Some actionable items, and a big announcement at the end of the post. Thanks for dropping by another weekly article on Artificial Intelligence and project management.
[Subject: Project Manager at Workplace], [Purpose: Illustration], [Mood: Confident], [Style: Minimalistic], [Background: Solid colour] Create a minimalist illustration depicting a confident Project Manager doing work in an office. Use simple lines and shapes to symbolize the person’s confidence and professionalism. The solid colour background should complement the overall mood and create a sense of professionalism.
I took inspiration from a previous newsletter from Zain.
Getting ready for Microsoft’s Copilots
The above video goes from speculative, to actionable! I like it, where in earlier articles I needed to only discus future possibilities you now (at least in the US) have the option to dive in and use Generative AI to your full advantage.
A great LinkedIn course
Last week I started the “Career Essentials in Generative AI by Microsoft and LinkedIn” course. And it’s a great source to get more information on what Generative AI is, and how it can assist anyone, in any job. If you are curious about the new technology, and why people are so enthusiastic about it, this course might just be for you. It’s a (close to) four-hour course, but worth your time, you could almost call it essential 😉.
Microsoft Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenges!
Don’t know what to do in the later half of July? Learn and develop essential AI skills with the Microsoft Learn AI Skills Challenge. The challenge begins on July 17th! Preview topics and sign up now. I for one signed up to all 4 challenges, I’ll likely have a big challenge (pun) to complete them all because of some personal stuff I’ll talk about in the final notes section. But I’m looking forward to learning a lot as well.
In case you did join, let me know how it went, I’d love to hear from you.
I finished Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
And it’s a very nice thought-provoking book! I especially liked the first half of the book. In that section a better understanding of the AI capabilities is outlined, as well as a description of 12 possible outcomes of a Super intelligent AI future (chapter 5). I would highly recommend anyone interested in the broader topic of AI (and not just the Generative type of AI that we hear about so often now) to pick up a copy of the book.
Next book on the list: A thousand brains by Jeff Hawkins.
Final notes
As a final note, I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss an important notice by Microsoft. Azure Active Directory, the place where we store our users and groups recently got a new name: Microsoft Entra. Strange name it you ask me, and strange to change the name of such an imbedded piece of software. Bing had this to say about Entra (so it’s actually more than just AAD):
Microsoft Entra is a new name for the family of identity and access products that Microsoft offers12. It includes Azure AD, Entra Verified ID, and Entra Permissions Management12. It is Microsoft’s vision for the future of identity and access that goes beyond traditional identity and access management123. It aims to verify all types of identities and secure, manage, and govern their access to any resource34. It supports both hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud environments35. It is based on a Zero Trust approach to security3.
Now, about that personal thing.
We are moving! And this time it’s not a 100 meter distance from our previous house. This time we will travel all the way to the far Northeast of The Netherlands.
New school for the kids, my wife quit her job at the toy store, and thankfully I can continue with my consultancy work at Projectum as if nothing changes. Work-from-anywhere-mentality for the win!
At the end of the month, we handover the key to the buyers, but we won’t be able to move into our new house yet because it’s in construction. We’ll do some traveling in France and the centre of The Netherlands in between, and will settle down in a temporary house until the construction is completed, and we can move in.
That means that for at least the months August and September I don’t know how much time and energy I’ll have to spare for TPC. I hope I’ll be able to continue this AI post serries, and making video’s for the YouTube channel. But please excuse me if I don’t post as regular as I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks.