to help.
Now’s the time to jump on the bandwagon of the next paradigm in human interaction with machines. AI, chatbots, and natural language communication isn’t just the experience of the future, these experiences are available to you today. You just need to know how to harness them. So stop by and I’ll help you plan that out.
