Category: Random words

 

Global Azure is here, and we have an overload of amazing sessions!!!

Has previous years and toghether with 3 other Azure MVPs (Pedro Sousa, Virgilio Esteves and Sandro Pereira) I’m organizing the local Global Azure 2021 – Portugal.

This year I also decide to take advantage the virtual approach of most events and deliver sessions at 6 different events. Here is a small list:

• 9:00AM to 9:15AM – Welcome at Global Azure Portugal
• 9:15AM to 10:00 AM: I find your lack of Azure Governance disturbing! – Global Azure Portugal
• 10:30AM – 11:00AM – India
• 11:00 – 11:45 – I find your lack of Azure Governance disturbing! – Global Azure Greece (SLOT 2)
• 11:45 to 12:00 – Supercharge you App Service to a Global Scale – Global Azure Nigeria (infra Track)
• 11:45 to 12:45 – I find your lack of Azure Governance disturbing! – Global Azure Bulgaria (TRACK 3)

It’s going to be a crazy morning and then I will be monitoring the afternoon sessions at Global Azure Portugal. Will you join me at some of the events?

 

It’s been a while since I have published on this blog. That happened for a series of reasons.

First of all, most of my articles got copied and pasted in other blogs where the owners of those blogs had the great idea of putting their names has the authors… Honestly got super bummed about it when someone in the community sent me the links… The other reason is a happy reason, we have a new family member, and I took some time to focus on the family. After reflecting if I would stop this project or keep it alive, I decided to re-start publishing articles here and even start to publish videos on my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/tiagocostamct. If those “authors” want to copy-paste my articles be my guest, I write mainly for the pleasure of sharing my knowledge about Microsoft Azure with other members of the community. You can start and copy this one

Watch out this space and my YouTube channel, new content is getting ready!!! Microsoft Azure / Certifications / Tech gear / Training tips will be the topics.

Hope to see you on this space,
Tiago Costa

Microsoft Ignite 2020 week it’s just around the corner! Are you excited to join? I’d like to share a great news about this year Microsoft Ignite: Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge 2020: Free Certification Exam. You can read full details on the following Docs content: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/microsoft-ignite-cloud-skills-challenge-2020-free-certification-exam?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5001832

The article says “All participants of Microsoft Ignite who complete at least one collection in the Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge are eligible for a free certification exam,…”

If you’re looking to get certified, this is an awesome opportunity to get your cert for free! Check out my Study guides and get ready!

List of eligible exams: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/certifications/microsoft-ignite-cloud-skills-challenge-2020-free-certification-exam?WT.mc_id=AZ-MVP-5001832#eligible-exams

Also don’t forget to register for one of my four sessions. Looking forward to have you in the audience. You can check then out here.

Just got the message!

I got renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP. That’s 5 years in a row! It’s indescribable the felling and honor to be among the elite of Microsoft Azure Professionals. My imposter syndrome comes to life when I get these emails. Still can’t believe that Microsoft recognizes me toghether with so many great professional out there.

I would like to thank for all the support that I got from several community members and specialy from my family that puts up with my absences when I choose to speak at events across the world, all the late conference calls with other events organizers, etc… Without this support all this wasn’t possible. My wife Sofia and my daughter are amazing and I’m very lucky to share my life with then!

A lot of people ask me what the Microsoft MVP program is, so here it goes: Microsoft MVP it’s a recognition from Microsoft for all the non-paid activity I do for the community. I share my knowledge on Microsoft Azure in conferences, online forums, videos, blog posts, … I also help organizing events for the Azure User Group Portugal – https://www.meetup.com/Azure-User-Group-Portugal/ and the local conference Global Azure – https://www.globalazure.pt/ – and SPS Lisbon, now Collabdays Lisbon – https://www.collabdays.org/2020-lisbon/. You can find more information about the MVP program at https://mvp.microsoft.com/ and a list of all the MVPs at https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/MvpSearch.

 

Plans for next year?

Oh yes!!! I have great plans lineup for this MVP year: Continuing to speak in amazing events across the world. In the next few months online-only, but Covid-19 will not stop me from sharing my knowledge and helping the cloud community, so in a nutshell:

• Keep speaking at conferences and user groups.
• Growing the Azure User Group Portugal – https://www.meetup.com/Azure-User-Group-Portugal/
• Keep teaching Azure to IT professionals, Developers and Architects
• Helping amazing customer in moving to the cloud by building and designing state of the art solutions
• Writing and producing amazing content, both in this site and on other platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn Learning, …
• Publishing tons of videos on my YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/tiagocostamct
• and some more to TBA activities. Keep your eyes on this space.

A final thank you, to all the professionals that I have shared my space with. It’s been an honor and I hope to share more amazing conversations with all of you! Come and join me on my next engagements.

We are living a … let’s be positive and called it “special” time! Corona virus outbreak is among us, and everyone that can, is working from home. You still need to interact with your team, customers and partners, so all conference calls services are seeing an exponential growth. Microsoft Teams saw a huge growth last week when not only a lot of customers started to work from home, but also schools started to teach virtually. You can check this article that states that Microsoft Teams surged to 44 million users (https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-teams-surges-44-million-daily-users-amid-coronavirus-outbreak), so that you can understand the huge growth. In November of 2019, Microsoft reported 20 million daily users!

I don’t want to write a huge article explaining how back-to-back meetings are a productivity killer. There are other authors that can explain this way better than me. Some meetings can overrun and if you have another meeting schedule without breaks… well… you get it! It’s important to allow for some break between meetings. What about if we could do this in an automatic way? If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, YES YOU CAN!!!

I bring you an amazing feature that we can use to allow some break between back-to-back meetings.

1. Open your Microsoft Outlook desktop app.
2. Under File, select Options.
3. Select the Calendar tab and then check the End appointments and meetings early checkbox.

With this option you will create a shorter meeting allowing some break between meetings for your colleagues, partners and customers.

Hope you liked this option!