I know you’ve heard of gamification, but have you ever heard of festification? That’s what Microsoft will be doing in April and May, with the Microsoft AI Skills Fest. It’s a little odd, but it also looks like it might be a heck of a lot of fun.
Free AI training for everyone
Microsoft’s AI Skills Fest offers courses that are open for all skill levels. You can learn early stages of the lessons if you’re new to AI, or work on deeper topics if you’re more familiar with AI concepts. Although there are tiers of learning, it’s packaged as a single experience. You can work through any or all of the lessons as part of one unified course.
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Lessons are available in Albanian, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Global, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
Sadly, conversational Klingon is not on offer.
But there’s a lot more, including hackathons, self-paced learning, challenges, community forums and meetups, and even (is this really a surprise?) an opportunity for Microsoft’s partners to pitch their AI-related training and related wares.
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For those getting started with AI, there are lessons like Using AI for everyday tasks. This lesson will help you “Understand generative AI and identify ways to use AI at home and at work. Write effective prompts and find helpful resources.”
As an example of the more advanced topics, you can take a course in Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft’s data analytics platform. The challenge helps you prepare for the DP-700 certification. During Skills Fest, the course is free, but if you do want to become certified, that’s something you’ll need to pay for outside the Skills Fest environment, and it’s roughly $165.
Prizes and discounts
If you don’t want to pay for certifications, you may be in luck. If you enter the Microsoft AI Skills Fest Challenge Sweepstakes (another name I couldn’t make up), you may be able to win one of 50,000 free certification vouchers awarded during weekly drawings.
GitHub is offering a 50% discount code for GitHub’s newest certification exam, GitHub Copilot. Once you finish the GitHub Learn module, you’ll be given a discount code, which will be valid until May 28, 2025. To make sure you don’t dilly or dally, you must complete the exam by June 30, 2025.
Register now
I’m going to do it. I registered at the Microsoft AI Skills Fest registration page. It’s free training on a hot topic from a well-respected company, so it’s definitely worth checking out.
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Are you planning on registering for the AI Skills Fest? Are there some AI skills you want to improve? Let us know in the comments below.
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