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>> Hi, there. My name is Seth Juarez,
Cloud Advocate in AIML.
I'm here in Johannesburg,
South Africa with a couple of colleagues.
I thought I'd bring all of us together, and talk about community.
Why don't you introduce yourself.
>> Thanks, Seth. My name is Laurent Bugnion.
I'm a Cloud Advocate as well based in Zurich,
Switzerland and active mostly in .NET.
>> Hi, I'm a Dev PMM at Azure out of South Africa.
>> I'm Jenn, I'm an Azure Developer Marketing PMM out of Redmond.
>> Tell us about what community is
like for developers here in South Africa?
>> We have a really vibrant South African ecosystem.
We have in Africa,
one of the youngest upcoming student populations in the world.
>> This is awesome. Laurent, obviously you're not from here.
>> No.
>> But you've been here before.
>> Correct.
>> What is a Cloud Advocate going to
do when they come to a place like this?
>> We have multiple activities,
of course, we have speaking.
But in addition to that, what we like to
do every time we go anywhere,
is connect with the local communities.
It's amazing to meet local people
and to have the possibility to share with them.
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>> It's so much fun to see everybody so passionate about
all these products and moving to Cloud. It's a really good time.
>> I'm at almost every single Meetup.
Microsoft actually hosts a lot
of Meetups on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I attend almost all of them.
>> Well, anything else you'd like to add about
community that you think is cool?
>> We're looking forward to seeing
all of the people at Ignite The Tour,
at the community booths,
and engaging with the local communities,
and hearing their own story of how they started,
and using the tech.
>> Yes. We're supporting the local Meetups with
the Azure Tech communities out of the Meetup programs.
We started this in September of last year.
This enables these different groups
from around the world to actually connect with each other too.
Then, they get to connect and actually talk to each other,
and we get to get feedback about
what would help them grow and help them learn.
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>> I run a Meetup here in Joburg called the Azure User Group,
where we meet once a month,
talk lots of Azure, we do a bit of IoT.
It's always nice to help the community find out the stuff
that they didn't know they could do, and have a good time.
>> Very passionate people.
We've got a few developer user groups,
not just what we do on the Dev side in the Azure UG.
There is a [inaudible] day, there's
a gaming day, and a few others.
Whatever you are poison is,
you will find it.
>> What does it look like for someone
that wants to organize a community?
>> All of them have one thing in common,
is that they are created to create
a safe space for people to be creative in them.
>> That sets sense of community that
you only find in the Microsoft community world,
that brings people together
to talk about stuff that they're passionate about.
>> This is how we interact with the Microsoft community,
this is how we get to see what's going on,
and this is how we get to learn.
>> The Azure Durban User Group is about 700 members.
We started in 2017.
It's an incubation for us to be able to take
aspiring individuals to use
the creative aspects of
the Cloud for them to drive that into their community.
>> Johannesburg is like
this African hub when it comes to technology.
>> If someone wants to start a community,
what suggestions do you have for them?
>> I think the first thing to do is to
understand that you need to be approachable,
and you need to be trustworthy,
and be friendly, and embrace everyone equally.
You need to have a code of conduct that also
promotes diversity and anti-harassment,
and have a safe place.
Start off with an idea,
with the belief that you want to create
that safe space for your community
and Microsoft will help you get there.
>> First is to look at what the need is in the market.
There's a couple of user groups already existing.
Do you fit in with one of them?
It's actually a very good idea to maybe
contact those people and see if you can't help those to start off,
we're happy to bring one and also share our expertise,
and the stuff that we've learned during
our tenure at user group meetings and that stuff.
>> We're actually looking at building
a blockchain community in South Africa because it's such a niche.
It's a struggle getting solidity developers
or even Viper developers.
We're trying to build that community and help people be more
aware of they can use blockchain in
outside of just Fintech Solutions.
They can use it in education and other spheres as well.
>> About two years ago, I created Microsoft User Group Ghana.
