Managing activities and productivity as a consultant

Posted on by

I have a hard time keeping track of my activities. It can be hard to track my availability, and my days tend to disappear in a flash. I have tried many different digital ways of doing this, and now I’m going with a mix of digital and analog.

You don’t get what you want, you get what you work for

To lead anyone, you have to have a healthy degree of self-awareness. I find that this is one quality which I don’t see very often, and it’s very hard to try and cultivate it. As a first step, it’s good to measure how you spend your time, because that shows your priorities more clearly, and in a way that you can measure.

I use Trello and Plus for Trello to log my activities over a period of time. The results showed that I spend a lot of time in email, so I worked towards getting it down to Inbox Zero. It took 30 hours of solid email writing to do it, and I did it on planes across the Atlantic to the US, and on planes across to the East. Inbox Zero doesn’t stay for very long though, so I used my last flight to Singapore to try and clear down as many as possible, and I’m down to the last 300 emails. I’m sitting in a cafe in Watford on a Sunday morning, while my dog is being groomed, to clear these down.

My Trello reports showed that I regularly do 15-16 hours of work a day. I work at every available pocket of time, with downtime only for food and for spending time with my son. Sleep gets squeezed. All of this work means that I am leaving a trail of things behind me, and that means it is difficult to unpick when it comes to invoicing and expense time.

Too busy to pick up the $50 notes that you drop as you go

I have hired a Virtual Assistant and she has been helping me a lot; it’s been worth the time investing in training her in my various home-grown systems and I’m hoping to get some time back. I was getting to the point where I was dropping things like expense claims, so, basically, I was dropping $50 dollar notes behind me as I sped along my way. Having the VA onboard means I have someone to help me to pick up the $50 dollars as I go, and it’s worth investing the time.

We are designed to have ideas, not hold them in our heads

I bought the Get Things Done book and something really spoke to me; humans are designed to have ideas, not hold them. That’s true.

I wrote down every single idea that I had. Truthfully, we forget our ideas. I didn’t bother evaluating if it is a good idea or a bad idea; I just wrote it down. I then saw that I could group these ideas, so I start to split them out. One of my headings was ‘Ideas for blog posts’. Very shortly, I had 36 blog post ideas down on the page, which I had collated over the period of a week or so. This is blog post #36. I haven’t lost the other 35; I can pencil them in my planning journal. So let’s dive in and take a look at the system.

Bullet Journalling in a Traveler’s Notebook

I started to use the bullet journal system and I’ve heavily adapted it. It was worth investiging a couple of hours to understand it, and get it set up. Here is the website here. After having tried various electronic and digital systems for the past twenty or so years, this is the only one I’ve found that works for me.

I have a Traveler’s Notebook, which is like a refillable notebook that you can customize yourself. Here’s my Traveler’s Notebook, which I took whilst I was out in the Philippines:

IMG_20180507_184026

The Traveler’s Notebook itself is customizable. I have the following sections:

  • Task List
  • Monthly Tracker with Weekly next to it
  • Daily Tracker
  • Mindsweeper (a brain dump, basically) for blog ideas, things to remember, quotes I like, tentative activities, adresses I need temporarily etc.
  • Slot for holding cards
  • card envelopes for holding things such as train tickets, boarding passes
  • Zippable wallet for holding passport

Here are some ideas to get you going.

Tracking over a Month

I use a monthly spread, which uses a vertical format. On the left hand side, I record anything that is personal. On the right hand side, I record work activities. I don’t split the page evenly, since I have less personal activities than work activities.

Here is my example below. The blue stickers are simply to cover up customer names. I took this shot half-way through my planning session, so you could see the structure before it got confusing with a lot of dates in it.

IMG_20180507_205411

Using my background in data visualization, I try to stick to the data/ink ratio. I am trying to simplify my life and declutter what my brain can take in quickly, so I find that it isn’t necessary to repeat the customer name for every day. Instead, I can just draw a vertical line that has two purposes; to point to a label, and to denote the length of the activity. In other words, it forms a pointer to the label, which shows the customer name. The length of the line covers the number of days that the activity lasts for. So, if the line has the length of four boxes, then this means that the activity lasts for four days.

Occasionally, I’ve got excited because I think I have some free days to book myself out for an unexpected request. Then, I realize it’s because I haven’t marked out the weekends. I work weekends too, and the main reason I mark weekends separately is because my customers don’t work weekends, usually. Therefore, I colour weekends in so that I can easily categorize the days as being part of a weekend or a normal working day. I have also done this for Bank Holidays because I tend to work then, too.

