March 2024

Quick question: Did your curiosity bring you here today? 

Did you drop by to feed your appetite for discovery – or to enrich your tech savvy? Or maybe to upgrade your upskilling? (Clearly, we’re pretty curious too.)  

Whatever the reason, if you remain passionate about growing your knowledge game, this edition is for you. This month, we explore how people are using tech to revive or energize their lifelong learning. 

We’ll show you how cocoa producers in rural Colombia mastered new farming techniques by linking to the digital world. And we’ll detail how business professionals around the globe are using AI to find fresh ways to do their jobs more efficiently.  

Hey, maybe an old dog can learn new tricks. In fact, we asked Designer in Copilot to create an image of what that might look like. Now it's your turn: Submit pics of your pets performing their favorite tricks!

Even the best can get better. These days, scores of talented folks are tapping tech to fuel their wisdom or just to stay in the know – from people working in the urban jungle to those making a living in the dense forest. 

Case in point: Colombia’s cocoa farmers.  

Already ranked among the planet’s top cocoa producers, many growers in Colombia increased their harvests and their profits after internet connectivity reached their mountainous villages. They quickly mastered ways to manage pests and control plant diseases. They picked up new pruning methods. And they finally gained visibility on live cocoa prices to gauge the best times to sell their crops.  

Colombia’s digital evolution began in 2021 when Microsoft and partner ANDITEL installed 26 points of connectivity in rural regions of the country as part of the Airband Initiative. The upgrade included satellite technology and infrastructure like electrical lines, towers and antennas.  

Meanwhile, more insights are flowing from AI’s early adopters, including companies in health care, agriculture and financial services.  

In recent months, some organizations in those industries have been learning – and sharing – the right ways to AI, like how to roll out the technology to their teams, how to cultivate AI-based work habits and how to prioritize AI training.  

At Accenture, for example, Chair and CEO Julie Sweet has made it her mission to offer Microsoft Copilot training to 250,000 workers – more than a third of its workforce – to unlock personal productivity across the professional services company.  

A more personal kind of lesson helped carry Åsa Bredin to the top of Mojang Studios, the creator of Minecraft.  

Early in her career, the engineer was often the only woman in work meetings. She didn’t speak up. Then she figured out a way to find her voice. “It took … learning to get to that point where I felt comfortable with that,” Bredin says. “It can be uncomfortable, but you learn over time and just go for it.”  

In October, Bredin was named head of Mojang Studios.  

Of course, the bedrock of lifelong learning is childhood education. And new AI tools are helping K-12 and college teachers spend more time on student instruction and less on administrative tasks, like crafting assignments and creating quizzes – duties that traditionally require hours of work. With AI, teachers complete those chores in minutes.  

In Seattle, high-school biology teacher Clare Prowse is planning to have Copilot help her students create podcasts about ecological systems. “It’s my job to prepare them for life,” Prowse says. “And (AI) is going to be part of their lives.” 

And across more than 1,110 Mathnasium Learning Centers, kids around the world are devouring “pizza math,” a visual learning style that enables students to crack equations without the stress of rote memorization or repetitive exercises.  

Several backend Microsoft tools help streamline the business functions at Mathnasium franchises. That allows instructors to focus on guiding students to get mentally comfy with calculations. It’s a unique way of learning they can lean on into their adult years, says co-founder Larry Martinek.  

“An idea must exist in the mind before it exists on paper,” Martinek says. “You don’t teach kids how to do math. You teach kids how to think math.” 

Permission to be off your game

For years, Xbox leader Katy Jo Wright has looked far and listened hard to make gaming more inclusive. She’s talked to gamers with limited mobility, engineers with low vision and people who are neurodivergent. 

But until recently, Wright’s research didn’t include one important item: her own disability. For starters, she didn’t see herself as someone with a disability, though she’s long lived with debilitating pain, fatigue, memory issues and organ damage – all caused by Lyme disease.  

Now, Wright is helping people with chronic illnesses and disabilities feel more connected. She shared her story this month at Microsoft’s Ability Summit, an annual public event highlighting disability inclusion and accessible technologies. 

“Being open and honoring my truth helps me be in full integrity,” Wright says. “It gives people permission to not have to be 100% at the top of their game every day and to bring that human element that we’re all dealing with stuff.” 

A new Leap on life

Melissa Curry tears up when talking about the year she couldn’t afford to buy her son holiday gifts.  

That was before she applied to join the Microsoft Leap program, an immersive, 16-week experience for people with a base foundation of tech training. It helps bring nontraditional hires into the industry.   

For Curry, Microsoft Leap became the catalyst for true life change, including extra confidence and a job as a Microsoft technical program manager. Where giving her son Christmas toys was once a stretch, Curry now can afford to take off work during the month of December.  

“I’m definitely someone who gets happiness and joy from other people’s happiness,” she says. “And so that’s what I enjoy most about my work now.”  

AI could aid in the cancer fight  

With AI roaring out of the research lab and into real life, people are applying the technology to curb deadly diseases.  

For example, researchers have been collaborating to develop the world’s largest image-based AI model to help transform cancer diagnoses and patient care. The model is based on more than one billion images from half a million pathology slides across multiple cancer types. It will help capture the subtle complexities of cancer and serve as a cornerstone of next-gen clinical applications.  

AI’s ability to accelerate scientific discoveries has been deemed one of three big AI trends to watch in 2024.  

And that completes our lesson for today. Pencils down. Class dismissed. See you next month! 

We hope “The Monthly Tech-In” quenches your digital thirst. Between issues, keep current with the latest Microsoft innovations by following us on LinkedIn or by visiting us at Microsoft Source.  

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