Author: Tiago Costa

Speaking at Global Azure 2020

Tiago Costa / / Azure, Speaking

Global Azure Lisbon – 25th April

The Global Azure 2020 – https://globalazure.net/ – was initially scheduled to be an in-person event across several cities in the world. Due to the limitation imposed by COVID-19, organizers had 2 options:

  1. Cancel the event
  2. Move to virtual.

I’m one of the organizers of the Lisbon event and the decision was to move to virtual, it never crossed my mind not having the event in Lisbon. Lisbon has been a proud member city since the first Global Azure event (remember it was called Global Windows Azure Global Bootcamp – GWAB).

You can find the Lisbon Virtual Global Azure at https://www.globalazure.pt. We already have more than 350 persons signup! It’s the best number EVER! We can still accommodate more people so, if don’t have a ticket, stop reading this post and get your FREE ticket right now!

I’m also a speaker on the event so if you want to learn all about how to build applications to respond to request and demand at a global scale, how can you lose this session??? My session will be delivered in English so that I can accommodate all my audience. Join me for a full 1 hour of fun session and demos, lots and lots of demos!!!

Global Azure Virtual 2020 UK & Ireland

Has some of you know I have my fair of traveling to the UK and Ireland. So it made all sense to also speak there and I’m very proud to got the possibility to do so. You can watch my session on the first day of the event – 23 April. Go to https://azureglobalbootcamp2020.azurewebsites.net/ and signup for the event! It will be awesome too!!!

Azure Tip: Add an SSL/TLS certificate to you Azure Web App for FREE!!!

Tiago Costa / / Azure

The Let’s Encrypt initiative is the market reference when we talk about free SSL certificates. It is a great initiative, but today, I want to talk about something super easy to implement under Azure Web Apps.

In Azure Web Apps, we now have the option to add a free, yes, you read it, FREE!!! SSL/TLS certificate. With this feature, you can create a certificate that can be used for SSL Binding for the selected sub-domain. App Service Managed Certificates are free of cost and fully managed by App Service to maintain the safety and security of your site at the highest level. This feature comes with some limitations:

  • No support for wildcard certificates
  • No support for naked domains
  • Cannot be exported
  • Does not support DNS A-records

If you have a workload that needs one of those features, currently, you cannot use this feature. You can Import App Service Certificates or even import your SSL/TLS certificate.

How to create the free certificate?

1. Navigate to the overview blade of your Web App and select the TLS/SSL settings option.

2. In the TLS/SSL settings blade, select the Private Key Certificates (.pfx) option.

3. In the TLS/SSL settings blade, select the + Create App Service Managed Certification option.

4. In the Create App Service Managed Certificates blade, in step 1, select the non-naked domain you want to create the SSL/TLS certificate and then press the Create button.

There you go, you just created a certificate for free for your Web App custom domain. All this for free with a super easy setup. If you like these Azure tips, leave your comments or questions in the comment box!

Productivity Hack: Kill back-to-back meetings

Tiago Costa / / Random words

We are living a … let’s be positive and called it “special” time! Corona virus outbreak is among us, and everyone that can, is working from home. You still need to interact with your team, customers and partners, so all conference calls services are seeing an exponential growth. Microsoft Teams saw a huge growth last week when not only a lot of customers started to work from home, but also schools started to teach virtually. You can check this article that states that Microsoft Teams surged to 44 million users (https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-teams-surges-44-million-daily-users-amid-coronavirus-outbreak), so that you can understand the huge growth. In November of 2019, Microsoft reported 20 million daily users!

I don’t want to write a huge article explaining how back-to-back meetings are a productivity killer. There are other authors that can explain this way better than me. Some meetings can overrun and if you have another meeting schedule without breaks… well… you get it! It’s important to allow for some break between meetings. What about if we could do this in an automatic way? If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, YES YOU CAN!!!

I bring you an amazing feature that we can use to allow some break between back-to-back meetings.

  1. Open your Microsoft Outlook desktop app.
  2. Under File, select Options.
  3. Select the Calendar tab and then check the End appointments and meetings early checkbox.

With this option you will create a shorter meeting allowing some break between meetings for your colleagues, partners and customers.

Hope you liked this option!

Speaking at Building the Future 2020

Tiago Costa / / Random words

From technical to business oriented and strategic scope sessions to tech demos and experiences, Building the Future 2019 helped people from all backgrounds to better understand how they can create their future. The first edition of Building the Future was just the beginning. Get ready to learn, meet and connect with the people that are building the future in 2020.

Toghether with Ricardo Fiel and Alexandre Vieira we will bring an amazing Serverless Lab. During more than 1 hour, you will be challenged to implement an end-to-end scenario using a supplied sample that is based on Microsoft Azure Functions, Azure Cosmos DB, Event Grid, and related services. The scenario will include implementing compute, storage, workflows, and monitoring, using various components of Microsoft Azure.

Can you imagine how many talks, hands-on sessions or workshops about themes such as Digital Transformation, AI, Machine Learning, Organizational Culture or Cybersecurity can fit in 2 days? Look at the agenda and build your own journey at https://buildingthefuture.pt/schedule

Last year recap:

If you’re attending find me and say hi!!!

MVP Award 2019-2020

Tiago Costa / / Random words

On July, 1st, I got renewed as a Microsoft Azure MVP. 4 years in a row! It’s indescribable the felling and honor to be among the elite of Microsoft Azure Professionals. It’s in these days that my imposter syndrome comes to life.

Before starting this blog post I would like to thank for all the support that I got from several community members and specialy from my family that puts up with my absences when I choose to speak at events across the world, all the conference calls with other events organizers, etc… Without this support all this wasn’t possible. My wife Sofia is amazing and I’m very lucky to share my life with her!

But, today is not only a happy day, it’s also a sad day, because many awesome MVPs are not renewing. Personally, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to all of you!!! Your contributions across the years have been inspiring to make me a better professional. I have many MVPs to reference, but I would highlight @André Vala. Across the years I have been sharing time and adventures with him! We had organized amazing events in Lisbon and I’m sure that he is continuing to help on these activities and very shortly will be re-awarded. André is the backbone of some of our events. His insights and organization make out life easier in organizing those events.

A lot of people ask me what the Microsoft MVP program is, so here it goes: Microsoft MVP in a non-paid activity, it consists in sharing your knowledge on Microsoft technologies usually in conferences, online forums, videos, blog posts, … You can find more information about the MVP program here and a list of all the MVPs here.

Plans for next year?

  • Continuing to speak in amazing events across the world
  • Building new Azure focus communities to life – Announcement will be very soon!!!
  • Helping to make the change in the Azure world by teaching Azure to IT professionals, Developers and Architects
  • Helping amazing customer in moving to the cloud by building and designing state of the art workloads
  • Writing and producing amazing content, both in this site but also on LinkedIn Learning and other video-based tutorials
  • and some more to TBA activities. Keep your eyes on this space.

A final thank you, to all the professionals that I had shared my space with. It’s been an honor and I hope to share more amazing conversations with all of you! Come and join me on my next speaking engagements and let’s have a talk over some drinks.