Dynamics Minds 2025 🇸🇮 | The Executive Forum for Partners
The Dynamics Minds conference takes please in Slovenia from 26-28 May 2025! A Dynamics 365 and Power Platform community conference, where brilliant minds meet, mingle and share.
Join the team across all 4 sessions of the Executive Forum series for Microsoft Partners, hosted exclusively by Cloud Lighthouse to light the way on all things Trustworthy AI. Includes insight in becoming the truly strategic AI partner of the future.
ColorCloud 2025 🇩🇪 | Trustworthy AI: Global view, strategy, and tooling
We’ve guided the Trustworthy AI journey for organizations in 11 countries. We’ll show you how to shine for your customers, get your next best job, reduce your organization’s risk, and lead the strategy with your C-Suite and board.
AI Policies: A New Era for Federal Agencies
The conversation covers recent US AI policies, highlighting responsible adoption. It compares US and European policy perspectives, then shifts to global AI competition, especially with China. The speakers discuss nationalism, AI's global impact, tech limitations, the role of memory, and delegation in AI systems. They also touch on Microsoft's Copilot and the need for clear messaging in the AI space.
Navigating Microsoft's AI Landscape and Evolution
The recent MVP Summit is examined, with a focus on Microsoft's evolving AI strategy and the implications of their Fabric platform. The future of business applications at Microsoft, the changing relationship between technology and legal considerations, and the importance of trust and governance in AI are explored. Additionally, the human rights implications of AI and the necessity for a more robust ethical framework as technology continues to advance are discussed.
Canadian Power Platform Summit | Innovate and Adopt Trustworthy AI 🇨🇦
Join Mark Smith, Cloud Lighthouse Managing Partner, on 22nd March 2025 at the Canadian Power Platform Summit. Learn how to innovate and adopt with Trustworthy AI across 5 key pillars: strategy and vision, ecosystem architecture, workloads, responsible AI and scaling AI.
Is AI over-hyped? Is this AI wave going to become something else?
The conversation covers a range of topics on creative design and branding for AI technology, concerns about human rights in AI, reflections on recent AI events, and the disconnect between AI technology creators and sellers regarding trustworthy AI. The participants emphasize the importance of innovation while maintaining awareness of ethical considerations in AI development. In this conversation, we explore the multifaceted implications of AI, emphasizing the need for a balance between innovation and ethical considerations. We discuss the potential underhyping of AI's capabilities, the socio-economic impacts on jobs, and the importance of education and awareness in navigating the evolving landscape of technology. The conversation highlights the risks associated with AI, including its capacity for surveillance and the necessity for trustworthy practices in its development.
Navigating the Challenges of Trustworthy AI
Various aspects of Trustworthy AI are examined, including the challenges of scaling AI solutions, the regulatory landscape surrounding AI, and the exploration of new AI tools and applications. Insights are shared on current projects, the importance of risk management in AI, and the potential impact of regulations on AI development and deployment.
A Moment of Reckoning for Humanitarian and Public Sector
Leaders of these organizations now face a moment of reckoning and—in the chaos of that moment—an opportunity to craft the modern, technologically nimble institutions resilient enough to continue delivering the crucial services upon which their publics so desperately depend. They must use technology to drive out cost, with the core thesis being that to emerge stronger, they must become more modern organizations that use technology to reduce cost and improve services, rather than viewing technology as an ever-expanding cost center. Those that seize the opportunity may survive. Those who let it slip away will fail.
The Critical Role of Education in AI Development
The evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) is examined in this latest episode, emphasizing the significance of trustworthy AI, the imperative for critical thinking, and the cultural variances in education that influence cognitive abilities. The importance of questioning in effective communication and the necessity of addressing misinformation within the technology sector are underscored.
Additionally, the recent UK government documents on AI highlight the critical need to comprehend AI legislation, the essential skills and training required in the AI domain, and the innovative opportunities that AI presents. The legal ramifications of implementing AI solutions are explored, stressing the need for legal oversight and the importance of adhering to trustworthy AI practices to safeguard customer data.
Berkshire Azure User Group 🇬🇧 | Trustworthy AI for Safer Systems
Join Ana Welch, Cloud Lighthouse Cloud Strategist and Partner, on 11th February 2025 at the Berkshire Azure user group. Kickstart your journey into Trustworthy AI, learning how to build safer systems for real-world readiness.
Optimizing Health and Productivity Amid a Fast-Paced Lifestyle
Harnessing technology can help us achieve greater success whilst prioritizing health, to achieve more in less time. For example, creating a personalized GPT to track supplement intake or using tools that recommend optimal focus times based on our chronotype, emphasizing the importance of routine and minimalism. Understanding our productivity patterns and the impact of our health on achieving goals is significant, and and important focus for all.
Applying Modern Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture in PubSec
We’ve covered the Principles of Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture (EOA) and Mapping your Cloud Ecosystem in previous articles. We’ll now make the concepts discussed in those previous articles more real in context of Public Sector organizations. To do so, let’s spend some time speaking less about technology and begin describing workloads that incorporate functions and scenarios upon which a typical agency might rely on its cloud ecosystem to perform.