My personal things go on the left, and my work things go on the right.

Tracking over a Week

I put the weeks on the right hand side of the page, and this is where I combine time, tasks and scheduling. I use the grid in order to mark out the days, and, on the same line, I mark out the Task. Then, I can put a tick in the day when I have pencilled in the task itself. You’ll note that I have marked a seven day week. You can see it at the right hand side of the photo.

If I don’t manage to complete an activity that day, I just add another tick mark so the next day so that it gets tracked then.

I don’t eliminate tasks that I haven’t managed to complete that week. Instead, I just put them in the next week instead.

In my weekly list, I don’t cross things off when I’ve done them. I find that it created an unnecessary clutter, and I didn’t want to bring into focus the activities that I’ve done. I’m more interested in what I have to do next. I leave that to my daily list, and I will come onto that next.

Tracking over a Day

For the Day, I use an A6 size notebook, and I use a two-page format. On the left hand side, I go back to the vertical representation of time. This time, the day is chunked in to hours. As before, anything personal or non-work-related goes on the left hand side. On the right hand side, my work activities for the day go here. That may include stand-up meetings, retrospectives or whatever I am doing that day.

I have added in a slot for lunch. I don’t normally take lunch but I need to make sure that I eat something. It is easy for the day to slip by, and I only notice it’s lunchtime because people are not around and the office has gone a bit quieter.

On the right hand side, this forms a mini-brain-dump of activities or thoughts that occur as I proceed throughout the day. It can also form a memo pad of things that I need, such as a phone number, which I jot down before I add to contacts. This usually gets filled during the day. It is a messy space, a place to unload,

Some of these thoughts are important but they are not urgent. I can then clear these items into a less transient mindsweeper but I just need a place to hold them temporarily while I assess their urgency.

The idea of having ideas, rather than holding them in my head, was a revelation to me. I’d been worrying about my memory, and forgetting things. If you forget something, then you lose a part of yourself and you don’t get it back. I set myself memory tests, such as remembering the name of a painting, or a quote of some sorts. When I start to forget things, then I know I am starting to have problems. The reason I started to do this is because I could see the start of someone else’s memory start to go a little, as he forgot things such as who he ate dinner with; simple things like that. It made me very sad, and I realized that our memories make up so much of who are we.

It can be tremendously liberating to divest ourselves of our responsibility of trying to remember everything and to focus on the things that matter. It frees your mind to have more ideas, rather than focus effort on holding ideas, which is harder for your mind to do.

Why Microsoft does not need to prove it’s another IBM: Work is what we do, not where we are.

Posted on by

Does Microsoft have to prove it’s not another IBM? I read this article from the Verge, which suggested that Microsoft would have to prove that it’s not another IBM. The article suggests that ‘Microsoft is increasingly focusing its efforts on businesses rather than consumers’, evidenced by the Windows demos being relegated to Day Two.

In the article, the author states that ‘Microsoft can’t afford to become the next IBM and lose any relevance it still holds with consumers, but if it’s not careful, that might be inevitable.’ I would strongly disagree with this assertion. Let’s take a look at where Microsoft are going.

Work is what we do, not where we are. That’s why the Alexa and Cortana integration is so important.

From the Build keynote, I got the real sense that Microsoft are paying attention to consumers with the Alexa and Cortana integration. I see the split quite neatly; Alexa for Amazon type of requests where I want to order something, or use an Amazon service such as Audible. I see the Cortana aspect of Alexa as ramping up the productivity, both personal and professional, for consumers. Microsoft remember their consumers and this view will help Microsoft in efforts to retain mainstream mass market success beyond Windows and Office. The reality is that our life boundaries between work and play are pretty blurred nowadays, and Microsoft understand that. Work is what we do and part of who we are; work is not a place to go, do work, and come back again. Our lives are way too confusing for that simplicity and those days are gone.

workandplay

Microsoft has the opportunity to show the world this week what it really stands for, and, for me, Microsoft seems to ‘get’ people and the mess that is our lives. Additionally, there will always be the diversity aspect that Microsoft brings to the table. In the Day One keynote, for example, it was inspiring to see work teams collaborating productively with a deaf team member, and ensuring that she was part of the team.

Another aspect of Microsoft Build is that diversity does not mean sticking pretty young women up on the stage in some sort of reverse move; sexism in the guise of diversity where organizations pretend to be diverse by showing ‘babes’ as presenters. The Microsoft Build stage was shared with real women leaders who have a passion for technology, as well as an inclusive message by showing how technology helped a techie who is deaf. Microsoft’s demo showed that her deafness was part of who she is, but it did not stop her from doing what she loves. As a female in technology, this means a lot to me. Having complained on booth babes in the past, I feel that diverse groups have a home at Microsoft and Microsoft are showing the way by example. That’s real leadership, and that’s why I don’t think Microsoft need to prove that they aren’t IBM in disguise at all; they are embedding this perspective in their DNA.

With Satya Nadella at the helm, there is a real care and concern, almost a love for people and the planet, which imbued Satya’s keynote.

During the keynote, Nadella talked about Microsoft’s impact on people and planet through opportunity and responsibility, and they were right at the front and start and centre of the keynote. For that, as someone on a Buddhist journey as well as a female in tech, that was a key takeaway for me. I felt that Satya’s keynote talked directly to me.

Microsoft are serious about open source, and making it a first-class citizen. Microsoft is single largest contributor to open source on GitHub. According to GitHub, Microsoft has the largest open source community in the entire world with Visual Studio Code. If this is a surprise, you weren’t paying attention and it shows a real commitment to the creativity of developers. IBM has a story for open-source too and they have shown themselves to be leaders in this area. Microsoft seem to be splattering open source everywhere and I get the impression that they are way more vocal about it than IBM are. In fact, I don’t think you can actually avoid it in many Microsoft products anymore. Take R, for example; it’s in everything from SQL Server through to Power BI, and you can even use R in Excel, which is, after all, the world’s favourite Business Intelligence tools and one of the most unsung inventions of the 20th century.

I don’t believe that the promises of AI are ‘vague’ at all, as suggested by the article. There are clearly many opportunities for intelligent drones, as evidenced by Microsoft’s forward-looking partnership with DJI. It’s important to note that IBM also have a partnership with Aerialtronics. In this sense, both organizations are going in the same direction. I’m not sure what’s vague about it from the Microsoft perspective; they’ve signed up with a manufacturing giant, and I think that’s good news. I also think competition is a good thing, but I also think that Microsoft are placing the opportunity in the hands of developers and that’s allowing freedom and creativity, being mindful of Satya’s commentary about ethical AI and its responsibilities.

MIcrosoft should not fear IBM at all.  I see Microsoft as having a consumer and business audience. Consumers will still be a focus for Microsoft between Windows, Mixed Reality, Xbox, Office and other services, along with new innovations such as the Alexa/Cortana piece mentioned earlier. Microsoft have clearly gone after enterprise as a focus, especially in the Cloud sector. Those bets have been paying off as the Azure business is growing, and going from strength to strength and the strategy is continuing to prove itself to shareholders, and that’s crucial as an independent barometer.

 

Microsoft Build 2018 Day 2 Keynote Summary: Better developer experiences across devices

Posted on by

dotnet-core3

This blog is my takeaways from Microsoft’s Build 2018 conference, Day 2.

Communication is such an essential skill and it is even more crucial in today’s connected world. I love what Microsoft are doing with ML in Word, with WinML. It will improve people’s written communication skills since it improves the spell and grammar. This is an awesome experience and can help ANYONE to be a better writer, including kids. I do think that some people can get put off writing because they are worried about the spelling and grammar, and I hope that this will empower them. It’s also important for people with dyslexia since it can give them more confidence in their written communication. Kevin Gallo says Microsoft is also using Windows ML in their own products. The demo showed intelligent grammar checking, and that ability can be life changing for people who need the help.

For developers, the key takeaway was about making the pieces integrate and unify much more easily so that the developer experience is better.  Windows development will be one seamless experience, across all devices. I think that it is really a new Microsoft and honestly, I was so excited that Satya Nadella is doing the keynote at Build because I knew that there were good things coming!

Developers will be able to bring Fluent Design to applications built on Win32 via UWP XAML Islands, which will allow developers to access more XAML controls for their app. This can be achieved UI stack you use—whether it’s Windows Forms, WPF, or native Win32. In the Day 2 demo, XAML Islands integrated with Time and, for good measure, Sets as well. The demo also added in some Custom Vision Service, ONNX and Windows ML. The Windows UI LIbrary will provide native platform controls, and it will be available on Nuget. The controls are the same ones that ship in the platform, and the same ones that Windows uses in its own solutions.

