7shifts presents "Adopting AI Powered Developer Tools" at Microsoft Co-Pilot

7shifts is presenting two talks about GitHub Copilot at Microsoft Canada's HQ.

This is a joint meet-up, with Microsoft Reactor at CIBC Square in downtown Toronto. This is the building where the new GO Transit bus terminal is located, with direct PATH connection to Union Station.

Thank you to Alixia at Microsoft, and to 7shifts, for all their help making this joint meet-up happen.

The meet-up is on the 43rd floor, one of two floors that are made for conferences/shows/meet-ups. The facilities are terrific.

Microsoft is sponsoring pizza and beverages.

Please note: bottled water will not be available, so please BYOW.

Please see the special notes below, as things are a bit different than how we usually do our meet-ups.

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Talk #1: Adopting AI Powered Developer Tools

The hype around around AI developer tools is immense. It seems like new ones are popping up daily but how do you know which to use? and how can you quantify the impact of these tools on your development team? We had all of these questions and more when looking at adopting GitHub Copilot. We'll walk through how you can design experiments to cut through the hype and unearth the real impact new development tools can have on your team. We'll talk about how to run data driven experiments with your dev teams that ensure you are making impactful and cost effective choices. Finally we'll delve into the results of our experiments with AI assisted coding and what you should consider when adopting these tools.

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Talk #2: Building an AI Powered Engineering Blog

Technical writing is hard! 7shifts has always had a strong culture of internal knowledge sharing. When we attempted to start sharing some of that knowledge externally through our Engineering blog it was unexpectedly difficult. Over the last months we've been experimenting with AI to help us solve this problem. This talk will discuss how leveraging ChatGPT has made it easier for developers at 7shifts to transition into technical writing. We'll explore the journey from internal dev talks to polished blogs ready for our public R&D platform. You'll learn how to leverage AI tools to help your team's ideas reach a wider audience.

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5:00pm to 5:30pm: Welcome!
5:30pm to 5:45pm: Introductory remarks
5:45pm to 6:30pm: First presentation
6:30pm to 6:40pm: ten minute break
6:40pm to 7:25pm: Second presentation
7:25pm to 7:30pm: Closing remarks
7:30pm to 8:00pm: The "Hallway Track"

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Registration is through the Microsoft Reactor website, only:
https://developer.microsoft.com/reactor/events/20859

Microsoft will NOT recognize RSVP's done on this meetup.com event page.

Registration is ESSENTIAL. You need to register at the Microsoft website to be allowed on the elevator.

Registration will CLOSE on Tuesday January 23rd, 2023 at 4:00pm. DO NOT WAIT THAT LONG

Microsoft has told me that last minute "show-ups" WILL NOT be accommodated.

You need a Microsoft QR code for access to the elevators. Microsoft sends their list to CIBC, who will bulk generate the QR codes (probably) Tuesday evening.

Your QR code is both date and time activated. Your QR code will enable at 5:00pm.

When you enter CIBC Square:

• go to the main lobby where the elevators are
• go to the "41-49" bank of elevators
• scan your QR code at the turnstile entrance to those elevators
• your QR code will activate an elevator
• go to said activated elevator
• that elevator will take you to the 43rd floor. There are no buttons to individual floors in the elevator

Please register at:
https://developer.microsoft.com/reactor/events/20859

Looking forward to seeing you!
-Bob Bloom
Lead Organizer