Trustworthy AI: Strategic, Responsible, Safe, Reliable, Scalable
2025 is the year of Trustworthy AI as organizations worldwide deploy AI-enthused solutions with limited consideration on how to make it safe. Not only from a compliance and risk management perspective, but by creating AI that users themselves can trust. Trustworthy AI is top of mind for many people, though there is currently no standard approach to articulating what this means. Can we trust the results? Can we trust that AI is safely used? Is AI going to take our jobs? Will AI grow a personality and conquer the world by turning a society of toasters against us? To truly address this, it must be recognised that Trustworthy AI is more than red teaming, or testing against responsible pillars of AI. It’s about creating a trustworthy experience grounded in good data, exposing cumulative human error and AI hallucinations through technical monitoring and human observability. It’s about building a digital ecosystem that is strategic, responsible, safe, reliable and scalable. It’s about making AI a trusted enabler for humans.
Mapping your Cloud Ecosystem: The Ecosystem Map
"Ecosystem Map" is both one of the 25 dimensions of the AI Strategy Framework and a foundational concept in ecosystem-oriented architecture (EOA), which makes this article doubly important reading for strategic thinkers on both fronts. The “map” metaphor is instructive here. It is used to distinguish an ecosystem map from the various forms of architectural diagrams, nearly all of which tend to include more technical minutiae than a typical ecosystem map. Whereas an architectural diagram provides specific parameters for specific technical solutions, an ecosystem map presents a higher-level, more visionary view of an organization’s cloud ecosystem. This analogy is fundamental to understanding and practicing EOA.
Reflecting on 2024: AI and the ‘Shiny New Object’ Effect
Reflecting on 2024, it’s clear that AI has landed and officially taken on the ‘shiny object effect’. With organizations rushing to utilize the technology, there’s been a tendency to layer AI atop an ecosystem without establishing a strategy for the fundamentals, such as data platform, data consolidation and modernization. A hope for 2025 is the normalization of AI to avoid this, and the progression of autonomous agents that learn and mimic human communication preferences, advancing beyond basic chatbots to more immersive and context-aware AI agents.
Additionally, this past year has made it apparent that not all organization’s are creating conditions for hiring across boarders, and allowing top talent to work on key projects regardless of their geographic location. A shift in this would provide multiple benefits: simplifying projects whilst widening the talent pool, supporting the freedom of dedicated workers, and releasing brain power and capital in areas that will benefit from economic growth.
Data Integration: The Key to Operational Success
In this episode, Ana, Andrew, and Chris discuss various themes including the technical difficulties faced during remote recordings, the influence of technology on elections, the challenges of cybersecurity, and the complexities of data integration and security. They also explore how algorithms shape political messaging and the implications of these technologies on society. In this conversation, the speakers discuss various themes including the impact of social media on public perception, insights gained from major conferences like Ignite, the evolution of podcasting in the tech space, and the importance of ecosystem-oriented architecture in organizations. They emphasize the need for a clear vision and cultural readiness for successful transitions in technology and business strategies.
Principles of Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture
We were working with eight to ten years between major disruptions from the dawn of the consumer internet. But these “wave periods”, that is, the time between the crest of two waves, have shortened to three to five years since the rise of the public cloud. It makes sense: As the evolution of computing technology and capacity picks up steam, it similarly accelerates. Innovation begets innovation. Generative AI was only made possible by the incredible computing power and connectivity available in the cloud. Now, AI is further accelerating this pace of change, shortening the time we have available before new waves crash upon the shore. The grace period for organizations to get their act together and position themselves for the next wave is growing much shorter; the margin for error is much narrower.
Announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2024
Microsoft Ignite 2024 featured over 200 AI sessions. Key announcementsincluded Azure SQL transactional databases for app development, Co-pilot Studio in Power Apps for mini agents, deeper RAG capabilities with Azure AI Foundry, new managed security and operations in Power Platform, and updated governance and licensing for Co-pilot Studio.This podcast episode also tackles the rise of shadow AI, emphasizing the need for governance as 78% of workers use unsanctioned tools. Beyond the tech, it reflects on the joy of hands-on collaboration, like data modelling and brainstorming on whiteboards, proving that going back to basics can still drive innovation. What’s your top Ignite takeaway?
Achieving ‘Work-Life Integration’ in a Fast-Paced Environment
With modern work culture emphasizing the drive for productivity and connectivity, the traditional notion of work-life balance can be challenging to achieve. In this podcast, participants share their personal experiences in trying to achieve balance, expressing the importance of setting boundaries, such as blocking calendar times for personal activities, and being clear about availability to avoid burnout. Some prefer the term "work-life integration," highlighting the need to blend work and personal life in a way that suits individual needs, with external factors, such as family responsibilities and societal expectations of workers, adding to the complexity. Hosts note differences in how men and women traditionally balance these roles, as well as personal choices and preferences playing its part, with some individuals specifically thriving in high-intensity environments. Support systems can help, such as understanding colleagues or family members, as well as business applications for task prioritization, meetings management and remote working tools, which can reduce stress help professionals set boundaries.
Trust in AI: Reducing Fears with a Strategic Vision
It is hugely important that there is trust in AI org-wide, for the successful adoption of AI. This needs human involvement and intentionality as part of a long-term AI strategy and clearly defined enablement program. Podcast listener, Rachel Roberts, comments that the need for a clear vision and planning a path towards the benefits of AI, instead of letting organic doubt take over, will build trust and reduce fears of uncertainty. She believes that being intentional can help mitigate doubts and foster trust in AI and each other. Having a strategic vision is critical and must be collectively agreed upon and championed. Ensuring that change management and training are fundamental to the effort is also essential due to the complexities of technology implementation and adoption. By combining these approaches, users can adapt, and organizations can maximize the impact of AI within their business.