Now in its 3rd year, POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024 is not only bigger than previous years but some of my Postgres friends who are speakers tell me the event is even better than past years. Sweet.

Formerly called Citus Con (yes, we did a rename), POSETTE is a free and virtual developer event happening Jun 11-13 that is chock-full of Postgres content—with 4 livestreams, 42 talks, and 44 speakers.

And while POSETTE is organized by the Postgres team here at Microsoft, there is a lot of PG community involvement. For example, 31 of the 44 speakers (~70%) are from outside Microsoft! We have also tried to be quite transparent about the talk selection process used for POSETTE 2024, if you’re curious.

On the schedule, the add to calendar links (in upper right of each livestream’s tab) are quite useful for blocking your calendar—and the calendar appointments include a link to where you can watch the livestreams on the POSETTE site.

So what exactly is on the schedule for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024? A lot! When you look at the schedule page, be sure to check out all 4 tabs, so you don’t miss all the unique talks in Livestreams 2, 3, and 4.

Figure 1: Screenshot of the Schedule page for POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, with arrows pointing to the different tabs for each livestream.

There’s something “accessible” about virtual events

As much as many of us 🧡 in-person Postgres events—I just returned from PGConf.dev 2024 in Vancouver which was so much fun1—I am also a big fan of the accessibility of the virtual format.

Why? Because not everybody can travel to in-person conferences: Not everyone has the budget (or the time, or the schedule flexibility). So it’s rewarding to collaborate with all these knowledgeable speakers to produce video talks you can watch from the comfort of your very own desk. With espresso (or tea) in hand.

Speaking of accessibility, let’s talk captions. All the talk videos published on YouTube will have captions available in 14 languages. The POSETTE team QA’s and fixes the English captions first and then generates the translated captions based on the improved baseline version.

Captions available in 14 languages: Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish

So much gratitude for all these POSETTE speakers

The raison d’être for most conferences is to learn from each other—and in particular, to learn from the speakers. So before diving into this Ultimate Guide we want to say thank you to all of the amazing the speakers who have brought so much knowledge and enthusiasm to POSETTE this year.

Figure 2: Headshots from the amazing Postgres experts who are speakers in this year’s event.

TIP about Speaker Interviews: Some of the speakers submitted speaker interviews. So if you want to know more about these Postgres experts, just click on the links to their talks below and you’ll be taken to their speaker page, which includes the talk abstract, a link to the livestream schedule, links to any past POSETTE talks—plus the speaker interview, if they submitted one!

Gratitude for our Livestream hosts too

There is a fun lineup of Postgres people from inside and outside Microsoft to co-host the 4 livestreams, including Boriss Mejías, Claire Giordano (that’s me) Floor Drees, Jelte Fennema-Nio, Krishnakumar (KK) Ravi, Melanie Plageman, and Pino de Candia.

Big +1 to all these folks for volunteering their time and their commentary to hosting the livestreams.

How to watch the POSETTE livestreams?

Each of the 4 livestreams has its own Add to calendar link which should be easy to find on that Livestream’s tab on the POSETTE Schedule.

And when you use the Add to calendar links to block your calendar, the calendar invites include instructions on:

WHERE to watch the livestreams: POSETTE event homepage

TIP: be sure to reload the POSETTE homepage on the day of the event, so you’re not viewing some cached older version of the page or a replay of a previous livestream.

WHERE to check out the schedule = POSETTE schedule page

How to participate in the official back-channel for POSETTE?

WHERE to join the virtual hallway track = #posetteconf channel on the Microsoft Open Source Discord.

You can join the channel now, no need to wait, that way you’ll be all setup before the conference.

What’s the benefit to you of joining the virtual hallway track, also known as the “official back-channel”? Most of the speakers have signed up to be available on the virtual hallway track whilst their talks are being livestreamed. So it’s your opportunity to ask speakers questions—and to be part of the conversation, and make some Postgres friends.

Figure 3: Join the virtual hallway track before, during, and after the Livestreams to be part of the POSETTE conversation. Most of the speakers have signed up to be on the #posetteconf channel whilst their talk is being livestreamed so it’s a good chance to ask questions and go deeper.

