Microsoft Imaginer Program

Hello!

Today I am going to talk about a program I have recently completed successfully. The program is named as "Imaginer" and it is organized by Microsoft Turkey. I am one of the people chosen from several applications throughout the country. There was a nice ceremony for the completion of the program on 17 June 2023. (I write the year too because that page will have a place here for years.)

Let me briefly talk about what we did during the program. Every week we have two different meetings, one is usually named as LT talks or experience sharing. In these meetings, we have guest speakers from the industry, specially from Microsoft or its partners, e.g., Koç group. They were especially people who are very experienced in the area and they usually are in management positions rather than technical positions. They share their experiences with us. These meetings were much more personal talks rather than formal meetings, as we, including the speakers, want. As a result of this, there were not even recordings just to make everybody feel relaxed. I learned a lot from these meetings, and they helped me create a path for my career.

The other meeting we have per week is related to an ongoing technology, specially from the viewpoint of Microsoft and its application in this area. We have a guest speaker, or sometimes speakers who are very technical in the area. Our speakers are again usually from Microsoft or its partners. We learned about the basics of technology, talked about its advantages and disadvantages, and also its possible future. This one also helps a lot when it comes to creating a path. These meetings were recorded and a little bit more formal.

For both of the speaker types, they were always very open to communicate even after the meetings. They always shared their preferred communication way (E-mail, phone number, etc.) Clearly speaking, this is so nice for those who have not started their professional career.

Other than these usual meetings, every student has a mentor, who is usually a technical person working at Microsoft. There isn't much to say about the program because it varies from person to person, but what I can definitely say is that students and mentors hold weekly meetings and have extensive discussions.

My mentor was Sefa Duman, who is Dynamics 365 Technology Specialist at Microsoft. After 7 months, we have become close to each other. He always helped me with the questions I had in my mind. He was always very open to sharing his own experiences with me to take benefit from them. I believe we will continue to stay in touch with him in the future too.

Me and my mentor Sefa Duman

Lastly, after starting the program, we were assigned random groups to create projects for the 17 sustainability goals of the United Nations. I will avoid giving technical aspects, but let me give just an overview of what we did.

My teammates in the program

We created a mobile application that detects the disease of the plant. Our mobile application is compatible with every mobile platform. We created 33 different Machine Learning models using Microsoft’s Custom Vision service, and also applied one versus all method.

The photos you see until this point belong to our ceremony. In our ceremony, we gave oral presentations about our project. Let me also talk about that very briefly, after high school I never experienced giving an in person presentation due to corona virus pandemic and then the earthquake. I know I will give many in person presentations in my upcoming two terms, but the first presentation was in this ceremony. As a person really loves giving presentation (talking about what we did) it was really a nice (and ofc hard) experience for me to talk in front of the people.

Me, in presentation, talking about Machine Learning

All in all, the Imaginer program was a great experience for me. I learned a lot, gained valuable insights into the industry, and had the opportunity to work on a meaningful project. I am grateful for the opportunity and look forward to applying the knowledge and skills I gained during the program in my future endeavors.

Thank you for reading!

All imaginers, creators/managers of the program and mentors