Conferences on Cloudinthealps

Apprendre à gérer l'humain, avec l'IA, et non l'inverse!

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Comment gérez-vous un collègue en situation difficile? Comment aborder un sujet délicat avec un collaborateur? Que peux dire un manager pour avoir une bonne position d’écoute?

Et si vous simplifiez vos formations au savoir être?

Je vous ai accrochés? J’espère que oui.

Pour mettre un peu de contexte, j’ai pu tester, brièvement, une solution qui permet de procéder à des exercices de mise en situation, sans avoir besoin d’acteurs ou de formateurs. Evidemment, c’est aidé par de l’IA, sinon ça ne serait pas amusant.

Retour sur la première de MS Build en France!

Thu, 26 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Voilà, la première édition de ce #MSBuild #SpotlightFrance s’est terminée.

Ce fut une édition épique, forcément la meilleure jusqu’ici :)

Il y a eu beaucoup d’annonces et de sessions passionnantes, en ligne et en présentiel, mais j’ai choisi de vous parler plutôt de tout ce qu’il s’est passé en dehors des annonces. Et donc, finalement, vous parler de ce que j’en retiens.

Pour les annonces, je vous recommande le book of news!

My very first public presentation - feedback

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

There we are, I have finally given my talk about Kubernetes and Azure. It was both more and less than I expected. It was more easy, once I got there, into the position of a speaker than I expected. My fellow speakers were very kind and supportive, which helped with the pre-stage flutters :) It was also easier because the room was of a reasonable size, and I was not on stage in front of 500 people. And it was less deep dive than I expected, which also allowed me to relax a bit. I could get a feeling about the audience before going there, which let me into the dark regarding their needs and expectations. Let’s set the stage. The event took place at Microsoft’s Building 20, which is a Reactor (https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/). So the building is definitely designed to host events comfortably. That helped a lot, as we even had someone from the A/V team to help us and ensure all the screens and microphones would be working correctly. And yes, the free coffee might also have been a huge help :) The room was large, without any raised platform for the speaker, but with multiple repeat screens all around. I was the third speaker, so I definitely had some time to review my slides and demo setup a few times. I did setup the demo environment the night before, to avoid any deployment issue at the last minute (which did happen 2 days before while I was practicing). Once again, having a scripted demo ensured that I would not forget any step, or mess up some command line options. I did have a few issues during the talk. First the mike did stop working at some point, failed battery. I kept on speaking without it, as the room was small enough to let me speak louder for a short time and still be heard. The support guy came shortly to replace the battery, so no big issue there. My remote clicker did work perfectly, but not the pointer part. That’s a shame, because it made it more difficult to point out at a precise section of a slide or demo. Afterwards I found out why, and I should be able to avoid that particular issue in the future. I did not get as much interaction as I hoped I would. I thing that it was mostly due to my anxiety, which prevented me to behave like my normal self and be engaging. What I would change for the future. First, for a set event like this one, I would practice in front of a camera, or a mirror, to actually see and listen to my speech. That would probably ensure that I would keep the correct pace and articulation. And also make sure that the flow of slides is comprehensible. Second, I would work more to know the expectations of the public. It turns out that my talk was way too technical and fast it should have been. While discussing with the attendees afterwards, I realized that I did not get many of the points through, probably because I went too fast over those. This brings me back to the interactions point above : would I have been more comfortable and interactive, I could have grasped that during the session and corrected it. Third, I should probably think about learning a bit more about controlling my voice and projecting it. I realized that during the week leading to the event, as I had to speak in a loud environment, and present/discuss the same kind of subjects. Labs A word on the hands-on labs we had in the afternoon. I just was glad to have stayed for that part. First because I had never been on the proctor side before, and it’s really fascinating to see a problem through the eye of someone with a different mindset and culture. I really learned a lot, and realized a lot during these 2 hours. Second, because it showed me the areas where my presentation had been lacking, and how much I had not been clear enough to be understood by everyone. I think these discussions with the attendees were the deeper feedback and improvement tips that I could get. For the record, the container labs we used are there : https://github.com/Azure/blackbelt-aks-hackfest/ That’s it for now. This first talk has unlocked something and made me realize that I should talk at every occasion I can, and that I love it, at least when it’s done ;)