Will the recordings be available after the event?

Yes! All the POSETTE talks will be published online on YouTube after the event is over, so you can watch all 42 talks at your convenience, on your own schedule—even at 2X speed. With captions available in at least 14 languages.

Still, we hope you join us during the actual livestreams to be part of the live text chat.

Now let’s explore the different categories of talks you’ll see at POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024.

Figure 4: Overview of the different categories of talks in POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024, a free and virtual developer event full of Postgres talks—from the nerdy to the sublime.

4 amazing Keynotes, one for each livestream

Each of the 4 POSETTE livestreams has its own invited keynote. The keynote speakers were hand-selected and invited to come tell their story at POSETTE. We’re so happy they said yes—and that they will be sharing their open source, developer, cloud, and community experiences with us.

Livestream 1 Keynote by Charles Feddersen: All The Postgres Things at Microsoft, POSETTE edition
Livestream 2 Keynote by Regina Obe: The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres
Livestream 3 Keynote by Sarah Novotny: Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s
Livestream 4 Keynote by Thomas Munro: A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL

7 AI-related talks

With everything happening with pgvector and Postgres, it’s not a surprise that there was a plethora of AI talk submissions at this year’s POSETTE. In the end, we landed on 7 AI-related talks.

In alphabetical order by talk title:

6 things you can do with azure_ai & PostgreSQL on Azure, by Denzil Ribeiro (livestream 3, AI, azure_ai, AzureDBPostgres, Flexible Server, pgvector)
Advancing Drug Search with PostgreSQL and Azure AI, by Taras Kloba (livestream 4, ai, azure_ai, AzureDBPostgres, customer)
From Postgres full text search to Retrieval Augmented Generative search, by Adam Wølk (livestream 2, ai, AzureDBPostgres, rag)
pgvector for Python developers, by Pamela Fox (livestream 3, ai, ecosystem, pgvector, python, orm, psycopg, demo)
Postgres-powered AI: Running an End-to-End AI Platform with Postgres on Azure, by Jaehyun Sim of Ikigai Labs (livestream 1, ai, AzureDBPostgres, customer)
Semantic search with Django, PostgreSQL, & pgvector, by Paolo Melchiorre of 20tab (livestream 4, AI, django, ecosystem, pgvector, python)
Vector data in Postgres – how’s it different from “normal” data?, by Heikki Linnakangas of Neon (livestream 2, AI, data types, HNSW, postgres, pgvector)

15 Postgres core talks

Lots of Postgres goodness here. In alphabetical order by talk title:

Beyond Joins and Indexes, by Bruce Momjian of EDB (livestream 3, prolific presenter, query optimizer, tips)
Even JSONB In Postgres Needs Schemas, by Chris Ellis of Nexteam (livestream 2, customer, json, schemas)
Everything you need to know about Postgres Row Level Security, by Paul Copplestone of Supabase (livestream 1, security, startup)
Hazards of logical decoding in PostgreSQL, by Polina Bungina of Zalando SE (livestream 4, cdc, logical decoding)
How/Why to Sweep Async Tasks Under a Postgres Table, by Taylor Troesh (livestream 3, queues, Postgres as a platform)
Partitioning your Postgres tables for 20X better performance, by Derk van Veen of Adyen (livestream 4, customer, joins, partitioning, performance, tips)
Postgres Storytelling: What’s going on with Synchronous Replication?, by Boriss Mejías of EDB (livestream 2, Postgres storytelling, replication, WAL)
PostgreSQL Partitioning: Slicing and Dicing for Performance and Easier Maintenance, by Ryan Booz of Redgate (livestream 2, maintenance, partitioning, performance)
PostgreSQL performance tips you have never seen before V2.0, by Hans-Jürgen Schönig of CYBERTEC (livestream 4, performance, tips)
PostgreSQL physical replication – internals, latest development and opportunities, by Krishnakumar (KK) Ravi and Melih Mutlu (livestream 3, replication, WAL)
Revitalizing Outdated Data Models with PostgreSQL Views, by Newvick Lee of Careteam Technologies (livestream 3, data modeling, postgresql views)
Scaling the Wall of Text: Logging Best Practices in PostgreSQL, by Richard Yen of EDB (livestream 1, logging, performance, security, tips)
Tuning Parameters in Postgres vs. Tuning Your Queries, by Henrietta Dombrovskaya of DRW (livestream 1, performance, query tuning)
Where do the performance cliffs come from?, by Tomas Vondra of EDB (livestream 4, performance, performance cliffs, query optimizer)
You Don’t Need a Database Backup Policy, by Karen Jex of Crunchy Data (livestream 4, backups, disaster recovery, DR)

8 Postgres ecosystem talks

“Ecosystem” is the “E” in the middle of POSETTE. In alphabetical order by talk title:

Accelerating PL/pgSQL Code Conversion When Migrating to Postgres, by Deepak Mahto (livestream 2, pl/pgsql, migrations, Oracle to Postgres)
Comparing Postgres connection pooler support for prepared statements, by Jelte Fennema-Nio (livestream 1, connection poolers, pgbouncer, odyssey, pgcat, supavisor)
Data-intensive PostgreSQL: Three ways to scale, by Marco Slot of Crunchy Data (livestream 2, analytics, citus, extensions, it depends, performance, pg_partman, SaaS, scalability)   
The Open Source Geospatial Community, PostGIS, & Postgres, by Regina Obe of Paragon Corporation and PostGIS PSC (livestream 2, community, geospatial, KEYNOTE, postgis)
Lessons Learned from benchmarking and profiling distributed PostgreSQL, by Lotte Felius, a PhD Student in the Database Architectures group at CWI (livestream 2, benchmarking, citus, extensions, performance, ycsb)
SaaS on Rails on PostgreSQL, by Andrew Atkinson, author of High Performance PostgreSQL for Rails (livestream 1, citus, extensions, multi-tenancy, rails, ruby, saas)
State of the Postgres Extension Ecosystem, by David Wheeler of Tembo (livestream 1, extensions, pgxn)
Vindicating ZFS with PostgreSQL: Unleashing the Power of Scalability, by Federico Campoli (livestream 4, file system, storage, zfs, zol)

8 Azure Database for PostgreSQL talks

All The Postgres Things at Microsoft, POSETTE edition, by Charles Feddersen (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, community, conferences, KEYNOTE, open source)
Autotuning PostgreSQL on Azure Flexible Server, by Luigi Nardi of DBtune (livestream 4, AzureDBPostgres, machine learning, performance, query tuning, self-driving database)  
HA and DR at a glance with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, by Silvano Coriani (livestream 2, AzureDBPostgres, DR, HA, multi-region DR, PaaS)
Making Postgres inserts faster on Azure, by Gayathri Paderla (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, performance)
Tales from the Field – Oracle to PostgreSQL migrations, by Adithya Kumaranchath (livestream 3, migrations, Oracle to Postgres)
Using Azure Query Store to Understand PostgreSQL Performance, by Grant Fritchey of Redgate (livestream 3, AzureDBPostgres, performance, query store, query tuning)
What Enterprises like about Azure Database for PostgreSQL – Flexible Server, by Kanchan Bharati (livestream 1, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, enterprise)
What Makes Azure Database for PostgreSQL Great for Developers?, by Varun Dhawan (livestream 3, AzureDBPostgres, cloud, developers, extensions, ecosystem)

4 Postgres community talks

A Walking Tour of PostgreSQL, by Thomas Munro (livestream 4, community, KEYNOTE, open source, postgres history, postgres contributor story)
How to Work with Other People, by Jimmy Angelakos and Floor Drees (livestream 2, collaboration, community, neurodiversity, open source, people)
Open Source Contributions to Postgres: The Basics, by Elizabeth Christensen of Crunchy Data (livestream 1, contributing to postgres, community)
Why I love open source development & what I learned from K8s, by Sarah Novotny (livestream 3, collaboration, community, kubernetes, open source)

Please tell your friends & mark your calendars for this year’s POSETTE

If you are into PostgreSQL and into continuous learning, join us on Jun 11-13. No travel required.

Livestream 1: on Tue Jun 11 from 8:00am – 2:00pm PDT (UTC -7) with 11 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 1 schedule)
Livestream 2: on Wed Jun 12 from 8:00am – 2:00pm CEST (UTC +2) with 11 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 2 schedule)
Livestream 3: on Wed Jun 12 from 8:00am – 1:30pm PDT (UTC -7) with 10 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 3 schedule)
Livestream 4: on Thu Jun 13 from 8:00am – 1:30pm CEST (UTC +2) with 10 unique talks (add to calendar / link to Livestream 4 schedule)
Virtual hallway track is in the #posetteconf channel on the Microsoft Open Source Discord. You’re invited to pop in, say hello, and ask questions.
Opportunities for cool SWAG: There will be chances to snag sticker swag for those who join the livestreams—plus a cloud skills challenge for those who are into Azure Database for PostgreSQL.

And if you do the social media thing and want to help spread the word about the POSETTE livestreams to your friends and networks, you can follow @PosetteConf on X/Twitter to stay connected—or you can follow us on Mastodon or also on Threads.

Final thank you’s

And while this blog post has already thanked the 44 speakers and 7 livestream co-hosts, it’s time to thank everyone at Microsoft involved in organizing POSETTE 2024 especially the organizing chair Teresa Giacomini. And immense gratitude to the talk selection team without whom we wouldn’t have this amazing roster of talks.

We hope you get a lot of value out of POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2024. Happy learning!

Footnotes

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

Send a message to the channel with the following command

curl $url -H “Content-Type: application/json” -d ‘{“text”: “test 1”}’

It looks like there is a message on the pc side

But can’t see the message sent in the mobile client, only an empty card

The client message is as follows

​Send a message to the channel with the following commandcurl $url -H “Content-Type: application/json” -d ‘{“text”: “test 1”}’It looks like there is a message on the pc side But can’t see the message sent in the mobile client, only an empty card  The client message is as follows     Read More

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Besides Azure portal, you can also do document intelligence and index creation in ML studio. The entire process of index creation includes several steps, crack_and_chunk, generate_embeddings, update_index, and register_index. In Azure ML studio you can create or use components for each of those steps and stitch them together as a pipeline. 

Section 1. What is it? 

Usually, a ML pipeline component does the job in serial, for example, it crack_and_chunk each input file, i.e., pdf file, one by one. If there are a couple of thousands of files, it would take several hours to finish the crack_and_chunk, and several hours for generate_embeddings, a total of a dozen hours for the entire index creation job. Imagine if there are hundreds of thousands or millions of files, it would take weeks to finish the entire index creation process. 

Parallel processing capability is extremely important to speed up the index creation process, where the two most time-consuming components are crack_and_chunk and generate_embeddings. 

Below figure shows the two components applying parallel processing capability for index creation: crack_and_chunk_with_doc_intel_parallel and generate_embeddings_parallel.  

Section 2. How is the parallelism achieved? 

Given crack_and_chunk_with_doc_intel_parallel component as an example, the logic of parallel process is like this: the ML job is run on a compute cluster which includes multiple nodes with multiple processors in each node, all files in the input folder is distributed into mini_batches, so each processor can handle some mini_batches, in this way, all processors can execute the crack_and_chunk job in parallel. Compared with serial pipelines, the parallel processing significantly improves the processing speed. 

Below shows an experiment of creating an index on about 120 pdf files, and compared the time spent on each step of the index creation. Parallel processing improved the speed a lot. Running on GPU cluster is even faster than on CPU cluster. I want to make a note here, for parallel processing, there is overhead at the beginning of the job for scheduling the tasks to each processor, for small number of input files, time saving of parallel processing comparing to serial process may not be significant; but if the number of input files is huge, the time saving will be more significant.  

How is the parallelism implemented in Azure ML? Please see this article: 

How to use parallel job in pipeline – Azure Machine Learning | Microsoft Learn 

There are several functions: init(), run() and shutdown(). The shutdown() function is optional.  

