Partner in the spotlight: Microsoft
For our last partner interview before the summer, we had a chat with Nick Trogh of Microsoft.
Hi Nick, can you introduce yourself and what's your role at Microsoft?
I’m Nick Trogh and I’m a developer audience product marketing manager at Microsoft. In this role I’m responsible to help professional developers get skilled on the Microsoft Azure platform. I do this by organizing developer workshops, creating online coding activities, speaking at conferences and meetups, and working with our developer communities to reach all developers wherever they are.
Can you tell us a bit more about Microsoft?
Microsoft is a global technology company based in Redmond, Washington. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Whether that is by enabling people in their personal of professional lives to get things done, through Windows, Microsoft Office, Xbox, etcetera. But also to help developers and organizations build innovative and creative solutions for their users and customers by leveraging our developer tools and cloud services, like Visual Studio, .NET, Microsoft Azure, GitHub, and much more.
Microsoft sponsors Visug and the community for years. Why do you sponsor?
We’re building software tools and platforms for developers so that they in turn can create innovative solutions. Visug and the developer community in general, are a key part in helping developers learn and explore our technology. As Microsoft, we can tell what’s possible but it’s the developer community where those possibilities become real.
What other values do you see of Visug (or the community in general)?
The true value of Visug is not only sharing information but the community aspect, where developers come together to exchange ideas, help each other out. I’ve been involved with Visug and other developer communities over the last 10 years and many of the people there I can call my friends.
After Corona, how do you think that community events should look like?
Corona has forced us to move our community events online, where we struggled to re-create that community networking experience. However, this online model has also brought us many benefits: anyone from all over the globe can join, people with mobility restrictions can now participate, through captions we can provide a more accessible experience. In the future, I would hope to see a hybrid approach where we combine in-person events with online deliveries, maybe alternating between them, and where we’re considerate about accessibility and inclusion.
Thank you for your time, Nick!