That's our Microsoft first community.
Now, there are other communities coming up again.
Because I've met Lawrence,
he's the MVP in Ghana and South Africa here,
he was mentoring me how to do my community work.
Since 2018, we started a Microsoft User Group Ghana.
>> What do you need to do? You need to be enthusiastic and
passionate about the technology that you're working in.
Reach out to any community person
that's involved in these user groups.
You can find us on the Azure Tech Communities Meetup page,
and speak to a community organizer
or an event organizer or anyone that's involved,
and they'll be able to put you in
contact with someone that can help you.
We've gone from six degrees of separation,
down to two degrees of separation.
That's what social media has done for us
and you can connect with the right person.
We're more than happy to help.
Everyone wants to grow some form of
community and start your own. You don't need much.
You need a Meetup page or some way to get your messaging out,
and people will come.
If you build it, they will come.
>> I just wanted to have my community
because I've been looking for it.
I wanted someone to create, nobody created it.
I have to create it myself.
>> We've got a thing called Ubuntu, that means humanity.
We're big on people,
we're big on helping.
What we're doing is in terms of the community,
you follow your passion,
you find the right people, we help you do that.
I'm big on sharing as well so you can hit me up on Twitter,
and I'll share as much as I possibly can
and help you find your path in the tech space.
>> If I can say something.
>> Yes, please.
>> I'm helping manage user groups in Switzerland as well.
One big difficulty is finding speakers.
I encourage truly everyone who has
worked on anything to go and speak about it.
I know it can be intimidating,
but it's easier to start with just 10 people.
Maybe you know some of them because you have attended there.
Don't hesitate to go out and talk about what you do.
Some people tell me, "Oh,
but I do nothing interesting at work" and that's wrong.
I mean, they code, or the design,
or they do any architecture,
or whatever, and just go and talk about it.
It can be even just half an hour,
maybe you pair with somebody else and you
have two half an hour topics.
Really go out and speak about what you do.
>> What is the thing you like most about being in a Meetup?
For those that maybe haven't gone and are wanting to
work the courage up to do so. What do you think, Laurent?
>> For me really is the richness that I find
there is meeting people from all over the world.
I was recently at a Meetup in London,
actually, Nottingham, a little bit further away.
We had people who were not even developers in the room.
They came to listen to an introduction to AI.
>> I'm a fan.
>> There was an architect, there was
a project manager who was there.
There were a few people who had nothing to do with development,
but they came anyway.
Meeting these type of people and being able
to interact with them is
really the best that you can have, and I love that.
>> Being around all these great people.
I took on a technology that I
never would have tried a million years,
and in a year we've got master that I'm [inaudible].
Just being around these guys helped me push on.
They gave me the confidence that I needed,
and the help that I needed to
try and get something working on here.
Once we've got that going it was just absolutely amazing.
>> Basically coding, like making
an apps where we're solving community problems.
For instance, maybe there's the GBV problem in our communities.
We create apps maybe that have panic buttons,
sign in locations, and stuff,
just to come up with that problem,
since devices are always in our hand.
>> Being a technical evangelist started all way
back at Durban when I met Lawrence.
It gave me strength and courage to actually see what
Azure and Microsoft technologies are able to
do in order to change and conserve our nature.
That success story of rhino poaching actually did touch me,
and I'm happy to say that under his wing today,
I'm the most certified one around here and I'm still very young.
I'm happy that I do share my knowledge together
with the Azure Fridays user group since I've moved here,
and also with his mentorship
I believe that South Africa will definitely change.
>> Being a student in development can be daunting.
We're constantly getting individuals
come there and saying, "Where do we start?"
If you've ever been and mentored someone,
you know that you actually gain more from
mentoring someone than you do from being the mentee,
and we create those relationships.
>> Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
Again, find a Meetup near you.
Right now go to aka.ms/azuretechcommunities.
Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time.
Take care.
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