by Contributed | Feb 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Women’s shelters offer an important safe haven, a place where victims of violence and their children can seek refuge and, ultimately, become self-sufficient.
This journey to self-sufficiency, however, is not easy. Business Apps MVP Mary Thompson says that a lack of stability and quality opportunities are the biggest challenges for these women, and this is especially difficult at shelters without the digital resources to enable job searches or online study.
This is why Mary has established a tech center for women and other disadvantaged groups that enables them to learn about technology and transform their lives.
Mary is on a mission to empower as many people as possible to reach their maximum potential and says that she saw a unique opportunity to do so in her home state of South Carolina.
Launching a tech hub at the local women’s shelter — complete with computer, internet, and printer access — offers an important stepping stone for the women to connect with the wider world and better plan for their future, Mary says. Applying for jobs and work is now easier thanks to the center, as is submitting the necessary paperwork to keep the government assistance that helps these women to get out on their own.
Moreover, Mary says: “The tech center also gives them the ability to digitally upskill, which provides better jobs with better pay, and ultimately more stability. Some women have even started some online classes for medical coding and paralegal work.”
Importantly, since children live at the shelter as well, the tech center provides them with internet access to complete remote school work during the pandemic.
Mary views technology as the most impactful way to maximize any individual’s potential and says she felt driven to reach a group of people that could benefit most from a life change.
“I wanted to help women that had backgrounds and stories that weren’t too terribly different from my own. And I know what a difference tech made to me, so I wanted to share that with them as well,” she says.
“My vision for the tech center is to create a culture of developing tech skills. A place where they know that they go, learn new skills, and — boom — change their life by entering the tech industry.”
Mary credits local stakeholders for helping the center to develop to where it is today, and hopes positive outcomes from the initiative can lead to further tech centers across the state of South Carolina.
“It’s all about paying it forward and taking care of others. That is why I’m passionate about helping the shelter. People have helped me so I wouldn’t be in a shelter and people helped me to get my tech career started — both were life-changing and it’s about bringing that to others.”
For more on Mary, check out her Twitter @Mm090511
by Contributed | Feb 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We now support the use of Google’s compliance screens on Android Enterprise dedicated devices running Android 9+ and that leverage kiosk mode. As a result, you can now configure a password policy and ensure that your end-users will be guided down a path to enforce said policy. The screens will get invoked if you configure a password policy in device configuration and/or device compliance. That experience would look something like this (this example is a password policy requiring 4 digits):
Password policy experience requiring 4 digits
Below are other screens your users may see, depending on what compliance policies you have applied to their devices. We will update as more screens get introduced.
Minimum OS level
Minimum OS level user experience
Set a new screen lock
Set a new screen lock user experience
Learn more about Android Enterprise device password restrictions here.
Let us know if you have any questions by commenting on this post or reaching out to @IntuneSuppTeam on Twitter.
by Contributed | Feb 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
A smarter tech community is a stronger tech community. This is the guiding principle behind MVP education efforts that are driving tech learning, upskilling and certification in Europe and Asia.
Azurebrains, for example, operate in Spain. The founder, Azure MVP Alejandro Almeida, started the project as a simple blog in 2017 to publish relevant content from experts.
Thanks to the high quality of the posts and its team spirit, the blog became very popular with the cloud community in a matter of months. The number of keen contributors has increased to its current team of 21 diverse writers, which is coordinated by Azure MVP Roberto Tejero, with recent months generating more than 190,000 visits and 4,000 engagements.
Further than the blog itself, Azurebrains boosts different events, from must-attend dates like the Global AI Bootcamp in Spain to regular meetups managed by activity coordinator and Developer Technologies MVP Alberto Picazo.
During the pandemic, the group also realized that many new people were joining their Telegram channel looking for help with Microsoft Azure Certification, so Azurebrains expanded to create a mentoring program to focus on certifications. Now, group members are even moderating Microsoft Baseline Fundamentals sessions collaborating with Microsoft Azure BG.
“Certifications validate the professional expertise under unified criteria and offer partners and customers a highly valuable tool to recruit experts for their projects,” the team say. “Azurebrains is helping to motivate our members to get Azure certifications by offering educational resources, mentoring support inside our community, and sharing and solving technical doubts.”
Meanwhile, in multiple countries across Asia, MVPs are also bringing together their communities with education. For example, Chinese AI MVP YuXiang Wang is dedicated to learning more about Azure Machine Learning with self-educational tools like Microsoft Learn and Docs. YuXiang looks to not only expand his professional capacity but change the perception of elder developers as well.
“I would like to prove to Chinese enterprises that the learning ability has nothing to do with age,” YuXiang says. “We should abandon the idea that learning ability declines after the age of 35. I’m really interested in learning new technical knowledge and sharing it with peers in my communities.”
Indian Azure MVP Lalit Rawat, meanwhile, runs India’s largest meetup for Azure aspirants. The meetup offers several certification programs to train a wide audience, which Lalit also takes to boost his technical abilities. “Certification is really important as it helps people to grow technically and boost their carrier,” he says. “It provides the skills to compete in the market, especially nowadays when there is a high demand for certified IT professionals.”
Similarly, Japanese Azure MVP Akiyoshi Tsuchida is the founder of Japan Microsoft Learn User Group. The community counts 700 members with growing regional branches across Japan and aims to create a space where people can lean on each other for support.
“I wanted to connect with people who use Microsoft Learn and learn together. I guessed that it would be more fun if you share what you achieve,” Akiyoshi says.
“Certifications are important because they are the start of a positive loop. Passing a certification that is in demand will increase your probability of getting a better job and, through your new job, become more skilled. Ultimately, the more skilled you become, the more opportunity you have.”
This “positive loop” is evident with Korean Windows and Devices for IT MVP Soonman Kwon, who has made a great effort in learning technologies to achieve more than 100 certifications. Soonman actively publishes his educational journey with the world via his blog and enjoys expanding his expertise in regard to new technologies and cloud services.
“I still have a lot of curiosity about new products and features,” Soonman says.
Caption: An Azurebrains meetup in February 2020.
by Contributed | Feb 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
By the end of March 2021, the bid strategy for audience campaigns can only be set at the campaign level. An audience campaign’s bid strategy will be in effect for all of its ad groups. Attempts to set the ad group level bid strategy with the Bing Ads API will be silently ignored and no error will be returned.
The bid strategy option to select either Use the campaign’s bid strategy or Use the bid I set for an ad group is being removed from Microsoft Advertising. Whether you previously chose Use the campaign’s bid strategy or Use the bid I set for an ad group, all ad groups will use the campaign’s bid strategy.
This change does not affect bids in any way, since at this point audience campaigns only support the manual CPC bid strategy.
Audience campaigns will continue to support manual CPC as a campaign level bid strategy. Only search and shopping campaigns will deprecate manual CPC as a bid strategy as announced in the previous blog post.
As always please feel free to contact support or post a question in the Bing Ads API developer forum.
by Contributed | Feb 12, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
With the MidDay Café show heading for its fourth episode we have been getting lots of inquiries on how to keep up with upcoming events, recorded events, and how to even take episodes in the car for on the go listening. Well, we have heard your requests and now have multiple ways that you can subscribe and follow along, as well as take us with you.
Use the following resource links to follow/subscribe to MidDay Café and consume the content in the way that works best for you.
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