Speaking at Microsoft Ignite 2019, but not about tech

Ryan YatesConsultant

Just a dude in his 30's doing things in Tech & trying to break the stigma's around talking about Mental Health

Yet again I’ve had another acceptance on a session that I have submitted to a conference, this time to Microsoft’s flagship conference, Ignite, this year taking place between November 4th - 8th 2019 in Orlando, Florida.

 

I’ve been accepted for 2 sessions, a 45 minute Breakout session and a 20 minute theatre session, both of which will be brand new to me sessions, and whilst both are completely non-technical, they are incredibly important topics in the Diversity & Inclusion track, something that I have been trying more and more to be better involved with.

The first session “Mental Health: It’s time to talk” is going to be an interesting and fun talk to plan, and planning has already started, including planning what tech I need to used to be able to pull together some statistics to share in my session.

The session description is as follows Microsoft Ignite Session BRK1033

The second session “Mentoring: Is it your most powerful networking tool?” is a short theatre session covering my own experience with mentoring and how I am excited with the new mentoring app as detailed in this blog post on Tech Community

The session description is as follows Microsoft Ignite Session THR1044

 

As I mentioned in a previous blog post on my Reflective thoughts on 2018 and a look ahead at 2019  I intend to be doing more and more technical and non-technical writing & also where possible more non-technical presenting as part of a personal long term goal to reduce the stigma of talking and writing about Mental Health, because like many millions out there Mental Health Affects Someone Like Me.

 

You can follow my Mental Health blog site over at @mhasl_me and if you are interested in helping writing content at all then please head to the site at https://mhasl.me and fill in the form linked to on there.

I’m looking forward to getting these 2 presentations put together for a number of reasons, including the following

  • These are both non-technical topics that are both really close to my heart, and well one that you could say is more close to my head than my heart, but it is something that I want to use my technical & non-technical skills where I can for good and this feels like a good extension of where I can start.

Whilst I am looking forward to the next 2 months of planning and presentation refinement, I will also be looking forward to taking some much needed downtime afterwards to decompress properly as  event’s like Microsoft Ignite and other conferences can be draining, especially with the International travel and change of body clock due to the time zone difference.

 

That’s all for now, but I have a few more posts in the works, so expect another new post from me soon enough