Events

Microsoft ModernBiz: Re-imagine Finance Event Date: Wednesday, 5 November 2014 Time: 8.00am to 1.00pm (Registration starts at 8.00am) Event Venue: Microsoft Auditorium, Level 21 Address: One Marina Boulevard, 1 Marina Boulevard, Singapore 018989 Who should attend: Finance Directors, Financial Controllers, Head of Department, Finance Professionals, Bankers, Operations Managers, Finance Executives. With economic uncertainty, globalization and intense competition, there’s been an increasing pressure on the finance function to play a more strategic role in the business. There’s a perceptible change in emphasis from traditional scorekeeping and cost control to value creation and business partnering. In a constantly shifting business environment, there’s a need to manage complexity to deal with new threats and seize opportunities than ever before. In particular, the rise of digital technology presents the finance function with new and unique tools to rise to these challenges. It represents opportunities for the finance function to increase its strategic influence as well as meet the digital needs of a new generation of young finance professionals which it aims to attract and retain. In addition, the right technology can be a major differentiator for finance professionals from small and midsize businesses. Modernizing your IT can set you apart from your competitors, whatever size they may be. In fact, a study from Boston Consulting Group found that technology leaders—defined as businesses who adopt new technology early—far outperform their peers in the marketplace. ModernBiz Event Topics: ...

Come 1 November 2014, Microsoft Singapore will launch the all-new We Tech Care initiative in line with its ongoing support of the President’s Challenge. The new initiative goes beyond regular fundraising activities by combining the volunteering of time and technology expertise by Microsoft employees, with fundraising efforts, to empower people through technology. To celebrate the launch of the We Tech Care initiative, Microsoft Singapore will holding a We Tech Care Open House on Saturday, 1 November 2014 at One Marina Boulevard. This complimentary public event brings together a committed group of volunteers which includes Microsoft employees, President’s Challenge representatives, partners as well as beneficiaries SPD (formerly the Society for the Physically Disabled) and RSVP (The Organisation of Senior Volunteers) who are volunteering their time to conduct IT-related workshops, activities and games for all members of the public. President Tony Tan Keng Yam will also be gracing the event, where he will participate in fun-filled activities and the We Tech Care launch ceremony to present certificates of appreciation to Microsoft Singapore and its partners for their support of the President’s Challenge. The day’s programme features a variety of IT-related workshops, activities and games for families including parents, children, teenagers and grand-parents. These include: ...

What is this training about? Discover Microsoft’s Cloud offering of the Azure platform with close to 60 different services spanning Infrastructure services, Platform Services, Identity Services, Data Services and Application Services. With Azure platform, the core is the Developer, IT Professional and Architects, hence we shall showcase Open Source and Microsoft technologies in this theme based demos for various scenarios that utilize more than one of the above Azure Services. ...

6th September 2014 saw one of the largest gathering of technologists, entrepreneurs, and tech enthusiasts at SCAPE for TechFest 2014. People from all walks of life came together to share their experiences and passion for technology, and to inspire and encourage each other to continue doing what we love. The event featured various talks by over 20 distiniguished speakers, such as Mr Tan Min Liang (Razer Co-founder), Mr Sergio Salvador (Google - Global Head Games Partnerships), Mr Bunnie Huang (Kosagi - Co-Founder), Mr Aaron Gill (GrabTaxi - Head of Product), and Mr Tan Chun Siong (Microsoft - Technical Evangelist). A gallery of notable technology organizations, groups, and startups were also present to showcase their latest tech offerings and share their personal journeys in the industry, such as Autodesk, Carousell, and Garena. I absolutely enjoyed myself at the event, catching up with old friends while meeting new ones and sharing our passion for the industry. The sold-out event was a resounding success and a testament to the thriving tech community in Singapore. Kudos to the organizers of the event and a special thank you to everyone who participated in TechFest 2014! What do you think of TechFest 2014? Please share your experiences in the comments below and provide your suggestions on the next event that we should cover.

Walkabout Singapore - 13th June Walkabout Singapore is an annual open house for technology companies in Singapore where the public is given an opportunity to interact with the hottest startups and tech giants, such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter. Since its successful inaugural edition in 2012, Walkabout Singapore has grew by leaps and bounds with its 3rd edition offering 80 open houses, 25 special events, and a rockin’ afterparty at Kyo. ...

While many of you had the awesome opportunity to attend the exciting //publish/Hackathon event held in Singapore, I had the chance to attend the one held in London, United Kingdom. The event here was held at Cardinal Place, Microsoft London on 17th May 2014 from 9am - 9pm. Throughout the event, developers had the opportunity to gather for the day to develop and publish their apps. It was also a great opportunity to connect with other developers around the world via live video stream and chat room, view training sessions, and get 1-on-1 personalized consulting with Microsoft Engineers on-site at the dev clinics. The engineers provided valuable feedback to make great apps into masterpieces, where some of the support rendered included store certification preparation, migration guidance, advice for app performance, stability and design, and troubleshooting assistance. Also, there was the UK AppChallenge held concurrently, where attendees had the chance to win Microsoft hardware as we competed with one another to climb the leader board. Unlike the one held in Singapore which lasted for 2 days, we only had the event for a day, so we had to make every second count! At the end of the day, developers who published an app received a limited edition goodybag consisting thumbdrives, special edition t-shirts and cool Microsoft gifts. On top of that, developers also demoed their published apps, and the best ones won pretty awesome hardware devices. Well, enough said, I guess I’ll let the photos I took do the talking! :)

