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Innovation Days was held from 9am to 5pm on Saturday 17th September at NSI TAFE NSW Campus. Over 130 attendees took part in a ground-breaking new event. The content focused on the following topics: Datacenter and Cloud (Private, Hybrid and Public), Identity and Security, Linux, Collaboration, IoT, Database, Business Analytics and Integration and Application Development.

Information gathered during registration showed that 73% of attendees were interested in Cloud and Datacenter management, 64% in Data Analytics and 50% in Modern Apps.

It also showed that 53.77% are aware that their company has a cloud strategy, 27.36% who don’t know and 18.87% whose company does not have a cloud strategy yet.

It showed also some insights about Linux utilisation/deployment at about 42% and what are their planning public clod adoption, with Azure as preferred by 44.81% followed by AWS at 21.23% and Unknown/None at 35.38%.

The event was sponsored by NSI Tafe NSW, Microsoft, RXP and RedHat. Significant in-kind sponsorship was received from NSI Tafe NSW, and I am very thankful for that. The event ran at a non-profit and it was free to the attendees, thanks the sponsorship.

The feedback from participants gathered during informal conversations at the networking time, indicated a very high level of satisfaction with the event. Quoting one attendee: “The event was inspiring. The IoT session was great. I am going to buy a Raspberry PI and start coding.  It’s amazing what we can achieve with that.”

The speakers were amongst industry experts and Australian Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) who presented great content about innovative technologies and based on their real world experience in short action packed sessions. I would like to thank you all the speakers for taking time to prepare and present great content sessions.

The event started 9am with an introduction from NSI Tafe NSW Derik Pola, Faculty Director of Information Technology, Media and Business , followed by a keynote session “Go Mobile, stay in Control: Enterprise Mobility + Security” from Microsoft Evangelist Jeff Alexander, followed by another keynote on Modern Cloud by Alessandro Cardoso and then 3 sessions: Nano Server:  Minimize reboots and improve security with next-gen server deployment with Jeff Alexander, Introducing Microsoft PowerApps with Bill Chesnut and .Net Core with Jordan Knight.

After lunch, we had another keynote Session: Containers Anywhere with OpenShift with Stefano Picozzi from RedHat, who give away an Openshift book and I saw a many interested in getting a copy, which showed that the subject is at much interest.

Then we had 9 great sessions:

• Azure IoT End-to-End with Martin Abbott, MVP
• Business Case for Upgrading to SQL Server 2016 with Victor Isakov
• API Management and Hybrid Integration with Bill Chesnut, MVP
• “Best mates” Power BI and Machine Learning with Grant Paisley, MVP
• Using Azure Active Directory B2C in your next consumer App with Simon Waight, MVP
• Hyper-V, Nested Virtualisation and Linux with Alessandro Cardoso, MVP
• Windows 10 Integration with Organisational Identities in The Cloud with Mark O’Shea, MVP
• Collaborate beyond the boundaries of an enterprise: Your Enterprise bot is here with Amr Fouad, MVP
• Understanding Rights Management with Robert Crane, MVP

You can find more about our speakers here: http://innovationdays.com.au/speakers

As stories goes, one of the speakers came out the hospital where his wife just had a baby. I would like to congratulate Victor Isakov for the new born and for taking time away from his family to present a great session.

The motto of the event: Delivering an engaging, informing and technically focussed event – “Whether you know your way around the cloud and are trying to stay current, or are just getting started and figuring out the best path forward – having access to information, best practices and training is more critical than ever”, was fully achieved. There were several objectives which Innovation Days aimed to fulfil: bringing together the ICT community, discovering new solutions and new ways to implement it, connecting with industry experts, IT professionals and technology partners.

The range and depth of presentations was incredibly encouraging and networking with other professional colleagues was cited as one of the most important reasons to attend.

But the conference was not just talks and workshops. We had a good networking time at lunch time featuring Microsoft Cognitive Services as well as a social gathering after event with drinks.

At the end, thanks to the sponsors, we had many prizes and a lucky winner of a Lenovo Laptop sponsored by RXP Services.

This event could not be great success as it was without the support from John Barnet from NSI Tafe, Michael O’Keeffe from Microsoft and our sponsors and speakers: Martin Abbott, Victor Isakov, Bill Chesnut, Grant Paisley, Simon Waight, Mark O’Shea, Amr Fouad, Robert Crane, Jeff Alexander, Stefano Picozzi and myself: Alessandro Cardoso.

Several of the presentations can be found on the event website http://innovationdays.com.au/session-slides, alongside with some photos from the event at http://innovationdays.com.au/photos

I Looking forward to see you again in 2017!

Alessandro Cardoso Microsoft MVP | RXP Services Technology Strategist @cloudtidings