Tag: Microsoft Garage

The Microsoft Garage celebrates a new location at Microsoft’s Atlantic Yards campus to drive experimentation, innovation, and inspiration at Microsoft and in the vibrant city of Atlanta.

Atlanta’s skilled workforce is driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, providing an ideal landscape for international and local enterprises to establish a presence and open business. Atlanta has the third largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States. Add to the mix an energetic academic community of world-renowned Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), with gifted young professionals eager to make an impact, the region continues to draw companies courting top-notch talent.

The Garage Atlanta enables collaboration, creativity, and experimentation. Through engagement with local communities, The Garage Atlanta will create connections and inspire innovation for the Atlanta ecosystem to amplify their voice and their expression, especially historically underserved and vulnerable communities.

Microsoft has partnered closely with the city every step of the way to involve the city council and local organizations in planning the campus. The Garage is purpose-built to promote Microsoft’s mission to empower people to achieve more, including a community gathering space for workshops, talks, and meetups, and a maker space with the latest fabrication and prototyping equipment.

The Garage Azure Showcase provides a 24/7 snapshot of real-time azure data with a video wall that enables a comprehensive view of Azure, from internal processes to the customer experience: it’s designed as a space where engineering teams, large and small, can come together to utilize the data to increase efficiency, anticipate issues, and deliver on customer needs.

The Garage will also provide programming for the site’s One Mic recording and editing studio. Located next to The Garage, the studio is an experience to drive collaboration, creativity, and experimentation. Through video and music creation and editing, employees can express their authentic voice and creativity, teams can collaborate and experiment with their communication, and the Atlanta community can amplify and elevate their voice.

The Garage Atlanta officially opened its doors in May during a Microsoft Atlanta (ATL) launch event hosted in The Garage space, kicked off with a lively performance by the percussion section band from Clark Atlanta University (CAU). Hosted by Vince “The Voice” Bailey, with Microsoft Atlanta site leadership discussion panel featuring Terrell Cox, Billy Anders, Gayle Sheppard, and Michael Ford, and words from Keisha Ebbensen, Jeffrey Brown, and Reginald Shareef who spoke about the ATL employee experience and culture. A broad array of business groups across Microsoft came together for the grand opening of The Garage Atlanta including Engineering, Legal, HR, and Finance groups, illustrating an appetite to innovate, to foster a hack culture and a growth mindset across One Microsoft.

Clark Atlanta University percussion section band performance kicking off the ATL launch celebration

“The Garage Atlanta will be moving full STEAM ahead by partnering with Microsoft Philanthropies and our community engagement groups to support local Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics efforts.” LeAndra Jordan, Garage Atlanta Site Lead and Sr. Program Manager, is fully engaged and has already been connecting Microsoft to the local ecosystem. “We will continue to stoke creativity through different mediums of art including music and explore the intersectionality of aviation and hacking. We will offer opportunities for employee-led workshops to engage with each other but also the community.”

Located in Midtown Atlanta, The Garage is a tantalizing draw for new talent in tech and for Microsoft customers to experience what Microsoft’s culture is all about, how diversity in thought and curiosity to learn and collaborate can help create better products, more delightful experiences, and great innovations. Employees take principles practiced in The Garage back to their day jobs and while engaging customers – forming diverse teams and forging new relationships for better outcomes, valuing failure as essential to learning, putting the growth mindset into action with a bias for action, and understanding that good ideas can come from anywhere. Garage programs foster employee collaboration across the breadth of the company, breaking down silos and including varied perspectives.

The Garage Atlanta joins over a dozen Garages worldwide located in New England, New York, Bay Area, Vancouver, Kenya, Bengaluru, Dublin, Herzliya, Beijing and more.

Garage Programs include:
The Microsoft Global Hackathon, a company-wide, multi-day, global event produced by The Garage that brings employees and interns from all over the world together to create, innovate, and hack on ideas that inspire them.

New Employee Hacks, opportunities for new employees to be immersed in the Microsoft hack culture and learn The Garage approach to innovation.

Hack Advisors, a community for employees to put company cultural priorities into action by helping each other hack, gain feedback on products, and make connections across the company.

The Garage University Engagement creates career opportunities for underrepresented and underserved students.

Talks, Workshops, and Maker Kits are offerings for employees to exercise their curiosity and learn about topics and trends.

The Garage Growth Framework, a set of foundational methods to take your ideas from concept to sponsorship in the innovation lifecycle.

The Garage Experimental Outlet, where innovators at the company can put their ideas in the hands of real customers to get valuable feedback.

Wall display of Microsoft Global Hackathon visual elements and photos over the years

More about Microsoft Atlanta:

Microsoft announces next step in Atlanta campus development – Stories

Early community involvement has ‘meant a lot’ in Atlanta as Microsoft plans to expand its presence – Stories

Governor Kemp Announces Microsoft Corp. to Expand Presence in Atlanta with 1,500 New Jobs, New Facility | Governor Brian P. Kemp Office of the Governor (georgia.gov)

Microsoft, NASA, and students from two HBCUs in the Reston/DC area have completed the maiden mission of a new Microsoft/NASA partnership, STEM Educational Project: AI looking for new Earths.

Using methodology developed by The Microsoft Garage over years of running hackathons, in just one month – and while completing their final exams – the student hackers learned and deployed several new technologies, and quite literally reached the stars by showing they could deploy code to the International Space Station.

According to Piali Ghose, Director of The Garage Reston/DC and host of the event, “This hackathon amplifies the cultural priorities closest to our hearts here at Microsoft and at The Garage because it allows us to continue fulfilling our stated commitments to making a difference, seeking diversity and being inclusive in our work, bringing multiple teams together as ‘One Microsoft’ while collaborating with federal and academic partners, and doing all of this with a growth mindset.”

Planning the mission

The partnership emerged from a shared goal of fostering the future STEM workforce by exposing university students to science, tools, and expertise “at the intersection of Space + Cloud.” By structuring the project as a month-long hackathon, participating students learned how real data scientists work as a team to ideate, develop, and validate their work with a proof of concept.

“Microsoft is in Reston to increase our ability to support government and commercial customers in the region,” Dr. Steve Scallen, Director of University Engagement at The Garage, explained. “The Garage Reston/DC programming creates opportunities for Reston employees to leverage their creativity and encourage collaboration with government customers, local communities, the broader DC tech industry, civic organizations, and education groups and institutions [like HBCUs].”

Microsoft provided “mission control” in the form of volunteer mentors from both the Azure Space and Data and AI teams, and students were also given access to experts at NASA, including Dr. Aprille Ericsson, Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, and Dr. Jon Jenkins. The whole mission was coordinated by The Garage Reston/DC, one of more than a dozen Garage locations at Microsoft campuses around the world, where Ghose worked with Azure Space’s Steve Kitay and Juan Carlos Lopez (formerly a NASA employee himself) to select students and design the mission.

Hackers and mentors from the NASA/Azure Space hackathon meet at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. From left: Sr. Azure Specialist Jamal Wade; crew members Demario Asquitt and Mubarek Abdela; The Garage Director Piali Ghose; crew members Getaante Yilma, Anu Upadhyaya, and Hridweek Karki; Azure Space Sr. Director Stephen Kitay, Sr. Software Engineer Kevin Mack, Sr. Programming Manager Juan Carlos Lopez; UMBC’s Asst. Research Scientist Rebekah Hounsell

Kitay, Senior Director of Azure Space, praised the mission in a recent LinkedIn post and said using Microsoft technologies to do work in space is a natural extension of the company’s mission statement. “Microsoft’s mission is to ‘empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more,’ and [the Azure Space team] has expanded that to empowering every person and organization on and off the planet to achieve more. That’s the purpose of Azure Space: being able to connect to the next generation and helping them be part of the excitement and the industry that we get to be part of, which is bringing space and cloud computing and new technologies together in innovative ways and sharing that with people – particularly people that might not otherwise have the opportunity.”

For Lopez, a Senior Software Engineer, it was also about paying it forward. As the first generation of his family to go to college, he said opportunities like this made a big difference in his own career trajectory. “I’m with Microsoft Azure Space but previously I worked at NASA for a number of years because of a student program similar to this one. So, to me it was about taking my new world at Microsoft and my old community at NASA and bringing them together to create opportunities for students in the same way that I was given those opportunities.”

Packing for the mission and determining launch window

Since 2018, NASA has been operating the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), charged with looking for earth-sized planets (exoplanets) orbiting bright stars outside the solar system. The Azure Space team realized that with access to some NASA data and SMEs, they had everything they needed to join the hunt for potential exoplanets, and to bring a few talented students along. Lopez joked that if they do find a planet, “Maybe we’ll call it Planet Azure.”

