Microsoft Ignite Spotlight on Switzerland - My experience at Ask The Experts table
Tags: devops, devrel, github, githubactions
Published: 2023-03-10 15:06:09

## Introduction
Microsoft Ignite Spotlight on Switzerland event arrived in Zurich at March 9th with three Keynotes, Breakout Sessions, and Ask the Experts.
It was a good way to get the latest updates on technology trends and news.
You can find the tracks in the [official event website](https://pulse.microsoft.com/de-ch/transform-de-ch/na/fa2-microsoft-ignite-spotlight-on-switzerland/).
A lot of speakers were Microsoft employees especially in the keynotes.
Apart from the CEO of Microsoft CH Catrin Hinkel, we also had Julia Liusson and Erich Gamma.
In the last keynote of the day we had Adam Goldberg from OpenAI.

## The Venue
The venue of the event was in the heart of the city at Kongresshaus Zurich.

![Kongresshaus Zurich](https://meeting.zuerich.com/sites/default/files/image/2021/web_zuerich_kongresshaus_36241.jpg)

It's a big venue for a conference but the event was sold out!
More than 1500 registration and 1200+ attendees showed up the day of the event!

The organization was perfect.
At the entrance with the QR Code or the name, someone gave you the badge and share with the attendees some basic information about the location.

![The Hall](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/l1xdr6yc3wd9b6r6f3gq.JPEG)

The keynote was in the main room and as you can see in the photo below, it was fully packed.

![The Venue](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/r2kptf93uqul48m3ek35.JPEG)

## Tracks
There were a total of **6 tracks** during the day divided by category: **Be Data-Driven & Optimize with Azure**, **Innovate with a cloud developer platform**, **Empower People to work in new ways, Protect everything, everyone, everywhere**, **Deliver efficiency with Automation & AI**, **Accelerate development & grow your startup**.
In addition there were 3 keynotes, two in the morning and one at the end of the day, before the apero.

![Morning Tracks](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ud2111qh424eksxndmd0.png)

![Afternoon Tracks](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/ol5ubbboy4z9wa9fr8qb.png)

## The meeting with Erich Gamma
After the first keynote I was hanging around in the Ask The Experts Area (more info in the next paragraph) and I saw **Erich Gamma** very close to me.
For people who don't know Erich Gamma I put a snippet here from Wikipedia.

> In 2011 he joined the Microsoft Visual Studio team and leads a development lab in Zürich, Switzerland that has developed the "Monaco" suite of components for browser-based development, found in products such as Azure DevOps Services (formerly Visual Studio Team Services and Visual Studio Online), Visual Studio Code, Azure Mobile Services, Azure Web Sites, and the Office 365 Development tools.

For me it's a kind of super guru because of Visual Studio Code.
I tried to talk with him and surprise surprise, he saw my Visual Studio Code tattoo that I have on my left arms and he asked me a selfie!!!
I didn't believe it!
Of course, after that, I asked for a selfie as well.
I will never forget this funny moment.

![Erich Gamma](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/oe2qn2zn4sdjy42w03n6.JPEG)

## Ask The Experts tables
On the second floor of the venue, we have 9 tables with different topics.
![Ask The Experts tables](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/azde74nwhs9ydvza0joz.png)
People could come at any time of the day and ask us questions.
The not-so-easy thing about ask the experts, compared to regular speech, is that you don't know what people may ask you.
And that of course always makes you a little apprehensive when you see people coming. 🤭

![DevSecOps Table](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/lr48o2i7rx8ciqtvnpmw.JPEG)

## Questions
I got 5 questions from people at our table about DevSecOps. Honestly it's an huge number because very often the people are too shy to come and ask something.
I was the only one at the table as an "outsider" 😀 because the other ones were Microsoft or GitHub employees.

I got two questions about Blazor (wow!!!🥳🥳🥳) and the other three questions were about GitHub services as GitHub Codespaces and other topics.

Fortunately, I've been using Blazor for a long time, and I haven't had much difficulty answering what was asked.

Even on the GitHub part I did pretty well because it's a service I've been using every day for many years anyway.

![me at Ignite](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/tfu8awo5ah6mxvad40re.JPEG)

## Summary
Basically, I really enjoyed the conference, both because I saw many people again who I had only heard from online, and because I met new people and interacted with them.
that's the beauty of live events.

Unfortunately, I saw very few sessions because I had to stay at the ask the experts tables but that is part of the game when you are directly involved.

I also thank here the people who invited me with an active role and hope to see everyone again next time!

![Badge](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/g5dnwmh813hns17l4570.JPEG)

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Are you interested in learning GitHub but don't know where to start? Try my course on LinkedIn Learning: [Learning GitHub](https://bit.ly/learninggithub).

![LinkedIn Learning](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/sdc2bpiftpadibi4h51c.gif)

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