//publish/Hackathon - 17th and 18th May Microsoft //publish/ is a global event where developers gather for 32 straight hours to develop and publish their apps, and share their knowledge, experiences and insights into the latest happenings in the industry. In Singapore, the event was held at The Co. on 17th and 18th May. Event Highlights The event welcomed a huge group of enthusiastic developers who are eager to exchange ideas to build and publish great apps. The highlight of the day was the special guest appearance by Inori Aizawa, the anime personification for Internet Explorer. She was cheering the developers at the event, and giving out limited edition pillows for participants that took a picture with her. What did you think of //publish/ hackathon? Is there another event that you would like us to cover? Please leave your comments and suggestions below!

Microsoft Singapore has announced that three teams of students from Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) have clinched the top spots in all three categories of this year’s Imagine Cup Singapore finals, breaking through intense competition which saw participation by over a hundred students from numerous institutions of higher learning in Singapore. The three teams are: Team STAND — Comprising students from NYP School of IT and NUS, Team STAND won the Innovation Competition with their facial recognition software capable of automatically identifying the age, race, gender and emotion of any audience member in a crowd in real time. Team Elites — Team Elites,fromNYP School of Engineering, broke through in the World Citizenship Competition with a Windows Phone-based solution that aims to help people with hearing and speech impairments to communicate better with those around them. Team LifeChoices — NYP School of IT’s Team LifeChoices took home the Games Competition championship with their roleplaying game which lets players simulate making life-changing decisions without actually risking any real-life entities, and an original, self-built game engine will randomize gameplay scenarios based on the choices players make. All three teams will now proceed to the World Semifinals to vie for the honor of representing Singapore in the World Finals, which will be held in Redmond, Washington, USA, from July 29, 2014 to August 2, 2014, where cash prizes of US$50,000 per category and other awards await. From the World Semifinals, three teams from the entire Asia Pacific region will be chosen to proceed to the World Finals. These three teams will be announced on May 28, 2014. Held annually since 2003, Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition, known affectionately by participants both past and present as “the Olympics of student technology competitions”, and has inspired countless students over the past 12 years to dream about the boundless opportunities technology offers to enhance people’s lives. ...

On 19th April, six Singaporean teams battle it out in the Imagine Cup Finals (Singapore Chapter) to earn a spot to the Imagine Cup World Finals in Seattle, Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) on August 2nd, 2014. Here are some highlights from the exciting presentations: 1. Games Category: Life Choices. Team Life Choices developed a 2D game that teaches youths about the implications of life choices that are made by “modelling life as close as possible into a game with controlled environmental settings”. Within the game, users are able to engage fellow players and take part in activities and events to earn experience points. At the end of the game, each player will be provided with a game summary that provides advice on their life choices and recommendations to improve their life experiences. The team hoped to gradually roll out this product across schools in Singapore. 2. World Citizenship Category: I-HEARD (Intelligent Hearing Device). Team Elites created a sophisticated communications tool that utilizes voice and text translation technologies to improve communications for the deaf and mute. The team utilized a range of technologies to offer continuous speech recognition and location tracking capabilities, such as Bing and Nuance speech recognition, Bing translator, and Bing Map and Reverse GeoCoding. The audience was impressed by the sophistication of the tool and the team’s passion for helping to address a real-life challenge for a specific segment of the community that has not been adequately addressed till today. 3. Innovation Category: FACE (Facial Analyzer for Crowd Emotions). Team Stand produced an innovative system that enables the real-time capture and analysis of facial expressions with a wide range of uses in the private and public sector, such as retail, business analytics, and profiling. The system utilizes machine learning algorithms to improve its classification and analysis engine so as to increase its accuracy of predicting race, gender, age, and emotions. With its rich data sets, the system is able to generate a wide range of analytics reports with classification intervals. As noted by the judges, one of the key challenges for Face is the thorny issue of privacy. However, as highlighted by a recent report on marketing for millennials, 40% of millennials are able to identify specific digital information that is tracked and collected by companies. The key to making these data tracking activities acceptable to the general public is to be transparent about the types of data that is tracked, and to assure consumers that these information will not be mistreated. I would like to congratulate all of the teams on their amazing innovations which addresses real-life challenges. As pointed out by Mr. Tan Chun Siong, Microsoft Technical Evangelist and organizer of Imagine Cup (Singapore Chapter), this competition is the start of their journey and he hopes that the teams will continue to work with Microsoft to refine their products and bring it to market. Continue to Dream It, Build It, and Live It! What do you think of the Imagine Cup Finals? Do you have other great events and conferences that you’d like us to cover? Do share with us your experiences and recommendations in the comments below.

 Event Date: 8th April, 2014, Tuesday Time: 4.00p.m – 6.00p.m Venue: One Marina Boulevard, Microsoft Office, Level 22 To Register, email Rizal at (rizal@bizera.net ). Supported by: Visual Studio 2013 and Team Foundation Server 2013 was released on 13th Nov 2013. The new version has enhanced developer productivity and Application Lifecycle Management ( ALM) features making it effortless for teams of every size to collaborate and innovate, helping you build great software with agility and scale. ...