It was a great time to sit down with my good friend David Giard on his show “Technology and Friends”. The episode is now available on YouTube.

We talked about the toils and successes of using public cloud in public sector. There are some specific challenges and practical friction to getting something like that off the ground. The public sector also wants to use the Cloud and modern cloud based AI services, same as anyone.

Thanks David for having me on your show – it was a treat!

https://davidgiard.com/magnus-martensson-on-the-cloud-for-the-public-sector

It is going to be a smashing event to keynote the Premier .NET & AI conference in Tunisia: Tunisia DevDays!

Here’s a little video I put together for the event:

The conference is held annually in Tunisia, in the vibrant city of Tunis. Their mission is to bring together the brightest minds in technology, from innovators and pioneers to educators and policymakers, creating a fertile ground for networking, learning, and collaboration.

The conference boasts a two-day program filled with rock stars of tech who will cover a wide range of topics including software development, AI, and digital transformation.

Tunisia Dev Days is set up as more than a conference – it is a community event to foster innovation and drive the digital economy in Tunisia and beyond.

You should get your ticket now, and I will see you in Tunis!

I am speaking at DevSum 2024 in Stockholm on May 16-17, 2024.

My session this time is a “lessons learned” topic, and I am very excited to talk about it. Currently, I am helping public sector customers with their approach to cloud. There are, as I am sure you expect multiple interesting challenges with moving something of this size, this heavily regulated, and with considerable legacy IT and applications. It is challenging and rewarding to be a part of large transformation stories and there are many things to consider in public sector that are not of equal importance in the private sector.

DevSum

DevSum has a 20th anniversary this year, which is an impressive feat by Cornerstone the organizer. The conference is always very well organized and it draws a big crowd from near and far. The speaker lineup this year is, as every year, excellent! It will be an awesome show!

My session: Lessons learned from public sector cloud implementations

“It is time to talk about the specific challenges on the cloudy road ahead! It may feel intimidating, daunting, with a real risk of missing the target or not gaining the full benefit of the cloud-move. The cloud promises; Agile/fast, secure, compliant, and pay-per-use. Not to mention all those new AI services – they are all in the cloud. No cloud, no AI!

Right now, the Swedish public sector is in fact moving to the cloud. For many years, the situation was rather locked by compliance, security, and data sovereignty matters.

Over a decade after the introduction of cloud computing, the public sector in Sweden is finally beginning to migrate services that contain citizen data and/or are classified as nationally critical infrastructure to the cloud.

Among the challenges associated with adopting a cloud approach are governance, managing partner and supplier relationships, ensuring security and compliance, transitioning skills, planning for change, and developing a proper strategy. Attend this session for a run-down of the bold steps that will set you on a straighter path directly to the cloud!”

I gave a presentation at this sweet learning community on LinkedIn Learning called “Microsoft Zero to Hero Community”. Please take a look at this community, and if you are an Azure Learner – you could joint the community and follow them to share in all the learning they provide! <3

A while ago I started to just line up slides with random Azure advice. Over time the list of slides grew, and so I thought; “would anyone really want to hear a random rambling session by me where I just dispense a stream of things I have learned about Azure over the years?” Turns out the answer is “yes that is really useful”! So I sorted my slides and now have it as an ever growing set of anectdotal Azure knowledge.

I think Baz Luhrmann put it best: “Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth.”

For what it’s worth, it seems folks are keen to hear about Azure since the days it was called “Windows”. The original name for Azure… well the code name was Red Dog but that’s another story. The original name was “Windows Azure”.

You can view my session here on YouTube: Magnus Mårtensson - Four pre-flight checks for Azure Cloud (youtube.com)

I had the pleasure of speaking at Experts Live Denmark in Lyngby, just north of Copenhagen. This was a nicely executed event hosted at Microsoft, but run by the community. A very well organized event and with many great speakers there to share knowledge.

I was on an Ask Me Anything panel along with several of my speaker peers. That is always fun! My session was about Access Control management in Azure. This is a very important topic, and – let’s be honest – most companies do not do this very well.

I urge you to take a look at Experts Live and find an event near you, because if it is anything like the one in Copenhagen, you will be in for a treat!