Dr. Ericsson acted as a mentor to the crew on the NASA side. She said the hackathon was a way not only to learn new skills, but also to learn about the space science industry in general. “I love TESS because it’s a terrestrial planet finder – what cool stuff, right? I think the students got excited about this data and how it fits into the NASA themes. They really are learning a lot more than just a programming application – they’re learning about the larger goals of our organizations.”

TESS observes from an elliptical high earth orbit to produce unobstructed, precise, and continuous measurements of the brightness of a star called lightcurves. About NASA’s TESS Mission: The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is looking for earth-sized planets (exoplanets) orbiting bright stars outside the solar system. The mission will survey 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun to search for these transiting exoplanets. TESS was launched in April 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Mission control was comprised of Data and AI mentor Taylor Corbett, and Azure Space mentors David Weinstein, Steve Kitay, Kevin Mack, Brad Armstrong, and Tatyana Pearson. This team provided day-to-day and task-by-task guidance by way of regular checkpoints on Microsoft Teams, recorded for any crew members (students) who may have had a conflict with their studies. They also made themselves available after hours when necessary to accommodate the hackers’ school schedules.

Weinstein, the Azure Space team’s Principal Software Engineering Manager, said the space industry is on the verge of massive growth that will require a whole new cohort of computer scientists and other professionals to fill its ranks, both on Earth and in space. That wasn’t the case when he was a student. “In my generation, space was always on my mind, but it was not really a viable career for many people. But with this generation, with the space revolution that’s going on right now, there really is a solid opportunity for a much larger boom and many more career opportunities directly related to the space industry. That’s not on a lot of college students’ radar yet.”

Mack, a Senior Software Engineer with Azure Space, said TESS was a perfect choice for the hackathon format. “We wanted something interesting and compelling for the situation and for the space station, while also looking at something that was very achievable for [the students] in the timespan. The whole goal of this was to empower the students to succeed and empower them to literally reach the stars, so we wanted to make sure that it was something relevant to space, but also something that was attainable and doable.”

Armstrong, also a Senior Software Engineer, agreed, adding that all the data they were interested in is open source and accessible to the public from even a basic laptop. “This problem of trying to find exoplanets is something where the science is already fairly well established and the toolset around that is pretty performant, there’s simply a lot of data that has not been processed yet.”

Mission control pauses for a selfie. (Left photo) clockwise from left: Lopez, Kitay, Wade, Pearson, Mack, Azure Space Sr. Data Scientist Taylor Corbett; Ghose; Azure Space Principal Software Engineering Manager David Weinstein. (Right photo) from left: Piali Ghose, Juan Carlos Lopez, Steve Kitay, Dr. Rebekah Hounsell, Dr. Aprille Ericsson

Corbett, a Senior Data Scientist, said the hackathon was exactly the kind of thing he would have been interested in when he was a college student, or even before that. “I’ve been a space nerd my entire life. I still have photos of me at space camp in 6th grade and things like that, so the idea of being able to be part of something where conceivably we could find a new planet, like, who gets to do that?!” he said. “The amazing thing is that [the students] are working with data, models, and methods that weren’t around when I was born. And now here they are working with Microsoft, deploying code onto the cloud and onto the International Space Station.”

Lift-off!

Working with Dr. JiaJun Xu at University of the District of Columbia (UDC) and Dr. Michaela Amoo at Howard University, The Garage set out to identify students with a desire to “Participate in a student project combining Microsoft’s Azure Artificial Intelligence and data from NASA to explore the universe.” All that was required to apply was an intermediate knowledge of some basic coding languages (C#, Python, and Linux) and, of course, the spirit of an explorer.

Five students were selected as “crew members” for the hackathon: Anu Upadhyaya and Hridweek Karki from Howard; and Demario Asquitt, Mubarek Abdela, and Getaante Yilma from UDC.

While the students they selected all study at HBCUs in Washington, D.C., they all come originally from outside the U.S.

Upadhyaya, from Nepal, is a sophomore major in computer engineering at Howard who aspires to be a computer engineer. She was responsible for deploying the mock space station and equipping it with simulated constraints to mirror the environment in space. This included adding bandwidth and latency limits.

“Before this hackathon I had no experience with GitHub, and only a little experience with Python, so for me everything was really new – I learned so many things! We learned how to work with docker containers to create environments where our apps could work in any machine, and we learned about lightcurves and how to use the lightcurve data to create things like Target Pixel Files, periodograms, plots, BLS algorithms, and more. It showed me how things are actually done at NASA. I’m still exploring what I really want to do in my future, which is why I was so excited when Dr. Amoo came with this opportunity.”