Section 3. Code example 

Please see the code in azure-example github repo as example: 

azureml-examples/sdk/python/generative-ai/rag/notebooks/custom_crack_and_chunk_parallel at main · Azure/azureml-examples (github.com) 

This code repo creates parallel run component crack_and_chunk_doc_intel_component_parallel and stitches other Azure built-in components together to create a ML pipeline, the file crack_and_chunk_with_doc_intel/crack_and_chunk_parallel.py implements the parallelism logic. Several ways of providing .pdf inputs are addressed in the .ipynb files in this code repo. 

There are some especially important features supported in this implementation: 

Error handling. During crack_and_chunk, errors may happen when processing certain files, if there is no error handling, the subsequent job will be halted. In this solution you can decide how many errors you want to ignore before halting the whole job, you can even decide to ignore all errors. So, if there are some input files causing errors, you can continue crack_and_chunk for other input files. 
You can set desired timeout value to ensure enough time for some big input files to be processed (crack_and_chunk) and responses to be received.  
Retry. If there is error in crack_and_chunk, you can set number of retries. 

Be sure to check out this article for guidance of setting optimum parameters for parallel processing: 

ParallelRunStep Performance Tuning Guide · Azure ML-Ops (Accelerator) (microsoft.github.io)

Section 4. Benefits of using Azure ML 

Although there are other ways of creating AI search indexes, there are benefits of creating indexes in Azure ML.  

The jobs get the whole managed environment in Azure ML including monitoring. 
There are opportunities to use abundant compute resources in Azure ML platform, including VMs, CPUs, GPUs, etc. 
Security and authentication features are provided, such as system identify, managed identity. 
There are a variety of logs related to ML job execution, which help debugging and provide statistics for job analysis. 
 
See picture below, this log tells how much time is spent on each min_batch. 
 

 
There are other logs for performance, errors, user logs, system logs, etc. 
 
Azure ML provides version control for output chunks, embeddings, and indexes. This provides flexibility for users to select desired version of these entities when building applications. 
 
Below picture shows that you can specify the index version when you ask questions.

 
Azure ML can connect the index to promptflow natively. 

For this parallel processing feature, a header is added to indicate the crack_and_chunk_parallel processing API call. 

Some other capabilities can be built on top of this parallel processing ML pipeline: 

Scheduling. Once you are satisfied with a ML job, you can set a recurrent schedule to run it. 

Publish as pipeline endpoint, then submit to setup pipeline job easily. 

Use the index in a promptflow. 

Section 5. Future enhancements: 

Some future enhancements are considered, for example, re-indexing, which is to detect the changes in input files and only update the index with the changes. We will experiment with that part and publish Part 2 of the solution in the future. 

Acknowledgement: 

Thanks to the reviewers for providing feedback, involving in the discussion, reviewing the code, or sharing experience in Azure ML parallel processing:  

Alex Zeltov, Vincent Houdebine, Randy Thurman, Lu Zhang, Shu Peng, Jingyi Zhu, Long Chen, Alain Li, Yi Zhou. 

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

I would like a master sheet will all the names that will add or remove columns when new names are added/deleted. The arrow represents the end result of what the other sheet would look like after the master sheet removed “Randy”.

​I would like a master sheet will all the names that will add or remove columns when new names are added/deleted. The arrow represents the end result of what the other sheet would look like after the master sheet removed “Randy”.  Read More

​

As part of the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 Initiative, which aligns with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we are committed to showcasing solutions that drive meaningful societal impact and spotlighting our partners’ growth stories on the marketplace. Throughout the series, we will be telling the unique stories of partners who are leading the way with AI in app development, who are building using multiple Microsoft products, and who are publishing transactable applications on the marketplace. In this article, Microsoft’s Andrea Katsivelis sat down with Nexer Digital’s Hilary Stephenson to learn more about their story and partner journey.

About Hilary: Hilary Stephenson is the Founder and Managing Director at Nexer Digital (founded in 2007 under the name Sigma). With a background in content design, and having started out in technical documentation and early web publishing, Hilary has been involved in user-centered design throughout her career. She is passionate about accessibility and inclusion and helping clients to embrace them.

