“I watch Build every year and I’m very excited about all the cool announcements,” AI MVP in Massachusetts United States, Veronika Kolesnikova, shares her Microsoft Build experience. She led the virtual Microsoft Build Watch Party in June 2022 as a co-organizer with the Boston Azure’s community members.
This event was designed to watch the featured Build session selected by the organizer, Scaling responsible MLOps with Azure Machine Learning, to learn relevant technical information, and have a discussion to gain in-depth understanding. Veronika said, “I wanted to share my excitement with our user groups and also discuss the latest and greatest tools, cool technologies and learn other people’s perspective regarding the major announcements.”
Organizers encouraged the attendees to join the live discussion. “We didn’t record the event to make sure people are comfortable unmuting themselves and sharing their opinion freely,” she adds. This rule was announced in its event page in advance and ensured everyone to share their ideas, insights, and questions in a safe place.
Since MVPs and communities moved their stage to the virtual space, a lot of conferences and community events involved the people who had difficulties in visiting the event venue, and it brought expanded connection even with the community members in remote areas. On the flip side, many organizers and attendees know it is not the same experience as having a live community experience with friends in the physical space.
Veronika continued, “I hope next time to do it in-person, because not too many people showed up online for the event this time. I blame it on “online world fatigue”. Pizza and swag will probably also attract more people. It would be also good if the attendees could watch a couple of recorded sessions online ahead of time and then do lightning talks.”
