We’re excited to join forces with the local Seattle developer community, as we all come together to become better developers, technologists, and contributors. Big thank you to the great organizations - including
Geeking out Kids of Color and HERE Technologies who’re partnering with us to bring bits of //build to life.
In 2017, Christina made the leap from being a successful business/technology journalist to working at Microsoft as an engineer. Switching careers and trying something new is scary and intimidating and often full of lots of self-doubt. Over the last two years at Microsoft, Christina found out that her past had more in common with her present than she ever thought and that it's possible to do a total career change without freaking out.
Alvaro is originally from Uruguay, but left the country to travel the world with his wife a bit over 10 years ago. His first stop was China, where he lived for 3 years, and he's now based in Switzerland, having worked for some of the biggest tech companies in the world. This is his story from selling food on the streets to making it big in the tech industry.
We all know that public speaking helps with personal and professional growth. But public speaking can bring its own share of challenges. How do you pick a topic? How do you apply to a CFP (and increase the chances of being accepted)? And most importantly – how do you then craft the talk for diverse audiences, talk times and topics? In this talk I’ll share my perspectives on how sketch-noting has helped me become a better speaker, and how it can help you jumpstart a speaking career, or add new tools to your speaker toolkit if you are already an experienced presenter.
IoT is cool, and getting an LED flashing is also a lot of fun, but what’s more fun is connecting an IoT device to the cloud to collect sensor data and control the device. In this hands-on workshop, we will do just that! This talk walks through how to detect temperature using an MXChip board, then connect it to the cloud. After this workshop, there will be hands-on time with one of these boards where you can build this yourself.
Design Thinking is not just about designers. Design Thinking is about tackling problems that are ill defined or unknown. It's about identifying alternative strategies and solutions. It's about being human centric in your approach and empathize with your users. Most of all iit's about thinking differently when your existing methods fail you. Best part is the result becomes better the more diverse your team is.
In this workshop you will be introduced to the Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services, a range of offerings you can use to infuse intelligence and machine learning into your applications without needing to build the code from scratch. We will cover pre-trained AI APIs, such as computer vision and text analytics, that are accessed by REST protocol. Then look at how you can host these models in containers, giving you the ability to run Cognitive Services offline and on edge devices. Finally we will dive into Custom AI that uses transfer learning - Microsoft Azure Custom Vision. This enables you to provide a small amount of your own data to train an image classification model. Wrapping the workshop up by building our custom trained AI into an application - using Logic Apps, this technology is ideal for proof of concepts within machine learning.
J. Michael Palmero, HERE Technologies
The Underground
How lucky you are that you are paid to work on Open Source Software!” Thanks, but that was not luck. I was lucky that my father put me in front of a Commodore64 when I was four. I was lucky when my application for an MBA got rejected… but I developed OSS libraries for two years before anyone noticed.
The truth is that there is absolutely no luck in becoming an OSS developer. You need dedication, will and grit. Along with a strong desire for learning new things: from mastering version control to convincing others of your ideas.
The good news is that you can become an OSS developer too!
Pedro Perez, Fernando Sanchez (Geeking Out Kids of Color)
Janell Jordan (EmpowerHERment)
The Underground
Geeking Out Kids of Color is an after school educational program that teaches youth about computer science by intersecting anti-sexim, anti-racist, Social Emotional Learning with Computer science. By centering the youths culture and decentering Eurocentric learning styles, these youth easily become engaged in the learning and experience tech on their own terms. The youth will demonstrate how they learned to code, build digital stories and their own AI models through dance (Kiki Challenge), digital counterstories, EmpowerHERment, and the Black Panther Curriculum. Janell Jordan, founder of EmpowerHERment will join Pedro Perez and Fernando Sanchez in hosting this session.
CODE OF CONDUCT
Community events involve people from many different backgrounds. As Event Participants, Developer Advocates and Microsoft For Startups team members, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disabilities, neurodiversity, physical appearance, body size, ethnicity, nationality, race, age, religion, or similar personal characteristics.
Our code of conduct sets a baseline standard of behavior so that people with different social values and communication styles can communicate effectively, productively, and respectfully. This gives us the best chance to ensure a welcoming experience for all attendees and participants, both internal and external.
OUR STANDARDS
Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:
· Using welcoming and inclusive language
· Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
· Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
· Focusing on what is best for the community
· Showing empathy towards other community members
Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants include:
· The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome sexual attention or advances
· Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
· Public and/or private harassment
· Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission
· Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
OUR RESPONSE & RESPONSIBILITY
If you see someone violating the code of conduct, please notify the onsite event lead, a Microsoft employee, or email createstartups@microsoft.com. We will respond immediately with appropriate action. We are dedicated to providing an environment where everyone feels safe and welcomed.
TL;DR
· Treat everyone with respect and kindness.
· Be thoughtful in how you communicate in person and online.
· Don’t be destructive or inflammatory.
· Listen with purpose, create space for others’ communication preferences; honor them by shifting yours to accommodate.
RESOURCES WE’VE FOUND HELPFUL
· How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace
· 4 steps for busting unconscious bias
· Unconscious bias: Stereotypical hiring practices
· Writing Accessible Go (This talk is language agnostic)
· Empathy Technologies: Humanity At The Heart Of Emerging Tech
· Microsoft’s Standards of Business Conduct
· Open Source Anti-harassment policy, Geek Feminism
· Gender Inclusive Tech Events
· Social Rules, Recurse Center
· On Harassment & Code of Conduct 101
Alvaro is originally from Uruguay, but left the country to travel the world with his wife a bit over 10 years ago. His first stop was China, where he lived for 3 years, and he's now based in Switzerland, having worked for some of the biggest tech companies in the world. This is his story from selling food on the streets to making it big in the tech industry.
Matteo is Technical Director at NearForm, where he consults for some of the top brands in the world. In 2014, he defended his Ph.D. thesis titled "Application Platforms for the Internet of Things". Matteo is a member of the Node.js Technical Steering Committee focusing on streams, diagnostics and http. He is also the author of the fast logger Pino and of the Fastify web framework. Matteo is a renowned international speaker after presenting at more than 50 conferences, including Node.js Interactive, NodeConf.eu, NodeSummit, JSConf.Asia, WebRebels, and JsDay just to name a few. He is also co-author of the book "Node.js Cookbook, Third Edition" edited by Packt. In the summer he loves sailing the Sirocco.
“How lucky you are that you are paid to work on Open Source Software!” Thanks, but that was not luck. I was lucky that my father put me in front of a Commodore64 when I was four. I was lucky when my application for an MBA got rejected… but I developed OSS libraries for two years before anyone noticed.
The truth is that there is absolutely no luck in becoming an OSS developer. You need dedication, will and grit. Along with a strong desire for learning new things: from mastering version control to convincing others of your ideas.
The good news is that you can become an OSS developer too!"