Amy Nicholson’s Blog

What the Data?!?

Amy Kate Nicholson — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 14:25:25 GMT

WHAT THE DATA??? - FashTech Summit April 2016 Tagged as an interactive presentation from a Technical Evangelist from Microsoft - I bet the FashTech audience were thinking "oh goodness, what on earth is going to happen at 12:20" :) So I jumped straight in - Data and Analytics are my passion and I want to talk to you about why you want to get passionate about it as well. THE WORLDS DATA Let's start way back … even before I was born (showing my age!). Data was mostly analogue; books, tapes, records and paper documents. But during the 1990's I had the opportunity to start moving from analogue to digital. Granted I had a few tapes but then came the CD's, home computers and DVDs; and this digital data started to overtake the analogue. From the mid-1990's some of this data became connected, that is internet connected - this data now had an IP address. Now … the majority of the worlds data is digital, and a lot of this data is from the web and in the cloud. The future, what is in store? By 2020 its estimated we will have around 50 Zettabytes of data - 50 million petabytes!! This is likely to come from the internet of things, from applications in the cloud and mobile experiences. The vast majority of this data is predicted to be sitting in internet connected data centres, so we know it as the cloud. The planets data, information and intelligence will reside here and this transformation will be a revolution in every industry. Whether it’s the fashion and retail industry or a very different space like the agriculture industry - every company is now a data company! Fashion and Retail - the extremely innovative Von Bismark, a start-up supported by Microsoft to produce a virtual dressing room that now sits as an app on the Xbox One platform using the Kinect sensor to allow you to virtually try on clothing. Or all the way over to the Agriculture industry - with the connected cow story. A story with all the buzz words of today, internet of things, machine learning and data. From a single dairy farmers curiosity to understand how to more accurately detect oestrus - to cows wearing pedometers and now the farmers ability to control the production of his herd better: check out the fantastic connected cow story here. EVERY COMPANY IS NOW A DATA COMPANY BOLD INTERCONNECTED AMBITIONS With Microsoft's mission to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more comes 3 bold interconnected ambitions - Reinventing Productivity and Business Processes - Create More Personal Computing - Building the Intelligent Cloud I would like to focus on 'Building the Intelligent Cloud' in this blog post, however all of the things I talk about come with a point of making your applications 'think' and act intelligently with the data they see - this often then leads to the next step in design: how your users/customers interact with your applications in a more human way, a more personal way. That is how these ambitions become very closely related. BUILDING THE INTELLIGENT CLOUD Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform, offering services from IaaS, to PaaS, to SaaS. With a whole wealth of core services to allow you to build your solutions in the cloud and take advantage of elastic scalability, only pay for what you use; and move from app idea to production in a much shorter time. Very recently at BUILD, Microsoft' annual developer conference, we announced Cortana Intelligence - a suite of services dedicated to transforming your data into intelligent action. The ability to bring data from many inputs into the cloud, use a vast array of services from information management to advanced analytics and machine learning, but not forgetting that all this data should be stored in data stores that suit the type, size and velocity of your data. Cortana Intelligence suits a wide range of audiences and organisations at different stages of their intelligence vision. Whether its initially understanding and visualising your line of business application data, maybe through Power BI dash-boarding. Or all the way to an end-to-end big data and analytics pipeline taking advantage of both 'data at rest' and 'data in motion' within your business or application; therefore resulting in that ACTION statement below. DATA TO INTELLIGENT TO ACTION So examples always make this type of information easier to digest and starts to initiate ideas. Businesses are gaining better visibility into their organisation and making better predictions

In manufacturing, this can involve using remote monitoring to know exactly what’s going on with equipment at customer sites or in remote locations
In retail, people are optimizing demand forecasting to better predict what customer demand will look like next season, or next year.

Businesses are using advanced analytics to ensure materials, parts and products are optimally distributed to the right places at the right times

Better optimization of the marketing mix – using advanced analytics and intelligence to ensure the right product is in the right place, at the right price and being seen by customers who are more likely to buy.
Across industries, getting the right items to the right places contributes to operational efficiency objectives

Offering customers what they want, when they want it, understanding your customers and delivering personalised experiences

In manufacturing, this may involve tracking a customer’s use of a particular product, identifying 'wear and tear', offering advice on how to make the product last longer, and offering targeted promotions on replacement parts.
In financial services, this might involve making more tailored product recommendations based on customer information from across channels - from detailed demographics to social media interactions.
Across industries, using data, advanced analytics and intelligence capabilities can support more successful new product introduction. With these technologies, you can reduce the likelihood of introducing products that don't sell well, by informing product development with data and analytics.

An example I built, along with others in the team, was a Twitter Sentiment Analyser - called the Orb of Intelligence. This used a variety of services from Cortana Intelligence including Event Hubs, Stream Analytics, Cognitive Services and a Web App front end. Check out the initial blog post I wrote about this project here: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/amykatenicho/2015/09/07/the-current-level-of-reasonsto-happiness/ And watch me demo it in a video and show the aggregation of Twitter sentiment every 10 seconds: https://bit.ly/1QpQzjU With all of these types of solutions, different parts of the Cortana Intelligence suite can be stitched together to suit your needs, so you have full flexibility to create a bespoke end to end pipeline. On the other hand, Cortana Intelligence also offers out-of-the box functionality with Cognitive services as well as framework support when working with conversations as a platform, where natural language becomes and new UI and the bot framework can help support with the design of your intelligent bots. This is making the barrier to entry for 'getting into' data significantly lower. Don't worry about the infrastructure, it's your time to focus on the ideas, it's your time to think on how you can differentiate your business or application. The best way to get into Cortana Intelligence is to use the resources below and start building, follow handy tutorials and then design the framework for your projects! Links to Cortana Analytics Learning Path: https://aka.ms/cortanaintelligencelearningpath Link to Cognitive Services: https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services Link to the Bot Framework: https://dev.botframework.com/ Start building your bot: https://docs.botframework.com/builder/node/overview/ Please do go and check out these links and resources and keep in touch, let me know what you build @AmyKateNicho And a huge thanks to @FashTechLDN for inviting me to speak at their Fash Tech Summit 2016, it was a fantastic event!

The Current Level of #ReasonsTo Happiness

Amy Kate Nicholson — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 14:57:00 GMT

This is an example of Azure Machine Learning analysing the sentiment of tweets to the #ReasonsTo hashtag using a pre-built API, which is part of Microsoft's Project Oxford and Azure Machine Learning API’s This was built as a demo for the Tuesday morning keynote session at Reasons to be Creative. It was delivered live at the conference to show how someone who does not come from a machine learning background can use the publically available (and free) APIs to add aspects of Machine Learning(ML) to their websites and applications on any platform. This demo is built using the power of the cloud computing platform, Azure. Initially the code makes a call to the Twitter API and searches for tweets containing the specified hashtag (example: #welc2017 and #reasonsto). For each tweet received, an API call is made to the Text Analytics machine learning API to retrieve the sentiment of the tweet. The details from the Twitter API, and the sentiment assigned by the ML API, are combined together and sent to the cloud. Azure has a great data ingestion service call Event Hubs, which can consume millions of events per second so that you can process and analyse huge amounts of data at a time. In our ever growing data culture this is more important than ever. Each tweet is then passed on to Azure Stream Analytics to be processed and gain real time insights from. The stream analytics query, written using T-SQL, aggregates the tweets sentiment over a 60 second sliding window of time. Now we have an aggregated sentiment value for all the tweets, to the specified hashtag, over the last 60 seconds, we then then post them back to the event hub and surface them in a web application running on Azure, our glowing orb front-end The idea is it provides a visual 'pulse' of what the current sentiment is from people tweeting about the event - this was an idea that we came up with so that if you're speaking at an event and your session has a specific hashtag then you can see the public reaction to your session, live as you're speaking! In the top right corner is the value that the ML API assigns to the sentiment, you can see this value change from 0 to 100, 0 being very negative and 100 being very positive. The visualiser is a CSS animation that has 10 different visual states so depending on the sentiment value (0-100) is can either be red (0) amber (50) or green (100). If you want to understand more about this demo and maybe build one yourself, take a look at some of the resources below and start building intelligence into your applications today: Azure Machine Learning Studio Project Oxford Machine Learning API’s Microsoft Virtual Academy online learning platform Reasons to be Creative sentiment pulse To see this demo in action, check out this link: https://bit.ly/1QpQzjU