Microsoft have decoupled .NET updates from Windows updates with .Net Core 3; so you can perform .NET Core updates without updating the whole OS. If you are developer and you are itching to get work done, you can see why you’d get frustrated waiting for updates, and this will help you to manage your time better.

I’m also excited that there is more Azure Cosmos DB news. With #CosmosDB’s new multi-master support, you can direct your writes to any region where your DB is deployed. This means that you will get a write availability that’s equivalent with Cosmos DB’s best-in-class read availability. This is great for developers and for people who are accessing apps which rely on Azure Cosmos DB.

Fluenting is also improved by the Ink Analysis for Cognitive Services Labs, more details here:

They fixed Notepad! It now supports Linux line feeds. It’s the small things, right? It all means that developers have got the best dev box, ever.

Developers are incredibly creative and I look forward to seeing what people will do with it.

 

Data Vault Certification Course in London with Hans Hultgren.

Posted on by

Hans Hultgren (LinkedIn) and his team are holding the Data Vault Certification course (CDVDM) again in London – June 18-20.

Please tell Hans that I sent you, and you will qualify for a discount. Note that I’m not financially incentivized in any way; Hans reached out after my recent Data Vault post, and I was happy to help.

Please ping Hans over at his LinkedIn page directly, and I hope you enjoy the course. I’ll look forward to hearing your comments.

datavault6

Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote Summary: What does it mean for Artificial Intelligence, old and new?

Posted on by

This is the most exciting Microsoft Build for me, ever, for two reasons. Firstly, this is my first Microsoft Build as a Microsoft Regional Director and it is giving me new opportunities to see how developers are empowered to have one of the most impactful jobs in the environment. Secondly, this edition of Microsoft Build is all about Artificial Intelligence for me. I never thought that my decision to do postgraduate work in AI, two decades ago, would still be my passion twenty years on. Now, it seems that the world is catching up with AI again and this time, it’s not going to disappear from organizational radars.

“The focus of innovations and investments need to shift from slogging innovations like phone and, drone type innovations to solve real problems that are killing the inhabitants of the planet.” ― Saurabh Gupta, Earth5R

Following on from Gupta’s quote, I disagree with this emphasis. Used wisely, I think drones can have a good benefit. In natural and manmade environmental disasters, drones can be positioned to survey damage, locate stranded and injured victims, and assess ongoing threats. This means that we don’t risk the safety of rescue teams and first-responders. Drones can help with tactical surveillance and suspect tracking; if they are helping you or your family members, you may well be grateful for them. I can see AI and IoT used for good, here.

quote-drones-overall-will-be-more-impactful-than-i-think-people-recognize-in-positive-ways-bill-gates-142-81-77

 

I’m excited by two main things that Microsoft are doing: AI on IoT Edge, and the Open Sourcing of IoT Edge Runtime.

Cognitive Services support on IoT Edge so that you can build apps that leverage Artificial Intelligence algorithms on your IoT devices. It’s more than just hardware, though: it means you can help your devices to listen, see, speak and even interpret their environments. This includes drones but could include other things, such as industrial devices. Microsoft is providing you with Azure Machine Learning packages which allow developers to develop with devices to give you vision, text and forecasting. I think developers will be hugely empowered to do great things with Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things technology. Microsoft are going in the right direction with Azure AI and IoT, and I think we can see AI for good, with Azure as an engine to move the world forward.

Having worked with computer vision 20 years ago, I’m excited how Microsoft are making Artificial Intelligence easy and accessible.

I think developers will be genuinely excited about developing with devices such as drones. Who wouldn’t? Custom Vision is the first Azure Cognitive Service to support edge deployment, with more coming to Azure IoT Edge over the next several months.

I worked with computer vision very early in my AI career, in a project where we looked for edges, blobs and convolution were part of my everyday vocabularly; the Laplacian of Gaussian, anyone? Twenty years ago, computer vision was extremely tough to do, and I looked at doing it 20 years ago when it was AI was considered as a route to recognise objects, particularly faces e.g. identifying shoplifters as they entered a shop. Now, Microsoft are taking it further so you could recognize things, and then take actions when something is recognized. How amazing is that?

