Monday, 15 November 2021

Speaking at the European Collaboration Summit 2021 - Infuse AI into your Power Platform solutions

The European Collaboration Summit (ECS) is a fantastic Microsoft-focused conference in Europe with around 2100 attendees expected, and I'm hugely excited to be speaking there again this year. While we're clearly not done with the pandemic yet, it feels great to be out speaking and networking in-person again and the recent South Coast Summit event here in the UK showed that many others share the same feeling. This year's European Collaboration Summit will be a special event - it essentially combines two conferences in one since the European Cloud Summit which focuses on Azure and Google Cloud has been rolled into this event. I'll be speaking on automation, AI and the Power Platform - some one of my favourite topics of recent times as we embark on the next frontier of process automation.

ECS is held in Düsseldorf this year and as usual has a strong line-up of speakers and significant Microsoft representation. Keynote speakers include Karuana Gatimu, Dan Holme, Vesa Juvonen and others from Microsoft and Bernd Wagner from Google. With over 150 sessions, you can expect deep dives on Microsoft 365, Azure, the Power Platform, Google Cloud as well as business and strategy-focused talks on digital transformation and modern workplace in general. 


The event is almost sold out but it's not too late to get tickets - see below for more details. 

My session - "Infuse AI into your Power Platform solutions"

The session abstract is:

Bringing AI into your applications has never been easier, and huge benefits can be unlocked when some level of intelligent processing of your data happens. From auto-tagging of incident report images uploaded from a Power App, to Flows that detect anomalies in documents, to apps which detect if a retail shelf is low on stock - so many improvements to your SharePoint-based processes are now within easy reach.

In this session we'll cover several scenario demos showing how you can instantly get better insights from your data and better outcomes with little effort - and no developers required! This session is aimed at anyone building solutions on the Power Platform.

The session has a couple of pillars:

  • Demonstrating how to build AI into solutions using the example of an incident reporting Power App. The app uses image recognition to understand photos captured on a mobile phone, auto-tagging the image in Microsoft 365 and integrating with Microsoft Teams to alert a responder group for further triage if the incident appears to be serious
  • An exploration of 3 different techniques to integrate AI. Specifically we look at:
    • Power Apps AI Builder
    • Azure Cognitive Services through code
    • Azure Cognitive Services through Power Automate

Each of these options brings different capability and cost implications, and being able to make the right decisions in this space is vital. One area of focus is cost modelling based on Power Platform premium licensing where I show how what could be considered an architectural choice can have a big impact on the TCO of your solution. 

ECS conference details

Some more high level details of the conference:
  • When - 29 November - 01 December 2021
  • Where - Düsseldorf, Germany
  • Language - English
  • Conference size - expected to be 2100+ attendees
  • Pricing - see the Tickets page on the conference website
It would be great to see you there! The conference website has all the details you need of course: