This page is an up to date list of activities relevant to the Microsoft MVP award scheme. Please see the home page for blogs.
Personal Statement:
2024
November
MS Ignite - Chris and Zoe
Fergus Kidd
AI Podcast - 4018 LinkedIn impressions
Human Agent Connection Podcast
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October
AI Self interview
7185 LinkedIn impressions
AI video Generation
3144 LinkedIn impressions
September
Bletchley Park AI User Group
Multi Agentic AI with Fergus Kidd
We were amazed with an incredible talk from Fergus on 'The Road to General Artificial Intelligence'. Fergus discussed topics surrounding generative AI and gave us a fantastic demo of multi agentic generative AI in action and even incorporated a live build introducing a cat facts API to his AutoGen configuration using extensibility in Python.
August
Generative AI learns to Game - 1707 LinkedIn impressions
Fergus Kidd
July
Keynote speaker at the UCL Centre for AI summer event - 40 PhD and MSc Students in attendance. Speaking on the future of Agentic AI, including demos of Microsoft Azure OpenAI, and Microsoft AutoGen.
This was a particularly special invite, as I had been at the launch of the centre back in 2018.
UCL Festival of Engineering Launch event - spoke at the Industrial eXchange Network conference as part of the launch event.
Gen-E digital award judge - judging hundreds of young students based on their technical abilities and approaches to innovation.
OpenUK Digital #16 Cloud Native - Meetup Co-organiser. 56 attendees.
June
1728 LinkedIn impressions and 34,000 YouTube views on AI for productivity video, highlighting AI for modern work, including Azure OpenAI, and GitHub copilot.
OpenUK London #15: Sustainability and Open Source - Meetup co-organiser. 69 attendees.
May
OpenUK London #14: Cybersecurity - Meetup co-organiser. 98 attendees.
April
University of Central Florida - Invited to give an honours program keynote talk on shallow fakes with AI.
7882 LinkedIn impressions on my AI robot interview using a strech RE-1 robot, and Azure OpenAI, including Azure OpenAI's GPT-V
OpenUK London #13: Jobs in Open Source - Meetup co-organiser. 132 attendees.
March
OpenUK London #12: AI and Open Source - Meetup co-organiser and presenter. 114 attendees.
February
State of Open Con - Attended and manned the booth at SooC 2024, having conversations with attendees about Open-source in Microsoft.
Open sourcing of interactive Dall-E powered aquarium.
FergusKiddOpenUK London #12: Open Source Community - Meetup co-organiser. 76 attendees.
January
10,391 LinkedIn impressions on my self AI interview using Azure Open AI and HeyGen.
OpenUK London #11: OKRs and Goal Setting - Meetup co-organiser. 104 attendees.
2023
December
4528 LinkedIn Impressions on our AI generated Holiday card
Fergus Kidd
November
Ignite Attendee - Seattle. Manning the Avanade booth, attending talks, and speaking with other attendees about generative AI. Develped and showcased two interactive Generative AI demos, one on fish in an aquarium, and another on an interactive generated mural.
OpenUK London #9: Platform Engineering - Meetup co-organiser. 130 attendees.
October
Booth presenter at Microsoft Envision London
OpenUK London #8: Future of Open Source in 2024 - Meetup co-organiser. 50 attendees.
September
OpenUK London #7: Open and AI- Meetup co-organiser. 87 attendees.
August
ICRA, Poster presenter - Had a poster accepted at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, highlighting the work done with the Stretch-RE1, brain interface control, and Azure based intelligence.
Fergus Kidd
July
June
May
Microsoft Build Attendee - Seattle
April
March
3148 LinkedIn impressions on a text-to-speech augmentation of Azure OpenAI, which I open sourced.
February
Fergus Kidd speaker - State of Open Conference 23
Michelle Angert
January
3D projected textures
https://ferguskidd.com/generated-textures-but-with-depth/
2022
December
Synthetic data – Blender to Azure Custom Vision
https://fergusblog.azurewebsites.net/0-data-vision-model/
November
Dall-E textures continued
https://fergusblog.azurewebsites.net/ai-generated-textures-now-in-full/
https://github.com/FergusKidd/Seamless-Texture-Generation-with-DALL-E-2
Open UK awards - London
Runner up – Sustainability award for GSF work
Judge – Diversity and inclusion award
October
Microsoft Ignite Presenter - Manchester – state of generative AI, uses and ethics.