My very first public presentation - preparation

Sun, 15 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’m writing this a bit ahead of time, as I plan to write a follow-up to compare what is planned against what will have happened. As the title suggests, I will be hosting my very first public session on the 21st of April. I am taking part in Global Azure Bootcamp https://global.azurebootcamp.net, a worldwide community event where experts from around the world gather locally to share their experience and knowledge on Azure. I would probably have preferred to be involved in an event in France, however I am in Seattle that week, so my event of choice will be directly @Microsoft in Redmond. This will an occasion for multiple first times for me : first time on my own as a public speaker, first participation in Global Azure Bootcamp, first time presenting fully in English, and first time presenting in Redmond of course :) So, big step far out of my comfort zone. The aim of this post, as stated above, is to record what I did to prepare for the event, and afterwards, write down what have gone right and wrong, and how I can progress and do better. I have chosen the topic of containers & Kubernetes on Azure for two reasons : first I am rather comfortable with the subject, and second a colleague, Jean Poizat, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-poizat-0a97bb/, did already build a slidedeck and demo which I could expand from. Obvious first then : I have a chosen familiar grounds and existing material, to limit the amount of work needed. This however presented a challenger : start from slides which I did not write, and get familiar with those, before rearranging & completing those to my purpose and comfort. A word on how I got out of my comfort zone : a nice kick in the back end! I saw on some social networks few friends and colleagues getting ready for GAB in France, which prompted me to start collaborating, at least to give a hand. Once I realized I would be in Seattle at that time, I contacted the local event owner Manesh Raveendran, https://www.linkedin.com/in/maneshraveendran/, to offer my help, in broad terms. It took me a while to be able to suggest the session I will be presenting, and I almost chickened out a few times. But once Manesh wrote me in, that was it, I had to make this work! The next step was to get very familiar with the presentation and with the associated demos. I started presenting to myself, but out loud and standing. This allowed me to work my speech, content and speed, and fine tune the slides. I also quickly incorporated the demos, to work out how to time things, and how to work around a failing demo. I started 10 days before the set date, with the slides & demo mostly ready. I allowed a minimum of a deck run every two days, that I would then adjust depending on my comfort and accuracy. During these dry run, I would keep a piece of paper next to me, to write down whatever thoughts/questions or clarifications were needed. These would affect either the speech or the slides, and even the demo. In between these runs, I would review the slides as much as I could every day. I did not spend as much time reviewing the demo, as Jean had provided me with a solid script that would mostly run by itself, on my cue. The few manuals demos were quite simple, and worked every time. I was also lucky enough to meet with several architects during that time, who were kind enough to give me their feedback on my slides, and even to let me rehearse in front of them, and give me their impressions and advice. That was a big help, and a great comfort as showtime loomed closer :) I am now a few hours from the actual session, I will submit this post and start writing the follow-up right after the session. Stay tuned! PS : the program for the Redmond event is there : https://www.azurecommunityevents.com/#/event?181C8806AFB7-4142-B0D3-B1858E9E8956

Microsoft Tech Summit France

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000

As the summit has just closed its doors, I would like to share my feedback on this first Tech Summit to happen in France. As far as I know there are already Tech Summits in several other countries around the world. From what I have heard, they are supposed to be “local Ignite” events. For honesty’s sake, I have to say that I have not attended Ignite so far, only Tech-Ed Europe a few years ago, so I will not compare too much the two events. However according to the community website (http://aka.ms/community/techsummit) the sessions were exactly the same as the ones played at Ignite. I did not see any numbers published, so far, but it was a rather small event. Attendance to the first keynote on Microsoft 365 was not really high, however the Azure keynote attracted more people and the room was almost full. I had the feeling that Azure was more exciting than Microsoft 365, but maybe 9:30 was too early for most :) Or maybe I am biased toward Azure ;) The conference took place in one Hall from Paris Expo, on one level. And we were far from crowding it. As it was a free event, right in Paris, it seems that a lot of people came and went, just for a session or two, rather than stay for the whole two days. Which is rather smart, as it lets local people continue running their business, while being able to attend some sessions. And it lent a quiet feeling to the event itself. For once, I managed to attend a few sessions, and they were very interesting, very focused on a tight subject. I was never deceived by a catchy title enticing me to a session that had nothing to do with what I could expect. The speakers were a mix of Microsoft Corp and Microsoft France, most sessions were in English and we could interact easily with every speaker afterwards. Overall the sessions raise some good ideas for me to pitch, and subjects to talk about with my customers. I would have liked more technical sessions, but I think deep dives need a specific environment and public to be able to run properly. In conclusion, I liked the event overall, but I do not see it as attractive as Experiences. And it was much smaller! Also Experiences had been criticized has being less technical than the previous event it replaced, Tech Days. From my point of view, Tech Summit is on the same level as Experiences, just smaller and 6 months later (or earlier depending on how you look at it :) ) As usual, the strategy is a bit difficult to read, but the local speakers and content providers were present and accessible, which is almost always my first reason to come :) One final word about the technical levels used to sort the sessions : levels are standard, from 100 to 400, with 100 being introductory and 400 being expert. My advice would be to change the description as the level describes mostly the current knowledge you need to have about the product (Azure for example) than the depth of the session. 400 does not mean you will see live coding and the inners of the platform. It means that you know already where you’re going, and have probably already used the product.

