Tom Morgan: CollabDays Bletchley 2023 - Microsoft 365 Community Day at the National Museum of Computing
This was a really good day. I learnt a lot from the likes of Json Wynn, Al Eardley, Phillip Morrell, Rick van Rousselt and Pieter Op De Beéck. as you'll see in the video.
Hello, welcome to Bletchley. Welcome to the National Museum of Computing. It is right next to Bletchley Park, a really historic location for our industry, the computing industry. This building behind me, the National Museum of Computing, is a pretty special place actually. There is loads of amazing stuff inside, all the way back to the Second World War and even beyond that, but also right up to the present day through the communications revolution as well. They have just got lots and lots of stuff, and it is really well explained.
Anyway, we are here for CollabDays, a one-day event with a ton of really good speakers on the lineup. I think I counted 30. It is one day, so there are lots of different tracks going on and lots of things happening. It is going to be a really good day.
Thank you.
We usually have a keynote speaker, but we had so many people wanting to speak at this conference that we have counted as many of those sessions as we possibly could. So we are maximizing those sessions and not having a formal keynote. Let me just introduce ourselves. I am Brett, we are on site.
The Beatles were only as good if all four of them shared out. There is no point just having Ringo and George there, because you are like, what is this about? So having everybody doing it and using it is an absolute key. It is where we actually do our work. For those of us that are notoriously bad at having 10 different screens open, I can press the Teams button and it pops up Teams in front of me, and then I can come off mute and do what I want to do. It is actually kind of wonderful and amazing to be able to give sessions in a place like this, surrounded by so much history of computing, history, and technology.
It is a real surprise as well. This building encapsulates the oldest computer we have; it is in this building. There is so much history of computing here. It is a building run by volunteers who are constantly fundraising to make repairs and just keep the lights on and stuff like that. It is astonishing, given how much money there is in the industry, that not enough of it seems to find its way here. But it is wonderful to be able to come here and speak, and listen, and learn from sessions, surrounded by all this.
You are just walking along and you will see something that will take you back to your childhood or something that you have read about, or something you have no idea what it is but it looks cool. Then you learn that it is the first machine that the Post Office used, or it is the oldest machine they used in the Second World War, you know, the Enigma bombs, the Turing machines that Alan Turing worked on, and all this stuff. It is incredible.
Some of it is working as well, which is astonishing, so you can see things happening. There are a couple of old computers running old programs, doing things that you would not even think you would run on your watch now, like finding prime numbers and stuff like that, but it is taking an impressively long amount of time to calculate prime numbers, because it is old hardware and old tech.
It is great. Honestly, if you are in the UK, you need to come and visit this place. Come and visit the National Museum of Computing, come and see what is going on here. You do not have to come to this conference. Come to the conference as well when it is happening, but honestly, just come here anyway, because it is a really interesting place, and it is very right to do sessions here as well. That is an amazing bonus on top.
Thank you.
When we talk to people about what these teams do, a lot of people look at them and say, well actually, that just helps me. I do not have a specific thing; it just helps me. So if we talk about it, it is a consistent set of tools.
One of the cool things about having all this stuff out here is there are lots of members of staff around. They are super knowledgeable. I think they are volunteers as well, but they are really generous with their time, and you can ask them questions. They can show you how this stuff works, and they have all the stories as well. So it is really nice. It is not just that all this stuff is here; there are also people here who can explain it to you, who can tell you what it was used for and, in many cases, what it has been superseded by. They can point to other things in the museum that it has been superseded by, which is really interesting as well.
Enough.
Yeah, the update from the v2 to the v3, and everything broke, of course. So remember that you have to add this version and you need to add your region. It used to be just “give me a tunnel,” and now depending on what you want, you have to say, “I want a tunnel in the US,” or “I want a tunnel in Europe,” or “I want a tunnel in Asia,” or whatever. That also impacts the URL, of course.
So thanks to the sponsors, otherwise this obviously could not take place. A very short introduction about myself: my name is Pieter, I am from Belgium, so that is why “Pieter” is written a bit strange if you are from the UK. I have been a consultant for over 17 years now, but I mainly think of myself as an explorer.
When we pushed in an extra set of sessions today, it just allowed you all to be involved in the process. We were originally only going to have 20 sessions today. We opened the call for speakers and, for those 20 sessions, we had over 96 submissions, which was insane. How could we get all of this good content into one day? So we added an extra room and we added an extra slot. I am really impressed with those of you who made it through to the very final slot. Thank you to everyone who has made it through the full day.
We want to say thank you to our speakers, because without them this clearly could not happen, so I am just going to ask for a quick round of applause. And of course the sponsors, because if someone does not pay for it, we cannot have it, so thank you.
I have just come out of the final session, the goodbye session. What a fantastic day that was, really, really good. Great to get some really good sessions in and see some people I have not seen for a while, catch up, and see a really good representation of attendees and speakers from across Europe. Even the US – some speakers from the US were over as well, which was fantastic to see.
But also, this place is amazing. Definite recommendation: come and see the National Museum of Computing. Thank you ever so much for letting us be here today amongst some of your amazing equipment. A big thanks to all the attendees for coming; it was great to see so many of you. A massive thank you to the sponsors, the speakers, and of course the organizers who make this stuff possible. It has been a really good day, and I hope you have enjoyed coming along with me and seeing it as well. I will see you in the next video.