About Andrea: Andrea Katsivelis, a global GTM director at Microsoft, specializes in AI, cloud, industry, and accessible solutions. Andrea leads integration strategies and fosters collaboration for corporate acquisitions and partner co-sell, accelerating market impact and revenue growth. Her commitment to marketing and communications excellence, accessibility, and DEI, along with her results-driven approach, embody Microsoft’s vision for inclusive innovation. Andrea is DEI Workplace certified and mentors in women’s leadership programs.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[AK]: Tell us about Nexer and your mission. What inspired the founding?

[HS]: I have a background in user centered content design and accessibility. When asked to set up a new consulting company in the UK for our parent company, Nexer AB in 2007, I was keen to shape our hiring, services and sector focus around digital inclusion and social impact. I’m happy to say that we have grown to 100+ people across the UK, offering user research, product and service design to help make products and services more accessible and inclusive. We do this primarily in the health, government, charity and education sectors, meaning we are lucky to work on projects affecting a huge audience on behalf of our clients.

[AK]: Can you tell us a bit about the offer(s) you have available on the marketplace?
[HS]: We offer a range of services, from role-based training to accessibility audits, including an informative awareness session on Accessibility and Inclusion designed to raise awareness across teams, help organisations establish where they are on their accessibility journey, and where they’d like to be. This townhall-style session is perfect businesses of all shapes and sizes and includes senior stakeholder participation to establish buy-in, which is a crucial step in promoting accessibility as a core value.

Our Nexer Digital accessibility team, some of whom have personal lived experience lead the session. They share valuable insights on inclusive design and the challenges faced by users with disabilities when interacting with non-inclusive products, including those built with Microsoft products. The session also explores how Microsoft 365 and Teams can empower businesses to better support employees, customers, and citizens for more accessible and equitable digital experiences.

[AK]: How is Nexer helping customers make the most of Microsoft Teams and M365 Copilot, from an accessibility and disability inclusion perspective?
[HS]: We’ve been exploring how Copilot and M365 can make the workplace more accessible for users with disabilities. Through sharing their lived experience, our “Access at Nexer” Employee Resource group has been investigating the barriers that exist for individuals with different access needs, and how we can leverage built-in features including captioning and screen readers to address them.

We’ve also been interested in features like Copilot’s ability to summarise information from Teams and Outlook, generate transcripts, and convert data into accessible formats, all of which can reduce reliance on manual notetaking, reduce the cognitive load of such tasks, and allow for easier collaboration. This has particular benefits for neurodivergent colleagues.

This translates directly into the kind of support we can offer our clients too. By helping them prepare for Copilot, testing with real users, and supporting them to mature their approach to accessibility through training and awareness-raising, we’re ensuring they’re optimised and ready to make the most of all the benefits that Copilot and the M365 suite can offer.

[AK]: Nexer has been a part of driving the Accessibility agenda forward, leveraging the Microsoft Accessibility Horizons framework. We’re excited to feature your work as part of Horizons 1- Adopt: Enhance colleague experiences. What has been your experience engaging customers on the topic?
[HS]: We have worked with Microsoft to make our approach to accessibility onto the Horizon levels. For us, this means categorising our awareness raising, audits and training under the headings of Engage, Equip and Embed, taking clients from building knowledge, skills and capacity through to active advocacy and communities of practice. Microsoft have been hugely supportive in helping us develop this model. Clients are now opening their minds to the concept of colleague experience, where we are sharing guidance, use cases and experiments from our work with M265 and Copilot. We feel positive that we can use this framework to bring inclusion to the workplace and enhanced usability to corporate tools, as well as help shape policy around access to work, procurement and support for employees.

[AK]: How does your work align and support the UN SDGs?  Can you share how work with customers has created business value and supported positive inclusion outcomes? 
[HS]: Our work promotes the prioritisation of accessibility in the workplace, aligning with several UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By making corporate tools and digital workplaces more inclusive through the accessibility features found in Microsoft 365, we help our clients foster more equitable work environments (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth). Our approach also contributes to SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions by promoting a more inclusive society, and we aim to create and promote fairer, accessible workplaces, both physical and digital, where everyone can participate and feel welcome.

