Second stop on the 2025 speaking tour in the vibrant city of Johannesburg, South Africa! This time focused on a single breakout session while spending quality time with colleagues.
Breakout Session: Building AI Solutions in Azure AI Foundry
Delivered a comprehensive session covering the core building blocks of AI development - from prompt engineering to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and evaluation using Azure AI Foundry.
Session Overview:
- Azure AI Foundry as Microsoft’s end-to-end AI platform
- Build, develop, deploy, and monitor AI solutions
- Core concepts: prompt engineering, RAG, and evaluation
- Hands-on demonstrations and practical examples
Previously delivered this session in Australia and loved the interactive nature and audience engagement.
👉 Catch up with the prototype and session materials here.
New Workshop: Building Your First Agent
Attended the first-ever delivery of the new Agents workshop - it was fully packed! The session focused on using advanced tools to analyze and visualize organizational data:
Tools Covered: Function Calling, Code Interpreter, File Search and Bing Search
Real-world use case: analyzing and visualizing an organization’s sales data using AI agents.
👉 Learn more and code along with the workshop here.
Pre-Event: Agents of AI - AgentsCon South Africa
Made a quick detour to Agents of AI: AgentsCon South Africa at the Microsoft Johannesburg office before the main tour. Great networking and learning opportunity focused entirely on AI agents.
Upcoming: Kenyan edition happening on March 13th!
Technical Challenges & Lessons
Encountered some technical issues with the workshop materials that required debugging the day before the session.
💡 Sometimes you can’t fix everything in the moment. Document the workaround, get through the session, and fix it later without the stress of everything toppling over.
Reflections & Future Planning
Lessons learned for next time:
- Be more intentional with time management
- Plan meetings ahead of time
- Set clear goals for networking and learning
- Allow more time for engaging with other sessions and attendees
Resources
💬 Join the conversation! Connect with our community on Discord to continue the discussion, ask questions, and stay updated on the latest in AI and technology.