By the time they got to their final presentation, however, they were all talking like space scientists. “Once we got the data downloaded and processed from Target Pixel Files to lightcurves, we use the BLS algorithm to transform and fold the lightcurves so they make sense to scientists, allowing them to conclude if a planet exists in a specific area,” said Asquitt, a computer science major in his last year at UDC, originally from Jamaica. “If there’s an inverted parabolic shape in the periodogram, the scientists can be pretty sure there’s a planet there. Basically, we wanted to mimic the environment in space, so we created a virtual machine in Azure that functions as our ground station for processing data sent from the mock space station to our ground station. As soon as we had access to both stations, I could start to run code.”

Yilma, from Ethiopia, is a senior in computer science at UDC and an aspiring software engineer. Part of his contribution was to write scripts to download lightcurve files and transform the data into various formats. He also defined the docker file for the container and deployed the container to the mock ground and space stations using scripts provided in the GitHub repo.

“It was great to learn the hard skills like lightcurve, but one of my biggest takeaways from this hackathon was learning how to take a big problem and break it into smaller chunks. It gave me exposure to what is possible with Azure and this kind of computing – it was a great experience,” Yilma said.

Crew members present their solution to mission control at the hackathon closing ceremony. From left: Demario Asquitt, Hridweek Karki, Anu Upadhyaya, Mubarek Abdela, Getaante Yilma

Measuring success and coming in for a landing

According to Mack, the crew completed their mission the moment they proved they could deploy their own code to a space station. “One of the goals of the [Azure] Space team is really to democratize space and make it easier for people to get there. And to me, there’s a big check box there of a student getting code to space – that is an example of how we’re making it easier and pushing the ‘art of the possible.’ Not only do we think it’s possible, but it didn’t take 16 PhDs to do it. It took five students that are about to graduate.”

Karki is originally from Nepal and studies computer engineering at Howard. Before this hackathon, he had been a member of his high school astronomy club but that’s as close as he had gotten to NASA, or to learning from working space scientists.

He summarized the experience and the crew’s learnings like this: “The hackathon really made a big impact on all of us, and definitely raised our interest about future opportunities in space. We now all have a knowledge base and a better understanding of the possibilities for us in astrophysics, TESS/Kepler data, and finding exoplanets or even life beyond Earth. It was really exciting to learn the science behind what we were doing, like why we were folding these lightcurves. The other big thing I learned from this was when to ask questions, and what to look for when you get stuck. This also gave me a greater appreciation of mentorship, so I want to thank [mission control] for being there for us.”

It wasn’t all smooth sailing – the crew had difficulty initially in setting up the virtual environments, connecting to the virtual machines, and in one case, finding that their downloaded target pixel files were corrupted.

Abdela, a senior computer science student at the University of DC also originally from Ethiopia, said it best: “We want to thank everyone that supported us through this journey. For providing us this opportunity in the first place, but also for making sure that we were supported every step of the way. And that also meant a lot of hours, even hours outside of working time. Kevin, Brad, and the whole team are just so amazing. They were able to meet us where we were, explaining a lot of complex things in a very simple way which is helpful for people that are just starting out. Being just a text away for any issues that we face – we really, really appreciated that.”

Lopez said he hopes the students will keep in touch, whether they are planning for a career at Microsoft, NASA, or elsewhere. “This is not a goodbye. We already have the Space Act agreement with NASA, so this is just the first of many hackathons that we’re going to run together. I would love for you all to come back next year as mentors for the students that will come after you so that you can continue your relationships and continue being connected.” All of the students were encouraged to connect and continue their discussions on LinkedIn, where Lopez also shared a post to mark the finale.

Ghose closed by inviting the students back to The Garage Reston/DC for its grand opening next month. You can see more of her thoughts about the hackathon on LinkedIn. She also thanked the many groups at Microsoft that coalesced to make the event a success behind the scenes, including Blacks at Microsoft (BAM), members of the Federal Accounts team, and Microsoft’s legal team.

Congratulations to the crew on a successful mission, and huge thanks to mission control and the countless mentors and support staff at both Microsoft and NASA that came together to make it possible for them to send code to the cosmos and reach the stars.

More about Microsoft and NASA partnerships:

Big news for enthusiasts of digital ink—Journal, a Garage project, is now Microsoft Journal.

Microsoft Journal, an app for Windows, offers a delightful freeform personal notetaking experience that lets you take notes and reason through ink.