Velocity London '17 - content

Wed, 29 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I already posted about this event a few weeks ago, with a focus around my experience and the organization : https://cloudinthealps.mandin.net/2017/11/03/velocity-london-2017/ This time, I would like to share a short summary of what I have learned during these 4 days. The first two days were a Kubernetes training, so nothing very specific here. I learnt a lot about Kubernetes, which is to be expected :) During the two conference days, I attended the keynotes, and several sessions. The keynotes are difficult to sum up, as they were very different, and each was a succession of short talks. I attended several large-scale conferences in the past, and that was the first time that I felt that the speakers were really on the edge of research and technology. They were not specifically here to sell us their new product, but to share where their work was headed, what the outcomes could be etc. They broached subjects ranging from bio-software to chaos engineering, from blockchain to edge computing. Some talks were really oriented toward IT & DevOps, and some were bringing a completely different view on our world. Overall, it felt energizing to hear some many brilliant minds talk about what is mostly our future! The sessions were a bit more down to earth and provided with data, content and feedbacks that would bring us some changes back home. I was surprised to have most sessions concentrate on general information and feedback, and not so much on specific tools and solutions. I expected more sessions from the toolchains for DevOps (Chef, Puppet, Gitlab, Sensu and so on). Actually, even when the session were presented by these software companies (Datadog, Yahoo, Bitly, Puppet, PagerDuty) they never sold their product. However they used their experience and data to provide very useful insights and feedbacks. What I brought back could be split into two categories : short term improvements/decisions that could be implemented as soon as I got back (which I did partly), and trends that would have to be thought about and analyzed, and then maybe crafted into a new offer or approach. In the first category : • Blameless post-mortems. A lot of data analyzed, with one takeout for us : keep the story focused and short. If you do not have anything to add apart from the basic timeline… maybe you’re not the right team to handle the postmortem :) • Solving overmonitoring and alert fatigue. This talk was a gamechanger for me. What Kishore Jalleda (https://twitter.com/KishoreJalleda) stated was this : you may stop monitoring applications and services that are not respectful. For example, if you get more than X alerts everyday from an application, you may go to the owner of the application and say “as you are generating too much noise, we will disable monitoring for a moment, until the situation comes back to something that is manageable by the 24*7 team” Of course you have to help the product team get back on track and identify what is monitoring and what is alerting (https://cloudinthealps.mandin.net/2017/05/12/monitoring-and-alerting/). And you need top management support before you go and apply that :) • On the same topic, a session about monitoring containers came down to the same issue : how do you monitor the health of your application? Track the data :) The second group covered mostly higher level topics, on how to organize your teams and company for successful DevOps transformation. I noted an ever spreading use of the term “SRE”, which I would qualify of misused most of the time. At least SRE seems now to qualify any team/engineer in charge of running your infrastructure. Another trend, in terms of organization, was the model based on this famous SRE team, to provide tooling and best practices for each DevOps/Feature/Product team. I’ll probably post at length sometime later.

