Microsoft AI Tour Johannesburg

🛠️ The city of the hustle and bustle - AI Tour Joburg.

I know, I missed a post last week and the other. Life happened — I was confused, hurt, sad, and betrayed. Basically, adulting! One day, I’ll look back and laugh, but at the time, I was at my lowest. So, to make up for it, this week and the next few weeks we’re doubling up with two event recaps, some lessons from Robben Island, a new book I’m reading, and more.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Last week, I landed in South Africa early Tuesday mid-morning—right in the middle of our weekly team meeting. I was ready to work, explore, and make the most of the week ahead. This time, I was here for just one breakout session and to spend time with colleagues.

Debugging, un-bugging and everything in between

My workshop was part of the AI Tour, and when working with products, you always have to stay on top of things to ensure everything runs like a well-oiled machine. Well, something didn’t quite work, and I spent the day before the session trying to fix it. The biggest lesson? Sometimes, you can’t fix everything in the moment. Instead, document the workaround, get through the session, and fix it later—without the stress of everything toppling over.

Agents

You get an Agent, you get an Agent, everyone gets an Agent!

Our team introduced a new Agents workshop & breakout, and I had the chance to attend the first-ever session—it was fully packed! This session focused on using tools like Function Calling, Code Interpreter, File Search, and Bing Search to analyze and visualize an organization’s sales data.

👉 Learn more and code along with the workshop here.

Breakout: Building AI Solutions in Azure AI Foundry

Late last year, I delivered this session in Australia, and I absolutely loved it! It covers the core building blocks of AI—from prompt engineering to Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and evaluation.

Azure AI Foundry is Microsoft’s end-to-end AI platform that enables you to build, develop, deploy, and monitor your AI solutions.

👉 Catch up with the prototype and session materials here.

More on Agents - scandalous, I know!

Before the tour, we made a quick detour to **Agents of AI: AgentsCon South Africa,** which took place at the Microsoft Johannesburg office. Be on the lookout—the Kenyan edition is happening on March 13th! I can’t reveal too much yet but stay tuned.

Lessons learned….

Next time, I plan to be more intentional—spend more time learning and engaging, plan my meetings ahead of time, and set clear goals for what I want to gain. There were so many people I wanted to meet, but I barely had time to network properly.

So, plan better, Bethany!

For now, it’s on to the next adventure.

🙈 P.S. I did it and loved it! Speaking at Cape Town Developers UG. 🚀