Microsoft Ignite 2024 – The Lab Experience

This post is part of a series of posts about Microsoft Ignite 2024. In this post I’ll tell you about what brought me to Ignite and you’ll get familiar with one of the Ignite sessions types – Lab Sessions! This series is all about Microsoft Ignite beyond the technical parts. See my post with highlights from a Power Platform perspective if you’re only here for such content!

Full series
Microsoft Ignite 2024 – The Story
Microsoft Ignite 2024 – The Lab Experience
Microsoft Ignite 2024 – Beyond the Highlights
Microsoft Ignite 2024 – The Chicago Adventure

Also see the Microsoft Ignite 2024 – Highlights post, Power Platform and related.

Lab Proctor perspective

I had not planed to attend Microsoft Ignite, but when an opportunity showed up, I did not hesitate to seize it. All of a sudden I was going to Chicago, as a Lab Proctor! It was an amazing experience and I would do it all over again any day of the week.

To be part of such a dedicated lab team was fantastic, it’s rare to see this level of commitment and strive for perfection, even making sure all daily updates to the platform was taken into consideration. Here follows lab proctor/speaker tips. I had the first one in my previous post as well, it’s a good one!

• When an opportunity shows up, seize it (or gone forever)
• Fine tune your session and instructions (or not as good)
• Do the tech checks (or get issues)
• Verify instructions every day (or platform updates spoils it)

Three days in a row the lab Mastering Model-Driven Power Apps was held. Speakers were fellow MVPs Nick Doelman, the master of love letters to your future self and wonderful Angeliki Patsiavou. Lab Proctors were myself, April Dunnam, Sean Astrakhan and Stalin Ponnusamy. The dedication from all was very inspiring!

As a lab proctor you’ll get to try out labs and give feedback. Then you support attendees during the delivery, making sure labs run smoothly and issues are unblocked. You can also add extra value by giving a richer context when suitable. It was inspiring to see my lab proctor buddies helpfully assist the attendees!

Out of 52 labs this was the only one with MVPs as main speakers (others were Microsoft-held). Curious about the lab instructions? Nick made them available on GitHub.

Attendee perspective

On the last day of Microsoft Ignite, I went to the lab session, Interacting with multimodal Generative AI models, it was great! To get the most our of lab sessions:

• Register for labs (or miss great learning possibilities)
• Register for labs early (or out of seats)
• Be on time (or seat lost)
• Connect with speakers (or miss connections)
• Take notes (or forget)
• Ask if lab instructions are available publicly (or miss to go back to)

This lab gave a good overview of what’s what and how to get started with Azure AI Foundry (formerly known as Azure AI Studio) and Playgrounds. You can find lab instructions available on GitHub. Lots of great resources here as well.

This was the second post in a series of posts about my Ignite experience, beyond the technical parts. Next up is about networking and additional Ignite fun, you’ll find it here! Thanks for reading!

Original Post https://carinaclaesson.com/2024/12/18/microsoft-ignite-2024-the-lab-experience/