#011: Microsoft Foundry, Mentorship and the in betweens.
The art of doing, being and becoming.
It is my 2nd newsletter in the year, and I am reminded of an article I wrote back in the beginning of 2025; perfection is in completion. As far as I have come, I know consistency is not my key talent, but rather than embracing that I will never be consistent, I have begun a doing ritual. Whenever something comes to mind, instead of bargaining with myself, I just do it! Case in point, writing a second newsletter in July :-).
P.S. my first lesson has been I postponed purchasing a Brand New Day ticket and now they are all sold out.
Microsoft Foundry and Foundry Toolkit
I can say Azure is my 5 year old child at this rate, considering the length I have taught, played around and explored the platform. But every new turn, I learn something new. All this but I always return back to, when building with Microsoft Foundry is: always check your spending and delete whatever you are not using.
Two, there are different ways to get started, code-first, UI-first etc., but my favourite combo will always be Code + UI, because who says we can’t have both? For the past few months I have been creating workshops and content on Foundry Toolkit for VS Code, how you can build with both the UI and Code, perfect together, right in your IDE.
AI can…
Learn skills. Imagine you are teaching your intern something, and they have to do the same thing over and over again. How your brand image is like. How to deploy to Azure. How to talk to customers. And you want them to repeat the same things over and over again, until it is like their second nature. That’s how Skills come in with your coding agents. If this is something you are interested in learning, check awesome copilot for all different variations of skills and more.
Mentorship, teaching and beyond.
There are 3 things I can represent myself as. Genuinely curious, experimentalist and a teacher and I am always looking for experiences to teach and mentor. First, for the past couple of months, I have opened my calendar to KamiLimu mentees, to book my calendar and chat with me about anything on their mind. It is really interesting hearing about all the experiences and helping them navigate through uncertainties.
Two, I am back as a GMI mentor, this is a 1:1 mentorship program for 10 weeks in partnership with Microsoft ADC. It is interesting walking with the same person over weeks, to craft their career journey.
Three, and lastly, coming back from IWD and brainstorming on how we can make a difference, I stumbled upon a way to contribute and mentor Alliance Girls students. In adding to what AI can do, I was able to create stunning slides and presentation decks. Next, we want to actually have the girls code hands on and build projects.
In the spirit of updates, this project has taken a ton of time from me building an end-to-end AI course.
In-betweens
I am back to hiking, with my mini polaroid camera. So, there’s that.
Other parts of my in-betweens:
what i am reading: I stumbled upon Brianna Weist, and I am obsessed.
what i am listening to: Financially Incorrect is back on my radar. My most memorable one is the Nabo Capital story. I had no idea you can just ‘randomly’ invest in other countries.
what i am watching: Big Bang Theory. and Brand New Day, when I remember to buy my ticket early!
Thank you dear reader,
Bethany Jep
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P.S. do the one thing that’s been at the back of your mind, you’ll thank me later.