Continuous Learning is the Key to Progressing

Amy Kate Nicholson — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 15:14:03 GMT

Continuous learning is the key to progressing within any industry and this is truer than ever within the technology industry. As technology innovation is moving at an ever quicker pace, developers and ITPros should be comfortable with learning to build up their current skill set whilst also branching out into other areas of technology. Once you have a broader understanding of a whole range of technologies, you can start to think of ways to bring these together to create something truly innovative.

Thinking back to this time last year, I had just a submitted my final dissertation on ‘Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data’ at The University of Sheffield, and I was studying hard for my finals feeling like my degree wanted me to consume the whole of the technology industry for my exams. However I realise now more than ever, that leaving University is by no means the end of your learning, it is only the start. Learning is a continuous cycle.

Within this post I wanted to talk to you about how I moved from being a Computer Science student to working in a technical position at Microsoft, what my plan was for overcoming the initial learning curve, as well as my techniques and favourite resources.

In my role as a technical evangelist I find I learn about new things every day! Be that from chats with other members of the team, information within emails or on Yammer groups, or simply extending my knowledge of current technologies to present great new features to our technical audiences and customers. Sharing information with the incredibly intelligent people on the team, means we are all building our knowledge and learning from each other.

However when I arrived, I initially felt a little bit like this:

Or maybe this:

There was a whole host of technologies out there that I had never really researched before. With so much to learn and wanting to excel at the ‘day job’ of being a technical evangelist as well, it felt a little overwhelming.

However, I have never been known for giving up when things get a bit hard, so I did what I do best, I started to research resources out there and I made a plan. Below are the steps I take to learn something new.

Current Knowledge– Don’t lose the tactics you learnt at University and the great resources you used to complete your technical degree. Towards the end of university you normally have a pretty good understanding of how ‘you learn best’, now you just need to define this for the workplace.

At the start of my degree I would aimlessly search the internet for good resources and this would take time. However you start to establish a collection of your favourite code issues, samples, and bug bashing websites: for example some of mine are StackOverflow, W3C , Colour Schemes and the Python Programming Cookbook. So keep in contact with these sites, they could help you when you’re building new skills as well.

Also try new tools for productivity when learning. I used to be the most unusual Computer Science student as I loved writing notes and making lists with a pen and paper. However now I have been introduced to OneNote, I am hooked! You can get a free download now and it can go on all your devices so your notes are always in sync. Now when I am learning new skills, I have a OneNote workbook with sections and lists; it’s an organised persons dream.

Initial Research – When starting to research a new technology start with the high level information, make sure you understand what the technology is and when it is best to use it. I find doing a quick search using your favourite search engine is always a good place to start.

More recently I have noticed there is a trend for short introductory videos into different technologies and services. A great example of this is when I was trying to learn about all the new services avaliable on Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud. They have a great on-going series called ‘Azure Fridays’ where introductory 5-15mins videos are recorded talking about each service at a high level. These video are searchable from the site and available on demand. Scott Hanselman sums it up really well, “I learn best when a trusted friend sits down next to me and we work together on a problem. Just two engineers, a laptop and the cloud, solving problems. I'm trying to bring that experience to you every Friday. No editing, no marketing, just solutions.”

So if you are looking for updates to your favourite cloud services or wanting to branch out into various new IoT and data services check out the Azure Friday’s webpage

In-depth detail and courses – Now you have an overall understanding of the technology and you might have a development scenario in mind, but you need more detail on how to build these solutions.

I quite like using online video courses where they have a selection of structured, short videos with detailed content and demos. There might also be a downloadable presentation to refer back to at another time, and a quick set of questions to check you have understood the content described. A great example of this is the Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) Site. With 17 pages, each containing 30 different courses, so 500+ different courses on the site, this is a great source to add to your favourites tab!

