Re-awarded as Microsoft Azure MVP

This past Thursday I received the notice that I was re-awarded as Microsoft MVP. This will be my year #6 has a Microsoft Azure MVP. I still remember the exact place I was when 6 years ago on an April 1st I got my first email saying I got awarded! I was working at a customer site in Cyprus. I just had finished to the day and had packed my laptop in the backpack. Then I got an email notification on my phone and then the phone died on me. No more battery… I was like, I must be dreaming, I turn the computer on and stay blocked looking at the computer screen for more than 10 minutes! I was speechless! This is still the feeling I get every single time I got re-awarded. Still surprised and still with imposter syndrome.

I would say it because it’s what, I fell: It’s and huge honor to be among such great minds of the industry!

To all my fellow MVP – You All ROCK! You are amazing and do loads for the #Community! I will not tag or mention anyone, I will for sure forget someone important for me and then I will be feeling bad! You all know who you are!

It has been a crazy year and I hope everything will start becoming normal very soon and that we can start do some in-person events! I’m ready for that!!! I reviewed what I wrote 1 year ago, about some plans for this past year. I felt pretty good… From 8 objectives I got 7 done and one more kid in between. Sounds pretty good for me. I didn’t publish “loads of videos” on my YouTube channel. This is the year!

A special thanks to Cristina Gonzalez Herrero and Irene Pires. They do an amazing work managing the program at my region. Sometimes it’s not easy to manage these strong opinion MVPs, but they do it amazingly well!

I would just like to end with a big thanks to the community and all the other MVP and non-MVP that do the Microsoft Communities a great place to be, learn and network!

Speaking at ESPC 2020 Online


The countdown is on to ESPC20 Online – only 4 weeks to go!

This year I could be at the ESPC schedule for Amsterdam. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic this was moved to an online experience. I would prefer to be on-site and interact will all of you, but these are uncertain times and it’s safer this way.

ESPC20 Online is a new virtual conference offering you affordable, world-class Microsoft 365 learning at your fingertips, from wherever you are in the world. Tune in live Oct 14th & 15th or catch up on-demand across 100+ sessions from SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure experts.

Join me for my ESPC20 Online session:

I Find your Lack of Azure Functions Disturbing

When designing and developing Azure solutions it’s common to need to run some background tasks. In Microsoft Azure we have several services and features capable of creating and managing background tasks. Usually these services are based on IaaS or PaaS cloud models, but in a serverless world we have Azure Functions. Azure Functions is the cornerstone of the new serverless paradigm. In this workshop we will learn how Azure Functions allows you to develop scalable and event-drive small services. We need to focus on the Azure Function service and not with the infrastructure and scaling rules. This is taken care for us by Microsoft Azure with a per-second billing pricing model.

Benefits of Attending this Session:

  1. Get to know the serverless paradigm
  2. Build background tasks with Azure Functions
  3. Integrate Azure Functions with Office 365

ESPC is always top quality and I am truly looking forward to this year’s virtual conference. Check out some of ESPC’s reasons why you don’t want to miss this event.

Reasons to Attend ESPC20 Online

Refresh – With so much change, keep up with the product developments and practices that matter most.

Revitalize – Find new and better ways of working, to bring new energy and effectiveness to your work.

Investment – Invest in your team, yourself and your career by learning new skills or mastering current ones.

Access – With no travel, watch live or on-demand at a time that suits you from the comfort of your workspace.

Experts – Hear from the best of the best – Microsoft Product Team members, RDs, MVPs, MCMs and independent experts.

Depth – With levels catering from Level 100-400 there is something for everyone.

Network – Build your professional network online, with like-minded people from across the globe.

Vendors – Find the best solutions from the best local, European and Global providers.

Independence – Information and advice you can trust, learn what’s trendy and what works.

Breadth – Attend a variety of session types across the biggest SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure topics.

Affordability – Enjoy the quality of ESPC with incredibly affordable prices and options.

I hope to see you at ESPC20 Online! Will you join me?

Keep safe friends!

I’m speaking at University of Lahore Azure Bootcamp

I got invited and it is an honor to speak at the University of Lahore Azure Bootcamp. This Azure event is organized by the Microsoft Student Partners Community of the University of Lahore. The Azure Cloud Computing Bootcamp series will be composed by 4 workshops.

My session will be about how to build Web Application ready to be hosted under the Azure App Service. I will also talk about all the cool feature we currently have in Azure App Service! It will be an amazing session! Hope to have YOU in the audience!

Why Azure?

Expand beyond the limits of your current computing platform with the freedom to build, manage, and deploy your applications anywhere with Azure. Use your preferred languages, frameworks, and infrastructure—even your own datacenter and other clouds.

With help from Azure, you have everything you need to build your next great solution.

Microsoft Azure has an increasing demand over the globe (including Pakistan). By learning Azure, you are getting Future – Ready.

What are you waiting for? Go ahead and register yourself.

Will you join me?

One Week – Speaking in 3 different continents!

COVID-19 aside and this has been amazing times! I’m doing all my work remotely, customers are happy and see no difference, but I have to confess that I kind of miss the airport life. I very fortunately to work in the IT industry and even more working on Microsoft Azure that allows me to do amazing work remotely and deliver my classes via Teams or even using Webex like this week… That is the bad part of this week, I really don’t like webex (yes I have used lower case…). That interface seems from the 90”…. Let’s get back to the topic here.