I’ll be honest; two decades ago, computer vision was horrible and probably one of the hardest programing things that I ever did. I used C# and worked in a Computing Science department where people considered that Emacs was for softies.

I’m in awe that Microsoft are now making Artificial Intelligence so that it is accessible and easy.

What do Microsoft’s announcements mean for developers?

If you’re a graduate, or considering a career, I’d throw myself right at Artificial Intelligence in the cloud. I wish I could life my life again so I could have these opportunities as a young adult.

What does this give you, regardless of your career trajectory? Opportunity. It is a leveller to have the intelligent edge, whatever your size. It is for small organizations, large organizations, students who want to explore. These packages are not full-blown models with simple APIs the way Azure Cognitive Services are. At the other end of the spectrum, they are not raw algorithms, such as those offered in CNTK or TensorFlow. Instead, they are models that can be customized for particular applications; quicker roads to success, and that provides your opportunity to access success more quickly.

With great power, comes great responsibility (and opportunity)

As every Spiderman fan knows, with great power, comes great responsibility. We have to ensure that these technologies are empowering everyone in every industry. It’s about creating and developing trust. As quoted by Satya Nadella, Jonas formulated this imperative inter alia as follows: “Act so that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life,” or, expressed in negative terms: “Act so that the effects of your action are not destructive for the future possibility of such life.” When we work with technology that offers great opportunity, we have to think about acting with great responsibility.

Great responsibility in the everyday

One example: GDPR is a sound regulation with good intentions at heart. Microsoft have been diligently working with great responsibility in mind, whilst balancing these responsibility with great opportunity. We can ask what computers can do, and what computers should do. I would take this further; we need to ask ourselves what we can do with computers. Let’s hope for good intentions and that these are enabled through ethical AI. We have the opportunity to do great things, to lift humankind forward, and increase communication. I’d personally love to see a situation where Facebook ads and fake news sites are fact-checked as you open the site, so that you can get a real view of the data when you read it. I’d love to see a proactive, artificial intelligence fact-checker that can be put beside Breitbart, for example, so that the facts aren’t as easy to ignore.

Open Sourcing of IoT Edge Runtime

Developers can have more transparency and control for their edge application since they now have the power to modify the runtime. This is a great move since it gives open source developers the opportunity to get involved with IoT Edge, springboarding from their existing expertise.

How does this affect you?

The world is speeding up and it’s not going to stop so you can hop onboard. Get learning, get reading, and join in. Satya Nadella mentioned a few books and authors during his keynote. Why not start there? Even if you don’t code, you don’t need to see the possibilities and opportunities to be the ‘glue’ that holds AI, IT, and the business together. All aboard!

cb-3286017_1920.jpg

 

Being a Microsoft Regional Director: faith, trust and pixie dust for good

Posted on by

I’m still learning about being a Microsoft Regional Director and I’m figuring things out. I’d like to thank Microsoft here for this opportunity and I’d like to thank the great RD team at Microsoft for their seemingly-endless patience with my questions!

Here is my opinion. I don’t represent anyone other than myself, and this is in no way official. I am extremely honored to be a Regional Director and an MVP and I think that the RD role is worth exploring further. This is just an opinion, and that I’m still learning about the RD role since I am new to it. I might add that i’m still figuring out being an MVP as well. Actually, I’m still wondering what job I want to do when I grow up!

Let’s take an example. Recently, an email popped up in my mailbox from a senior executive and decision maker, who asked for a hiring strategy for Azure team members and a commentary about POs for Azure, including Power BI. So I made a huge impact at that customer site, which was a large organization and a big ship to steer around. In fact, it takes faith, hope and a little dash of pixie dust as well as joining hands with the team in order to make the jump in digital transformation; people, processes and technology. And then, I rinse and repeat at other organizations so that everyone has a good leap of faith in the direct direction.

Recently I was on the BBC, talking about a different client where I am helping with a data science for good project, which focuses on homelessness and other aspects of social care. I’ve put the video here, in case you’re interested:

You probably think that any one-woman-band projects mean much, but they do. In fact, it’s huge. I have been working with the first client for months, on and off, combining my time with other customers in an ad-hoc way. I am convinced that Azure is the right solution and the role was born out of the roadmap to Azure that I had worked with them to produce, as part of a larger strategy piece; and it’s just the first role and more will be added later.