Velocity London

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

This October I had the opportunity to go at the Velovity conference in London (https://conferences.oreilly.com/velocity/vl-eu). The exact title of the conference is “Build and maintain complex distributed systems”. That’s an ambitious subject. The event had been suggested by a customer who went to one of the US editions and found that it was a brilliant event, both in terms of DevOps subjects covered and in terms the attendees & networking. So here I am, back in London, for 4 days of DevOps and cloud talks. [logo conf] I have started the conference with a special 2-days training on Kubernetes, by Sebastien Goasgen (@sebgoa) [logo k8s] The training was really intense, as Sebastien described many standard objects and tools of the platform, as well as a few custom options that we can use. We played with Minikube on our laptops, which is a really great way to have the experience of a Kubernetes cluster, in a small box. It was really packed, and we had to rush to keep up with Sebastien’s tests and labs, even with his Github repo containing most of the scripts and K8s manifests. I came out of those days a bit tired by all the things I had learned and tested, and a long list of new functions and tools to try, new ideas to explore etc, it was immensely fun, thank Sebastien! The conference itself was rather overwhelming, and a big surprise for me. I am used to large conferences like Vmworld or Tech-Ed where you get the good word for the year to come from an editor and its ecosystem. Most of the sessions in those are obviously diving into the products and how to use them. At Velocity, almost all the keynote speakers were somehow working in research, or such bleeding edge domain that it might not even exist yet. I loved being presented with what might be happening, and by people who are scientists at heart, not just marketing infused with a light touch of technology. Moreover the sessions themselves were mostly feedback on the speakers own experience on a specific domain/issue/subject. Usually they are not into a particular tool or software suite, but rather on how to make things work with DevOps and large distributed systems. Overall, I I really enjoyed this conference, because it very well organized, and small enough to be a human experience. As we have four days with the same group of around 400 people (227 to this day according to the attendee directory), in a rather small area, you cross path often with the same people, and it makes it easy to start conversations. Also they came up with a lot of ribbons that you can attach to your badge, to let other know what you are here for : [photo des ribbons] I was used to much larger conferences, where I always found the networking a bit difficult, if you did not know a few people beforehand. In Velocity’s case, it is so easy, you have only a handful of attendees and speakers, and you can meet everyone informally, during lunch breaks or just by asking. It came as a surprise for me to able just to chat with some of the speakers that have impressed me, like [juergen & Gremlin] just by going and sit with them at a lunch table.

Experiences'17

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It has been a long two-days event for Microsoft France. I wanted to summarize this event and what happened during those two days. I will not be extensive about all the announcements and sessions that were offered. This will just be my experience (pun intended) of the event. This year I did not present a session, mainly because the process to submit one was very unclear, and I did not want to fight against smoke. And last precision, it was only my second Experiences, and I never attended its predecessor, Techdays. As I said, it is a two-days event, split between a business day and a technical day. I attended both, as my role is also split between the two aspects. I found that the distinction was very visible regarding the content of the various sessions, apart from the keynotes (and Partner Back to School session). Overall the technical level is rather low, but most of MS staff is onsite and you can have very interesting discussions with them, as well with the other attendees. A word on the attendees : there are very different groups in there. I have met with numerous Psellers and MVPs, as well as Microsoftees. Obviously, there are many customers and partners around, some of them just for show, some with a very specific project/problem in mind. And there are people that I am not accustomed to see in business events, but who bring a refreshing variety to the general attendee population. These are both students from multiple schools (engineering, but not only), and employees who managed to get their managers to approve because the event is free. I am not sure whether it is the case in other countries, but in France we usually have difficulties getting approval to travel abroad and pay for a conference. It is not always true with every company, but it has been widespread enough that some European-wide events are replicated to a smaller scale in France to allow French techies to get the content as well. Back to the event itself, the rhythm was rather intense this year and I missed many sessions, to be able to meet and discuss with everyone I wanted to. As it is with all event, the quality of a session is very dependent on the quality of the speaker. The ones I attended were very good and made a lot of effort to stay focused on their topic and keep everyone on board. About the keynotes, well they were of the expected quality, on par with Inspire, with several videos, demos, interviews etc. As was the case with Ignite, some talks were highly specific (to AI or Quantum computing) and made me believe that Satya Nadella is taking some moves from Elon Musk. It was very different from the Tech’Ed days were we were shown the new interface for System Center, or a new tablet. The buzzword this year at Experiences was AI (it was Blockchain last year). I have to admit that the AI Hackademy included some very interesting ideas and startups. I did not manage to visit them all but I was pretty impressed to see so many startups working on the subject, and bringing fresh ideas and concepts to our world. All right, everything was very positive, I am convinced. I will share one mildly negative thought though : AI was sometimes thinly stretched over a piece of software or idea. I’ve seen some interesting uses of statistics, or even good programming and algorithms, but to say these were truly AI was going a bit far. At least that’s my opinion, but we may not all have the same definition… as for what is a cloud :)