Thank you for using Journal as a Garage project. Your input has shaped it into what Microsoft Journal is today.

What makes Journal special?

Gorgeous page-based canvas designed for pen
Feel how simple it is to capture your thoughts in ink using Windows tablets, 2-in-1s, and other touch-focused, pen capable devices.

Modeless editing
Edit and create fluidly without switching tools by using AI driven gestures like scratchout and instant lasso.

Semantic smart ink
Stay organized by doing things that come naturally, like underlining headings, creating lists, or marking important items with stars. Journal’s AI recognizes and uses those gestures in a powerful faceted search—ways to filter your content by the smart ink Journal detects—so you can easily find your content.

Meeting notes
Tie your notes directly to meetings with Journal’s Microsoft 365 calendar integration so it’s easy to keep track of your conversations and decisions.

On-device artificial intelligence

The AI in Journal recognizes editing and semantic gestures quickly and seamlessly on the device. No need to be online. This makes your Journal experiences super-fast and it’s great for your privacy, too.

“We are entering an age of computer-aided reasoning, where AI accelerates the tasks that people do, and makes us all more productive. Journal shows just how powerful an experience can be when software anticipates your intentions. This is just the beginning.”

–Stevie Bathiche, Technical Fellow and leader of Microsoft’s Applied Sciences

Windows 11 design

In concert with this exciting news, you get Microsoft Journal in the Windows 11 look and feel, with all new colors and materials. This new release rolls out between April 5th and April 8th. If you want it now, get it from the Microsoft Store.

What the Journal team learned in The Garage

Microsoft never knows the contents of your journals, but general usage data helps the team understand how Journal adds value and where to make improvements. Since Journal launched as a Microsoft Garage project last year, the Journal team learned—by looking at the data—how important it is to intentionally design interactions for digital ink experiences. They also learned that inking is much more than just writing content, it’s also about annotating content, like PDFs.

For example, the Journal team explored how you can select content without needing to switch into a selection mode, which could break your flow. Experimenting with different ways for people to select content, the team expected to identify a clear winner, but instead learned—while people have preferences—all the ways you can naturally interact with content using touch and pen are useful.

The Journal team also validated their hypothesis that annotation of documents is a key scenario for people who ink. After all, in a world of paper, people scrawl notes on everything. The data shows that over half the pages created in Journal are imported from PDF.

“Journal works for people who think in ink, because its design is focused on that tactile, intimate experience people have when they use a pen. In turn, usage data helps focus us on driving that experience forward.”

–Jacques Chamberland, Principal Program Manager of the Journal team

The future

Being a supported Microsoft app means having a plan. The Journal team listens to your feedback and has plans to address the most common requests and a backlog of new features.

“Being a supported Microsoft app means having a plan. The Journal team listens to your feedback and has plans to address the most common requests and a big backlog of new features.”

–Oz Solomon, Principal Engineering Manager of the Journal team

Try Microsoft Journal

Join us to celebrate by downloading Journal, for free, from the Microsoft Store. Journal works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11 devices.

Let the Journal team know what you think by sharing your feedback in the Windows Feedback Hub.

The Microsoft Garage celebrated the opening of new locations in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria, as part of the growth of the Microsoft Africa Development Center (ADC).

“These new Garage locations are the culmination of several years of planning with the ADC,” says Jeff Ramos, GM of the Microsoft Garage. “We are pleased to bring to life our commitment to support innovation at the individual and regional level across Microsoft – and now in ADC campuses. In The Garage, we believe that great ideas can come from anywhere, and we enable people to cultivate their ideas in an environment where they can collaborate, experiment, and learn new things.”

The Garage provides employees the space, tools, and programming for creative collaboration along with opportunities to engage customers and the local ecosystem in digital transformation. The Garage programs include the Garage Growth Framework with team coaching, new employee hackathon sessions, student innovation workshops, and the annual Microsoft Global Hackathon – the largest of its kind in the world.

“The Garage is meant to spread the values of openness and collaboration throughout the Microsoft ADC, where people come to The Garage to work with interdisciplinary teams on passion projects that sometimes make their way into Microsoft products – this should ultimately allow Microsoft ADC to become a more prominent shaper of Africa’s tech culture,” Lydiah Karanja of The Garage East Africa explained.

Linda Thackeray, Senior Director of The Garage EMEA, adds, “We are pleased to add Garage sites in Africa to join the network of our culture and innovation programs in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.”