For the second customer case, the work we are doing, using Microsoft technologies, is going to have a good impact on people’s lives. The data overrides your perceptions. When we think of homeless people, we think of the tramps on the street, right? Wrong. What about victims of domestic violence, who become victims of unexpected homelessness because they are in fear for their lives? What about their children? That’s how hard people have it in their lives, and in the tech world, we are so blessed, often. What are we complaining about, really?

I don’t think that the RD role or the MVP role are sales roles at all. I don’t benefit financially from these recommendations. I am entirely independent and, if I recommend a solution, it’s because I believe that it is the correct solution.

So I think an RD is partially about having that strategic impact that Microsoft can really see and feel, in a good way. There will be nothing to tie me to the purchase of Azure at all, because I didn’t receive anything and I don’t sell Azure, and I didn’t make anything from the sale. I’m an independent consultant so I get paid for my time, not the fruits of my recommendations. But people will feel the results; the new hires, for example.

So I think an RD is partially about having that strategic impact that other people can really see and feel, in a good way. In these digital transformation pieces, I’m making people’s work easier for them through better processes, great technology and mentoring, supporting and helping people. For the work I’m doing in data science for good, I’m using Microsoft Data Science technologies as part of an amazing, amazing team who are doing great things and making people’s lives better. I think that is it, really: about using your pixie dust to do good things. It’s not about ‘bigger is better’ – bigger business, higher github admissions, higher turnover, larger number of hires, bigger number of Azure VMs, bigger number of forum answers or bigger profile on Stackoverflow. I think it’s about having the same pixie dust as anyone else, but throwing it liberally on the right things.

Rule your mind or it will rule you – Buddha

I think it’s about personal growth. It’s also about striving to have a maturity of outlook and a cool head, and I am trying very hard to heal and be the clean person I’d like to be. I’m doing my MBA and it’s all about personal growth and development. It’s unlike any other course I’ve done, since it means I get really hard feedback about myself as a person as well as my work. Some of the feedback is great, and other feedback is uncomfortable and provokes cognitive dissonance, but the self-honesty means that I can work on it through reflexive and reflective leadership techniques. For example, I’ve written before about having Imposter Syndrome but now I am learning to watch my thoughts better (mindfulness and my Buddhist journey) which means I’m starting to understand better if it really is Imposter Syndrome, or perhaps it’s a reality check, or perhaps I am just being silly? I have grown so much in the past few years and my Buddhist journey tells me that I have a long way to go.

When others go low, you go high

Kirk D Borne, who is an immensely insightful gentleman, asked me a deceptively simple question: what does this actually mean for you? I’d like to thank Kirk here because his generous and insightful question provoked me to think of  for days. I love it when someone challenges me with a wise question and one that I hadn’t considered before, which was kind of the point! I’ve decided on an answer: what being an RD means for me is the opportunity to network, learn and share with people who are brilliant, mature, optimistic, knowledgeable, willing to share freely and with no reward in it, know when to speak and when to stay silent, experienced in business and in the tech sphere. I’m with a great set of people who I admire.

Accountability

Accountability is a very tough thing to learn and it’s something that I ask myself every day: who is accountable? Professionally or personally, you can’t shrug off personal accountability. To lead by example, you have to be accountable, which means that people can have faith and trust in you.

It’s about people you can have faith and trust in, and striving to be that person. The RD program inspires me to work towards being all of these things and to consider accountability.

It also means that I am working to make sure that nobody steals my pixie dust. Michelle Obama inspires me here: when others go low, I go high. Words to live by!

Don’t let anyone steal your Pixie Dust

Following on from accountability, it’s about being an authentic you and striving to be a better  you. On my office wall, I have a picture of Tinkerbell, as follows.

pixiedust

My onboarding to the RD Program has been incredible and people outside and inside of Microsoft have been amazing. So I’d like to thank everyone who has congratulated me and I can promise that I will do my best.

TIL: Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA) for veterans

Posted on by

Now I’m part of the Regional Director Program, I’ve decided to learn more broadly about some of the great things that Microsoft do in order to be a diverse and conscious organization.

I was interested to read about the Microsoft Software & Systems Academy (MSSA), which is aimed at veterans with career skills required for today’s growing technology industry, as they progress from their military careers to their new careers.

The MSSA is aimed at all sorts of careers.  There are even Business Intelligence careers mentioned here, which I love. MSSA Programs are available at major military locations nationwide in the US, so it’s clearly something they’ve thought about, and are taking seriously.

You can read more here.