You might also notice that MVA invite back some of their great speakers to create new content. For example a couple of years ago I completed this C# for beginner’s course with Bob Tabor before I started my Internship at Microsoft’s search engine Bing: C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners.

I noticed more recently that Bob Tabor has produced an Azure Fundamentals course on MVA, so as I am learning new skills so are some of the recognised names in the industry: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals.

Hands on Development – I believe one of the key parts of learning a new skill is actually getting in there and building something. This may be taking some sample code and customising it, or following along with informative blog posts like this one on the Stream Analytics Cloud Service: Get started using Azure Stream Analytics: Real-time fraud detection. Blog posts like this can be found at the bottom of any Azure Service webpage under the ‘Learn More’ header.

Also don’t feel like you have to make a concrete decision on whether you will use this technology further in the future, there are often free trials avaliable for most new technologies, so you don’t have to worry about initial investment. An example is you can sign up for an Azure one-month free trial providing you with £125 to spend on all Azure Services for that one month. This is great because you try-before-you-buy and even after one month it is pay-as-you-go. So check out all the services with your trial and then start using your favourites the following month. I might have left University but I still love all the offers and free trials!

Keeping up-to-date – Now you have learnt a new skill and developed some new content, it’s always a good idea to try and keep up-to-date on the changes within the technology. As products and services are being released earlier and earlier in development, keep an eye on the new features and integrations released over time. I do this by following my favourite technology experts on Twitter for example Joseph Sirosh who tweets about what has just been released in Azure Machine Learning, as well as cool articles showing some great examples of using the technology like How-Old.Net and Connected Cows

So this is my plan to take forward in the future. Again, the key word in this article is ‘continuous learning’. I am going to keep iterating over this cycle and hopefully get back to you at another point with even more resources to share.

So from initially feeling a bit overwhelmed, now I feel more like this Cat! Building my knowledge all the time in various areas of technology and having my fire-breathing unicorn (favourites tab on Microsoft Edge) take me to my favourite learning resource destinations.

Learning at Work Week Competition

Resources

Where do you go to learn? Let us know in the comments section or via @TechNetUK #LearningatWorkWeek

"In my … computer science department, there are more Dave's than girls" - Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In (2013)

Amy Kate Nicholson — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 13:22:51 GMT

Hi, my name is Amy Nicholson and I've recently joined Microsoft as a graduate on the MACH Scheme (Microsoft Academy for College Hires). My role is a Technical Evangelist with the aim of reaching a developer or IT Pro audience and evangelising Microsoft products and services.

I entered the Microsoft world when I was about 10 years old. Not because I was some kind of child prodigy, but because my Grandad gave my family our first desktop computer and helped Bill Gates and Paul Allen fulfil their vision; "a computer on every desktop and in every home". From what I remember, it wasn't even connected to the internet, but I was fascinated by the games I could play and the endless new shortcuts and tools I could use. I think this, partnered with my need to create, understand and learn new things, ended with me studying BSc Computer Science at The University of Sheffield.

My course taught me skills in so many areas of Computer Science including Software Engineering, Intelligent Web, Data Driven computing and many more. As the quote in the title suggests, I was one of very few girls on my course and there were also a lot of Dave's! I think its brilliant being a female in technology and would love to help encourage more women to get into technical subjects.

During my second year I secured an internship year at Microsoft. I was a Technical Program Manager at Bing and worked on the Autosuggest feature team. This meant managing the progression of feature ideas to final products. I had an amazing year; I learnt so many new skills and knew I definitely wanted to come back to Microsoft. My internship year was extremely important and I would urge all students at university to consider gaining experience, be that yearlong or summer placements.

After finishing my final year of study and producing a dissertation project centered on machine leaning and sentiment analysis of Twitter data, I graduated with a First Class Honors in Computer Science with Employment Experience.

Now two months into my graduate job, I am over-the-moon to be back at Microsoft and I am really enjoying the diversity of the Technical Evangelism role. I am creating apps, getting involved in the area of Data Science, as well as attending and presenting at events. Now you have seen my blog why not check out my other social media streams LinkedIn and Twitter

See you soon!