Training

​📅 October 2025

 

Build Unique GenAI Experiences that Scale 10/23/2025

Azure OpenAI lets developers build scalable, data-grounded GenAI systems using RAG, SLMs, and multimodal inputs. With built-in safety, orchestration, and automation, it turns raw data into reliable, production-ready intelligence.

​

Python + AI Microsoft Reactor Series

          #     Date           Title

1  Oct 07 2025  Python + AI: Large Language Models 

2  Oct 08 2025  Python + AI: Vector embeddings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyIJcHKA6b0  

3  Oct 14 2025  Python + AI: Vision models 

4  Oct 09 2025  Python + AI: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) 

5  Oct 15 2025  Python + AI: Function Calling Structured outputs 

6  Oct 16 2025  Python + AI: Quality & Safety  

7  Oct 21 2025  Python + AI: Tool calling TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM+1

8  Oct 22 2025  Python + AI: AI agents TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM+1

9  Oct 23 2025  Python + AI: Model Context Protocol (MCP) TECHCOMMUNITY.MICROSOFT.COM+1​​​

• AI Engineer Associate Course AI-102

Learning to design, build, and deploy AI solutions using Azure AI services. Focused on integrating Azure OpenAI, Cognitive Search, and AI Foundry to create RAG pipelines, copilots, and secure, governed AI applications aligned with enterprise architecture.​​

• M365 Copilot Training 10/14/2025

Draft with Copilot in M365, tone, readers sentiment, clarity.  Powerpoint  Helpful Resources: Great Copilot Journey, Copilot Scenario Library, Copilot Adoption Page 

• The Democratic Data Revolution: Rel-Time Insights for ALL - Strata RTInsight Research + Microsoft Fabric

Organizations that scale AI + analytics are 2.6× more likely to achieve outsized revenue growth.  This stark reality underscores a critical truth that the democratization of data isn’t just a nice-to-have but a business imperative.​

• Report of the AI at Stanford Advisory Committee | Office of the Provost

Outlines a human-centered framework for the responsible use of AI in higher education. The report emphasizes human oversight, ethical governance, data transparency, and equity in AI adoption across administration, teaching, and research. Stanford advocates for “augmenting human capability, not replacing it,” establishing adaptable policies, and fostering experimentation under clear guardrails.

• Generative AI in Administration: Cornell University Task Force Report

Cornell’s cross-campus task force established a governance and risk framework for integrating AI into administrative operations. The report emphasizes ethical use, privacy, data quality, and human oversight, while identifying AI-enabled opportunities such as chatbots, document automation, and contract analysis. It promotes safe experimentation, university-licensed tools, and AI literacy across staff to ensure equitable, trustworthy, and efficient service delivery.​​

• Surveying the AI Landscape: Emerging Patterns in Higher Education Research – Digital Promise

A global review of 300+ studies found rapid adoption of generative AI in higher education, led by ChatGPT and focused on writing and assessment. Yet issues of bias, privacy, and transparency remain underexplored, prompting calls for ethical, inclusive, and well-evaluated AI integration across academia.​​

• Getting your data in shape for machine learning - Stack Overflow

Explains why machine learning requires specialized data structures and preprocessing. The article introduces scalars, vectors, matrices, and tensors as foundational elements of efficient ML pipelines and discusses how to structure, normalize, and batch data for high-performance GPU processing. Emphasizes building well-organized, accessible datasets as the first step toward reliable model training.  ML data structures - Colab

• Data-Rich to Information-Rich: AI Trends in Higher Education Institutional Research | AIR

AI is shifting Institutional Research (IR) from system maintenance to strategy. Trends include unified data platforms, embedded AI tools, and agents that automate reporting. Barriers remain—especially employee readiness and skills​

• ​Closing the Data Literacy Culture Gap | AIR

The institutions that will thrive are the ones that treat data literacy as a discipline rooted in institutional values: shared language, repeatable habits, real decisions, and visible leadership. 

• Microsoft: Build Unique GenAI experiences that scale (10/1/2025)

Azure OpenAI as a force multiplier, grounded in organizational data. Covered multimodality (text/video/audio), use of small LLMs, RAG for knowledge orchestration, and proactive safety. Highlighted automation for documentation, analysis, and data cleaning​

• Microsoft dynamic 365 10/2/2025

Showed how Copilot + autonomous agents streamline customer service with 1,400+ connectors. Explored frictionless IVR, AI routing, sentiment analysis, auto-summaries, and autonomous knowledge bases. Emphasized real-time insights, trend detection, and ROI​

• 5 day copilot challenge: new skill each day to explore. micro-learning

​

Fabric Private Paid community to uplevel learning/knowledge learning how to build robust data analytics & engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric

• Live calls

  • Saturday, October 5, 2025

    • Fabric News: Monthly Update & Catchup - Overview of recent Fabric product updates

      • Fabric Update - September 2025

      • Fabric September 2025 Feature Summary | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric

    • Architecture Review review a real-world Fabric architecture from Community member and discuss context, decisions, challenges in designing a Fabric Architecture

 

📅 September 2025

Microsoft Reactor Training: Customize AI Models with RAG & Fine-Tuning

• Hybrid Strategies: RAG to ground models in external data + fine-tuning to adapt behavior for domain needs.

• Azure Workflow Demo: Walkthrough of dataset preparation and fine-tuning job setup.

• Responsible AI Guardrails: Built-in content safety, groundedness validation, and compliance checks.

• Evaluation Metrics: Coherence, fluency, groundedness, precision/recall, and similarity-to-ground-truth.

CoPilot Training (Your 365 Advisor) - keeping up with the changes!​

5 day challenge to become familiar with Copilot. AI tools are the future of work.

• The Microsoft home page is now called M365 Copilot

Microsoft Azure Virtual Training Day: Build an AI App with Azure using RAG -9/29/2025

• Understand vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for Mongo DB

• Build you own AI copilot with vCore-based Azure Cosmos DB for MongoDB and Azure open AI

 

Live Fabric calls

• Saturday, September 13, 2025

  • Monthly Update & Catchup - Overview of recent Fabric product updates

  • Architecture Review with Ravi - We reviewed a real-world Fabric architecture from Community member Ravi! We discussed context, decisions, challenges in designing a Fabric Architecture

• Tuesday, September 23, 2025

  • FabCon Excitement – Live call 9/23/2025 debrief

• Sunday, September 28, 2025

  • Q&A Session - Our chance to meet, ask questions, and learn!

​​Hand on tutorials 

Making my way through over 120 hands-on tutorials and projects, split across the following modules:

• Dataflow Gen2 – power query, M query, ETL/ELT (6 exercise builds)

• Data Pipelines – Orchestration, ETL/ELT, Metadata, Expressions (12 exercise builds)

• Data Warehousing & T-SQL – T-SQL, Data Warehousing, Data modeling (28 exercise builds)

• CI/CD – Version Control, Deployment Pipelines, Azure DevOps

• Source Sorcery – REST API extraction

• Lakehouse & Notebooks – Lakehouses, PySpark, Notebooks, Data Modeling/Transformation

• Real-time & Streaming – Eventreams, Eventhouses, KQL

• Data Quality & Testing – Data Quality, Code Quality, Governance

• Security, Administration –

• Monitoring & Optimization - Capacity Management

• Solution Architecture – Architectural Design Making, Design Patterns, Medallion architecture​​​

 

📅 August 2025

• Fabric Private Paid community to uplevel learning/knowledge learning how to build robust data analytics & engineering solutions with Microsoft Fabric

• Strategizing further for deploying learning on private accounts