This article is republished from my original 'The 4th and final day of Microsoft Ignite' post in LinkedIn.

Also have a read of my highlights from Microsoft Ignite Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3.

The final day of Ignite is a half day so people can get back home in time for the weekend. I saw delegates from all parts of New Zealand, Australia and of course speakers from around the world. Walking through the Sky City hotel to my first session, there were lines of people in Microsoft t-shirts checking out and it made me realize what a huge undertaking this conference was. 2500 delegates and 140 sessions (up to 8 sessions across 2 conference centres at any one time), the party, keynote, breakout labs, vendor booths and catering. Wow! Quite a logistical feat.

This article is republished from my original 'Day 3 of Microsoft Ignite NZ' post in LinkedIn.

Also have a read of my highlights from Microsoft Ignite Day 1 and Day 2.

I have been writing up my time at Microsoft Ignite at the end of each day, and I'm really glad now because the sessions I went to on Tuesday are a bit of a blur now. Today's sessions will stick for a while though, as they are much more my bread and butter as a solutions architect. I've found the 12 Factor App patterns really influential and designed my last project around Microservices running in Docker containers.

This article is republished from my original 'Day 2 of Microsoft Ignite NZ' post in LinkedIn and follows on from my post yesterday First day of Microsoft Ignite NZ.

The hardest thing about a conference like Ignite is choosing which of the sessions to attend in each block. I'm interested in so many different things, from IoT to mobile, web apps and development, and every session I went to today involved a hard choice.

This article is republished from my original 'First day of Microsoft Ignite NZ' post in LinkedIn.

I'm fortunate to be attending the New Zealand Microsoft Ignite conference this year, thanks to my employer, Equinox IT, being a Microsoft partner. Most of my previous experience with cloud has been on AWS, and I wrote earlier in the year how themes of IoT, Serverless and Microservices came up again and again in the Auckland AWS Summit. Well, Ignite (formerly TechEd) is also hammering home the same topics.

Equinox IT has attracted leading Microsoft Azure consultant Aben Samuel to join the company's Azure practice in Auckland.