At Microsoft Build this year, we had great conversations with attendees, customers, partners, exhibitors, and our friends at Microsoft about the latest technology trends and exciting projects.
At the mobile development area, I met Jim Bennett, Cloud Developer Advocate at Microsoft, with whom I discussed ways drones could be used for good, as demonstrated in the first day keynote. He had many examples, the most compelling of which involved his wife’s family in west Africa. The family grows stevia on its farm, and struggles to keep out unwanted visitors who may steal its cows, or allow their cows to graze on the stevia fields, which would devastate the family’s crops. A drone could be used to patrol the property to look for broken fences or unfamiliar faces,and send an alert to the farmers to check it out. The drone could literally save the family’s livelihood if a problem is caught early.
Drone on display at DJI booth. Source: Marissa.
Another theme at Build was mixed reality and how it could be used to help medical professionals treat and diagnose patients. Plain Concepts, a Microsoft vendor, showcased how to use mixed reality to train new doctors, EMTs, and other medical professionals. In the image below, you can see what a cardiologist might see through HoloLens in this augmented reality – a 3-D version of a patient’s heart that is based on one set of scans. With this technology, if the cardiologist wanted to see different angles, they could simply manipulate this 3-D image instead of having to request further scans of the patient and waiting another week for those results.
Plain Concepts booth at Build. Source: Marissa.
I also had the pleasure of meeting a Syncfusion customer who had worked with our diagram component for many years and loved it. He was interested in starting his own company soon, and appreciated how the Syncfusion Community License gives start-ups enterprise-grade components for free.
Syncfusion diagram component.
I met another Xamarin MVP who loved our Succinctly series of free e-books, our collection of more than 130 short e-books on a variety of technical topics, spanning web and mobile development, specific programming languages, and everything in between. If you’re not yet familiar with them, browse our library at syncfusion.com/ebooks.
Alicia and I enjoyed visiting with David Ortinau of Microsoft and Ed Snider, a Microsoft MVP, who had been to our office a few times to speak at Xamarin Dev Days. David had created an AI app to recognize logos at Build and had asked us to help train the app by sending him various versions of our logo. We were happy to help.
Left to right: Ed Snider, Microsoft MVP and Marissa Keller Outten of Syncfusion. Source: Marissa
Left to right: Alicia Morris of Syncfusion, David Ortineau of Microsoft,, and Marissa Keller Outten of Syncfusion. Source: Marissa.
Syncfusion exhibited at Microsoft Build as well. Here is the Syncfusion team at our booth right before the expo hall opened:
Syncfusion staffers at Build. Source: Syncfusion.
We enjoyed speaking with attendees about their projects and sharing updates on our Xamarin and JavaScript UI toolkits. TypeScript, Angular, and React were the most popular talking points with visitors who were amazed at how much functionality our products offer. One visitor wanted a multiselect component, and was surprised to see we offer one in our Essential JS 2 suite. Other visitors, new to Xamarin.Forms, were impressed by the number of controls we offer—over one hundred—in Essential Studio® for Xamarin.
Another highlight with many visitors was the ability of our Essential JS 2 data grid to work with hundreds of thousands of rows, even though thousands of Build attendees were using the same Wi-Fi network.
Essential JS 2 Data Grid. Source: Syncfusion.
Syncfusion staffers talking with attendees. Source: Syncfusion 
Syncfusion staffers getting ready for the attendees. Source: Syncfusion
We had a great time attending and exhibiting at Microsoft Build. We reconnected with customers and Microsoft contacts, met with marketing partners, and engaged with attendees. It was a great opportunity to speak with customers and spread the word about our wide range of Xamarin and JavaScript UI components. We look forward to next year!
For more information on Microsoft Build or Syncfusion’s offerings, check out these links:
· Microsoft Build content: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build/content
· Microsoft Build keynotes: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/events/build/keynotes
· Syncfusion Essential Studio® for JavaScript: https://www.syncfusion.com/javascript-ui-controls
· Syncfusion Essential Studio® for Xamarin: https://www.syncfusion.com/xamarin-ui-controls
· Syncfusion Succinctly series of free e-books: https://www.syncfusion.com/ebooks
