Microsoft Ignite

Microsoft Ignite, a tech event held at the Gold Coast convention and exhibition centre this year, covered the most recent and innovating Microsoft products and services. 

The four-day event was split into sessions dedicated to a vast range of IT professionals. Some of the topics covered in those days were related to Innovation, Business Intelligence, Open Source,  Security, Productivity and Cloud Infrastructure.

As a .NET developer, I set my interest towards sessions related to the new paths the .NET platforms are moving forward, features and improvement of the IDE tools we normally use at work and, some tips to be more efficient at the time of writing, testing and deploying projects.  

I was impressed with the diversity of services accessible through Azure, how Microsoft is moving quickly to Open Source and the ability to run and host cross-platform .NET applications. Also, witnessing some live demonstrations about the implementation of cognitive services such as emotion detection, facial and voice recognition in software products. For example, notifying a client via email when a tweet with negative comments has been posted on the company twitter account. Also, searching and displaying pictures from your photo library or the Internet based on face recognition.  

I had the opportunity to try on a HoloLens headset; a holographic computer that uses mixed reality to perceive and interact with 3D objects in the real world.  The game consisted of finding and crushing with two fingers astronauts that appeared suddenly around the room I was. Each astronaut had different rotation speed and colour. It was exciting to witness that a new version of the game was deployed to Azure and synced to the headset while I was playing changing the rotation speed and the colour of some of the astronauts floating around without freezing or restarting the game.   
I believe mixed reality open new opportunities for gaming and industries like construction, art, and schools among others.  

On the other hand, there was the social part of the event where we were able to socialise with other people and share our thoughts about the experience; we had fun playing in sumo suits, ping pong, arcade games and especially laser skirmish.  

The event provided a glimpse of what is coming and what is already happening, encouraging the audience to explore more and discover what best suits your workplace. In my case, I would be inclined to know more about .NET Core applications and the .NET Standard framework. I think working towards a cross-platform environment gives us the opportunity to expand and cover more areas. Using Microsoft cognitive services in websites will be able to provide better user experience and accessibility features in websites.