Our work with Bupa, a major health insurance company with 45 million customers really demonstrates how accessibility efforts can create both business value and positive inclusion outcomes (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth).

Through accessibility audits, inclusive usability testing, and training programs, we helped Bupa identify and address accessibility barriers across their digital platforms including mobile and web. This programme of work led to a more inclusive user experience for their diverse customer base.

This project also fostered a cultural shift within Bupa. Through role-based training we empowered staff from across the organisation, including the C-suite with the knowledge and tools to prioritise accessibility, creating a more inclusive work environment and aligning with SDG 8’s focus on promoting decent work for all. This commitment from Bupa’s leadership also secured ongoing resources for continued progress within the organisation.

[AK]: How do you suggest other Microsoft partners and all organizations start or grow their accessibility journey?  

[HS]: Organizations can often be nervous about sharing their progress with accessibility, in fear of being told what they haven’t yet fixed. Litigation and a ack of understanding on where to start can be a real blocker to organisations talking about the subject. It is a journey though, so at Nexer, we always encourage our customers to share every step taken. Even better if they can do this in the context of a tools audit, product roadmap or accessibility statement, where they acknowledge what they’ve achieved and are transparent about the work still to be done. Making a commitment is vital and the Horizon model works perfectly in this context, as it’s about raising awareness, building confidence and creating mature communities of practice. The more people who share their progress, the greater the encouragement for others to follow.

[AK]: What are you most proud of in your journey building/leading Nexer? What’s next?

[HS]: We’ve built a real sense of community around accessibility over the last 20 years, which extends far beyond our own people and our immediate client work. This includes the relationship we have with Microsoft but also the partners we share in common, such as Purify Technology or Anywhere365. We help them understand the practical applicability of accessibility in their own work, from making meetings and Teams rooms more inclusive to creating contact centre scripts that seek to engage rather than alienate. It’s collaboration over competition. We speak at conferences, host meet-ups, work with freelancers and give accessibility a stage at our Camp Digital conference each year, and this network powers us forward. The next step will be to harness the true potential Copilot has for organizational inclusion, from access to work and on-boarding through to making corporate platforms usable and supportive.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Join the marketplace community today! Just click “join” on the upper right corner of our marketplace community page. You can also subscribe to the community to stay updated on the latest stories of how these inspiring leaders carved their career paths, what lessons they learned along the way, and more. 

Resources:

Join ISV Success
Join the marketplace community
Join the Microsoft #BuildFor2030 Initiative, a call-to-action for Microsoft partners to drive changemaking, innovation, and collective impact, to help advance the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Hear our partners’ perspective on participating.
Attest as a social impact or diverse business in Partner Center and be discovered on the marketplace.
Watch how Nexer drives inclusive colleague experiences forward with Accessibility Horizons 1

​Microsoft Tech Community – Latest Blogs –Read More 

The Microsoft In a Day (XIAD) events program is thrilled to announce upcoming XIAD Train the Trainer events for partners:

Automation in a Day (AuIAD) – Friday June 14, 2024 – 9am-5pm Central European Standard Time (UTC +2)

Power Pages in a Day (PPIAD) – Friday June 21, 2024 – 9am-5pm Central European Standard Time (UTC +2)

Register for an upcoming session at: https://aka.ms/xiadTTT

This is a great opportunity for partners interested in delivering these events to learn the content, event delivery tips and best practices from an experienced partner. For more information about the XIAD program, please visit https://aka.ms/XIADPartnerOpportunity

​ 
The Microsoft In a Day (XIAD) events program is thrilled to announce upcoming XIAD Train the Trainer events for partners:
 
Automation in a Day (AuIAD) – Friday June 14, 2024 – 9am-5pm Central European Standard Time (UTC +2)
Power Pages in a Day (PPIAD) – Friday June 21, 2024 – 9am-5pm Central European Standard Time (UTC +2)
 
Register for an upcoming session at: https://aka.ms/xiadTTT
 
This is a great opportunity for partners interested in delivering these events to learn the content, event delivery tips and best practices from an experienced partner. For more information about the XIAD program, please visit https://aka.ms/XIADPartnerOpportunity  Read More

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