This week I was at the MCT Summit Europe in Rijswijk. An event quite close by for a change, which was quite nice.
The event is for Microsoft Certified Trainers only which on one hand limits the amount of people being able to attend, on the other hand it gives a good insight in the audience. The attendees are all ‘speakers’, as you need to have this skill to be a trainer. The range of topics was very diverse, with quite a lot of non-technical sessions. The technical sessions encompassed almost all areas of the Microsoft stack.
Day 1
I missed the opening key note because of traffic but after that got to follow a session on how Microsoft is working internally to support and work with MCT’s. As some content is NDA, you know I won’t write about what was told.
The second session I attended was about using Privileged Identity Management and how to configure this. I knew most of the basics but learned a few things and saw a few moving parts in action.
The next session was standing room only. Cool tech stuff? No, Do’s and dont’s of (un)successful presentations. It was an excellent session with good content on visualisation, use of colour and story telling. After this one a session on securing your Active Directory against malicious actors and the day ended with a session on using CoPilot in concurrence with PurView. For me this mostly meant wetting my appetite to try it out.
The end of day 1 was a buffet dinner. There was the option to go for a walk in Delft but I had some work to catch up to and a session to prepare.
Day 2
The second day, I was a bit late and had to prepare for my session on deploying Azure Infrastructure via Code. It was a real fun session with about 10 attendees who were active in adding information and points of view. I LOVE it when this happens, it means the audience is invested in the content and by adding to it, the value for everyone increases. I got some valuable feedback as well, even though there were no ‘formal’ speaker feedback forms. After my session, I had to dig into work again and only resurfaced around dinner. A pity because there was a very cool session going on about drawing your message. Ah well, you can’t have it all.
Day 3
The last day I attended sessions on how to broadcast yourself by Thorsten Butz (some of you may know him from the Powershell conference). He showed some cool tips and tricks on how to record yourself and how to improve your audio. Head over to Auphonic to learn more! Next up was a bit of scary session where Sami Laiho talked about all the cybercrimes being committed. It makes you wonder why so many things still work… After that, there was some fun in a session on MCT’s being MVP’s and my conference ended with a session on Azure Bastion. After that, a quick lunch and then the drive back home.
Evaluation
As I’m primarily working with data and related resources, this wasn’t a conference aimed at me. Nor at anyone else specifically. It was about meeting people, making connections and broadening the horizon. And that purpose was very well served. The content of the sessions was very diverse in every aspect. From beginner to expert and from very technical to (at times) hilarious non-technical. It’s a challenge to compose an agenda that way. I think every attendee had fun, learned something and connected with new people. What more could you wish for? Excellent job by the organisers!
Personally, I would have loved for the agenda to have an indication of the levels (100-400) and a speaker evaluation form. If there’s one place speaker should be assured of constructive feedback, it should be at this place.
I heard next years event will be in Manchester so keep your eyes open if you want to be there.
Thanks for reading!
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