This past week I had the amazing opportunity to speak to 3 different countries each one in a different continent:

  • Nigeria, Africa
  • Germany, Europe
  • Bangladesh, Asia

Remote allows us to do this kind of deliveries and impact people lives. I couldn’t have done something like this with in-person events, just too expensive to travel to all this places and more 1 week of work that I could do. This is why I started this article writing that this pandemic has been teaching us some important lessons. We can do more than what we were doing in the past. I also love the feedback that I’m getting from attendees saying that these events are super inclusive because you just need an Internet connection and you get access to the content. Like always I loved to interact with different persons from different cultures. It’s always amazing to understand how the world works across the globe! #WeCanDoMore

Here is some links and information about the sessions I delivered.

Learn Azure By Moonlight at Microsoft Teams – https://rdre.me/AzureMoonlightSeries

Nigeria – May 3, 2020 – 6:30 PM (GMT +1)
Session 1: Azure Web Apps

Azure Cologne Meetup at Virtual – https://www.meetup.com/Azure-Cologne-Meetup/events/269934650/

Virtual – May 7, 2020 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM GMT+2
Session : Top 10 features of Azure Web Apps!

Bangladesh IT Community at Virtual – https://www.facebook.com/604241342952709/videos/926751294437116/
Virtual – May 8, 2020 – 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM GMT+2
Discussion about – Global Software Engineering Jobs after COVID-19 and Microsoft Azure.

Happy to speak more to other countries that want an awesome session about Azure! If you run a usergroup/community and your audience wants to know more about Azure, just ping me and I’m happy to accommodate you in my busy schedule.

You can keep up with all my speaking engagements at https://www.tiagocosta.com/speaking/

May Madness for online conferences – An opportunity to do better?

Corona virus outbreak has changed the conference space forever. Some amazing conferences have been canceled, postpone, or converted into online only. This last model – online – it’s not by far my favorite. I love to interact with the attendees and other speakers at the conference I speak. Nevertheless, this new format has given me the opportunity to increase the number of conferences and usergroups I’m speaking. Along the years I have been getting way more invitations to speak than I can accommodate in my schedule. Or is because I need to be in another continent the next day or just because I want to be at home with the family that day, etc… Now I just need to login into Teams, Skype, or whatever tool the organizers are using and deliver from my home office.

In the next few days, I will deliver 2 sessions in user groups without leaving my office. One for Nigeria and another to a Germany user group based in Cologne! You can get all the information here:

Learn Azure By Moonlight at Online
Nigeria – May 3, 2020 – 6:30 PM (GMT +1)
Session 1: Azure Web Apps
Link: https://rdre.me/AzureMoonlightSeries

Azure Cologne Meetup at Online
Cologne, Germany – May 7, 2020 – 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM GMT+2
Session: Top 10 features of Azure Web Apps!
Link: https://www.meetup.com/Azure-Cologne-Meetup/events/269934650/

But the May madness is not just about these small gatherings, also 3 big names in the Cloud industry are organizing massive online conferences. Microsoft, GitHub and Docker will deliver a total of 5 free days full of content and mostly delivered by their Product Groups and close customers. This is an amazing opportunity for you to take. Specialy if it’s hard for you to attend this events in-person. Just the other day I was chatting online with, let’s call him Mr. T for privacy reasons. Usually Mr. T can’t go to this kind of events due to his medical condition. COVID-19 is forcing these events to be converted to virtual and allowing Mr. T and others like him having access to this kind of content. I just wanted to leave this here has a taught that maybe we can do better when in-person events are back. We need to be inclusive and allow then to have access, they already struggle with their condition; others are just because they simply can’t afford traveling and attending. Knowledge should not have a price tag. #WeCanDoBetter

I just leave here the list with all the information of the 3 big conferences.

GitHub Satellite – May 6 – 9:00 AM (GMT-7)


GitHub Satellite is a free virtual event featuring developers working together on the world’s software, announcements from the GitHub team, and inspiring performances by artists who code. The event is free and there are some payed workshops that cost only 50 USD and 100% of your purchase goes to organizations leading COVID-19 response efforts. You get to donate some money and learn. Sounds like an awesome plan!

You can watch last year keynote here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGC2rwOiaWc

More information / registration: https://githubsatellite.com/

Microsoft Build – May 18-19 – 09:00 AM (GMT-7)

Build is the major developer conference from Microsoft. The conference moto is “For developers by developers”. Based on previous years you should expect a lot of awesome content from the Product Groups and a lot of focus on Azure and Microsoft 365. This year Build moved to a virtual format and it’s totally FREE! You just need to register. As developers come together to help the world solve new challenges—sharing knowledge and staying connected is more important than ever. Join the Build community to learn, connect, and code—to expand your skillset today, and innovate for tomorrow.

More information / registration: https://mybuild.microsoft.com/

You can also check the some sessions from Build 2019 for free at: https://insider.windows.com/en-us/articles/microsoft-build-2019-sessions/

DockerCon Live 2020 – May 28 – 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (GMT-7)


DockerCom is going online via theCUBE! It’s a 1-day conference that’s free and completely online. You’ll hear from speakers in live interviews with theCUBE, hang out with Docker experts in the live hallway track, and watch recorded sessions while chatting live with the speakers. If you want to know more about running applications in Containers, this is a must to attend conference.

More information / registration: https://docker.events.cube365.net/docker/dockercon

So, there you go, some of the major names in the Cloud industry will provide amazing content for free and without you leave your home you can expand your knowledge. What are you waiting for, register today, stay safe and Learn!