September
Dall-E for textures
https://fergusblog.azurewebsites.net/dall-e-2-2/
OSS Summit in Dublin
Presenter on Green software pipelines - Green Software Foundation
August
Altspace tips and tricks
https://ferguskidd.com/altspace-media-player-and-azure-storage/
Unevenly Distributed podcast with Jeff Vilimek
https://ferguskidd.com/untitled/
July
Avanade Blog on Dall-E 2
https://www.avanade.com/en/blogs/techs-and-specs/data-and-analytics/dall-e2-for-enterprises
Junior Avhieve it Europe Podcast on metaverse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIA70Bgxjgw
June
Dall-E blog
https://ferguskidd.com/dall-e-2/
Avanade blog on confidential ledger
https://www.avanade.com/en/blogs/techs-and-specs/azure/confidential-ledger-flexibility
Became chair of GSF project – carbon pipeline.
https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/Carbon_CI_Pipeline_Tooling
Questions
Why do you want to be an MVP?
• I’m passionate about AI, passionate about technology, and passionate about changing the world for the better with the skills I have built and continue to grow. I believe the recognition that comes with being part of the MVP community will give me a stronger platform to work from and share from. I hope that being part of the MVP community will also give me access to a diverse group of experts in their fields who I can continue to learn from, as well as find and explore new avenues of giving back to the wider community. I am also passionate about STEM education in young people and would want to use the MVP status to reach out to more students and young people to encourage them to pursue their passions in technology. I believe the resources offered as part of the MVP programme would allow me to build and share more adventurous and engaging demonstrations of technology on Microsoft Azure and allow me to host these demos in the public domain for easier sharing and interactions online.
What are the most impactful community contributions you've made in the last year?
• Over the last year I have grown my passion for sharing. From being invited as a keynote speaker to talk at the UCL centre for AI, to continuing to drive impact with junior achieve it Europe including being invited to speak with their CEO Salvatore Nigro about the Metaverse. I’ve also contributed to open-source work on GitHub, notably promoting the adoption of Microsoft generative AI, presenting back the impact of Microsoft text, vision and speech services, as well as openAI powered conversations in our Stretch RE1 robot. I also used a NextMind brain sensor to control the robot using only my mind, which has given me several opportunities to talk about that work in the public domain, where I always stress the ease and power of implementations of Microsoft AI.
What significant impact do you plan to make to the community in the upcoming year?
• In the coming year I plan to continue to build, play, and share. I believe the most impactful sessions to share passion in technology contain a compelling story and vibrant demonstration that is relevant to the audience. I love to prove how easy it can be to reach a goal by starting from scratch with no technology experience. I plan to continue to engage with young people in STEM, and hopefully grow connections with local schools and university programs. I am especially interested in the use of gaming for education, and plan to use gaming concepts to engage young people in such topics as Metaverse, AI, and computer science using tools like Microsoft’s Minecraft for Education, Altspace VR, as well as utilising Unity or unreal engine.
What are you doing to make your community better? (e.g. charity work, diversity and inclusion efforts, education, mentoring, etc.)
• I am an active member of Avanade’s LGBTQ+ inclusion workstream, a group that advocates LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace in Europe and beyond. I work with a team in the UK to put on events, panels, talks, and information campaigns to highlight LGBTQ+ issues in the workplace and society. I am very proud that we have grown this group to be inclusive and collaborative across Europe.
• I mentor several groups and individuals from UCL as part of an Industry eXchange Network program I set up within Avanade. I set technical projects for them to complete, and mentor them, as well as providing technical guidance with Microsoft Azure. In a normal academic year I mentor 10-20 students
• I have been engaged with work experience programs at Avanade, welcoming in school students with a passion for technology and engaging them with the work we do around Microsoft. Specifically in terms of modern software engineering and artificial intelligence. This has been affected by Covid-19, but I hope to continue this in the future. I am also a registered STEM ambassador.
• I am an active member of the Green Software Foundation, and chair of one of the GSF projects. Working with companies and passionate people all around the world to make a greener and more sustainable future in software.