Inspire '17

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 00:00:00 +0000

We are almost halfway of the first quarter for Microsoft Financial year, a month after the partner convention, which has been rebranded “Inspire”. Now that I am not a newbie any more, I can step back a bit and see past the awe of the first event. The setting this year was in Washington DC, which is great place for these kind of events. There are many hotels nearby, the city center is small enough to walk around, and there are many chic places for the evenings. This is not a travel blog, so I will not go further into the tourism information. This year we had decided, with our PSE, to have a lighter Microsoft agenda, and to be able to attend more sessions and impromptu meetings. I have to say that it was a wise choice. It allowed us to make new connections, to network quietly and to enjoy the Expo and the other partners. Note that I found it way easier to network this time, as our company was better known in the ecosystem, and we also had a better knowledge of the various people, names and acronyms used throughout Microsoft. This year I was able to attend several sessions, with different format : roundtables, breakout, demo theater, workshop and of course keynotes. The content was really good, though it is definitely not a technical event. The best way to have a technical discussion is to go to the Microsoft pods with a specific subject in mind and ask for an expert on that matter. Also these pods provide good help and advice on how to build or develop your business along the current track or toward a brand new scope (yes GDPR was a recurrent topic, I’ll write separately about that later on). I have met many amazing partners and vendors, through the social events, or on their booths and we have started to build new relationships that will hopefully help develop all our business and knowledge. Once again, it is an event where you have to be prepared, and be prepared to change your plans. First you need to have an idea of your goal beforehand. Do you want to find new partners within the ecosystem? Would you rather gian some traction or visibility in that ecosystem, both from Microsoft and from the other partners? Are you open to new business opportunities? Are you here to listen to the keynote and get a feeling of what is coming for the near future? Then, you need to build your agenda around that goal : sessions, meetings, events etc. But do remember to leave some room to be able to continue a discussion with an unexpected partner, or be ready to not attend a session live and see the recording, because something else popped up. And mostly, have fun :)

WPC 2016

Sat, 15 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

It has almost been a year since my first Worldwide Partner Convention organized by Microsoft in Toronto. At the time, I wanted to share some insights, and some tips to survive the week. Before WPC, I attended multiple Tech-Ed Europe and VMworld Europe, in several locations over the years. WPC is slightly different as it is a partner-dedicated event, without any customers or end users. It gives a very different tone to the sessions and discussions, as well as a very good opportunity to meet with Microsoft Execs. As it was my first time, I signed up for the FTA (First Time Attendee) program, which gave me access to a mentor (someone who had already attended at least once) and a few dedicated sessions to help us get the most out of the conference. The buildup weeks In the months preceding the event, Microsoft will be pushing to get you registered. They are quite right to do so, for two reasons. First the registration fee is significantly lower when you register early. So if you are certain to attend, save yourself a few hundred dollars and register as soon as you can. Note that you may even register during the event for the next one. Second, the hotels fill up very quickly, and if you want to be in a decent area, or even in the same place as your country delegation, be quick! A few weeks before the event, I had a phone call with my mentor, who gave me some advice and opinion, as well as pointers on how to survive the packed 5 days. This helped me focus on the meetings with potential partners, and meetings with microsoftees, rather than on the sessions themselves. More on that subject later. During that period, you are also given the opportunity to complete your online WPC profile, which may help get in touch with other partners, and organize some meetings ahead of time. You also get the sessions schedule, which let you organize your coming days, and see what the focus is. I had the surprise, a few days before the event, to learn that we had “graduated” in the Microsoft partner program, from remotely managed to fully managed. So we had a new PSE (Microsoft representative handling us as a partner) which was very helpful and set up a lot of meetings with everyone we needed to meet from Microsoft France. This helped, for a first-timer, to be guided by someone who knew the drill. I was very excited to get there, and a bit anxious as we were scheduled to meet a lot of people, in addition to my original agenda with many sessions planned.