At the ADC launches, President Uhuru Kenyatta was among other key guests welcomed by The Garage East Africa at the Nairobi facility at the Dunhill Towers. The Executive Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu, joined the opening festivities in Lagos at The Garage West Africa located at Kings Tower, Ikoyi.

President of Kenya Uhuru Kenyatta (center) visits The Garage East Africa in Nairobi, with Linda Thackeray, Senior Director of The Garage EMEA (left), and Lydiah Karanja, Program Manager of The Garage East Africa (right).

With these strategic investments in Africa, The Garage is ready to support Microsoft’s mission of empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

The Garage West Africa in Lagos welcoming Executive Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

Read more about the Microsoft ADC launch and The Garage:

Inside ‘The Microsoft Garage’ Lagos – TechEconomy.ng

How Microsoft plans to scale Africa’s home-grown talent – CNBC Africa

A creative space to bring new ideas to life, Microsoft opens The Garage in Africa – MCGH (microsoftcaregh.com)

Microsoft launches new office for ADC software engineers in Kenya – MCGH (microsoftcaregh.com)

Follow @MicrosoftADC on Twitter

Nearly two years ago, we released a Garage project created by a passionate engineer who channeled his classical architecture training and love for drawing into a 360 sketch app. Sketch 360 enables artists to create full, 360-degree, panoramic sketches with ease, using an innovative grid design. Originally released on Windows and designed around Surface Laptop, Surface Go, and the power of the Surface Pen, the app is now available on Android, leveraging the unique, two-screen form factor of the Surface Duo for on-the-go artists, architects, VR game designers–or anyone who wants to capture their imagination in 360 degrees.

“Throughout my career, my passion has been for building and using creative tools so my imagination comes alive with a dual-screen, pen/touch capable device that folds out from my pocket to the size of my typical journal page.”

–Michael Scherotter, Principal Program Manager and Sketch 360 creator

Bringing Sketch 360 to the Surface Duo

Sketch 360 creator and Principal Program Manager Michael Scherotter outlines his experience re-imagining the UWP app for the Duo in full detail, featured on the Surface Duo Dev Blog. Michael and a team of volunteer hackers brought Sketch 360 from a hack project to a releasable experiment and are extending an invitation to external collaborators by open sourcing the Android application.

“I was up for the challenge of moving my native C# UWP app to a C# Xamarin Forms. When the Microsoft Garage sponsored an internal hackathon to encourage employees to build or adapt apps for the Surface Duo, I jumped at the chance,” shares Michael, who is a multi-year hacking veteran. The largest company hacking event takes place at the Microsoft Hackathon each July, drawing thousands of employees and hack projects, but hacking culture thrives all year round. When Michael entered his prototype into a dedicated Surface Duo hackathon, his project was selected among three winners that would go on to share their prototypes with experts and leaders of the Surface business. 

In addition to demoing Sketch 360 adapted for Duo, Michael and the other teams were able to share their experience and feedback about adapting or creating experiences from scratch for Duo. “Xamarin forms made the process of creating a cross-platform mobile creative app straightforward, and with the additional tools in the Xamarin Essentials, I was able to make it as functional and performant as a native app.  For most of the development, using the Surface Duo Emulator enabled my volunteer team of hackers and me to build the app without having a physical device in-hand.”

A hacking culture enables ideas, diverse perspectives, and organic collaboration, to flow laterally and vertically through an organization to fuel innovation.

Developers can find a detailed outline of Michael’s experience, reimagining the app for Android, on the Surface Duo Dev Blog.

Mobile productivity, powered by two screens

The Microsoft Surface Duo offers a new way to get things done while on the go. Open two screens and discover a better way to get things done. View two apps at once or span one across both screens, drag and drop between screens, and say goodbye to constant app switching.

• Room to focus. Open and view different apps on each screen to easily reference and compare content. Say goodbye to constant app switching on your mobile device.
• Enhanced apps built for two screens. Dual-screen enhanced apps* respond to you and magically reorient to make best use of both screens.
• Create your favorite combos with App Groups. Unique to Surface Duo, pair and launch any two apps at the same time. It’s completely custom to you.
• Drag and drop to effortlessly move images, text, files, and more between screens so you can get things done quicker (only available on supported apps)

Learn more about the power of two screens on a Surface Duo.

Try it out or contribute to the open source project

Sketch 360 is now available to download for your Duo device on the Google Play Store. Share your feedback or contribute to the open source project on GitHub.

We’re excited to share a big announcement for Trove, a Microsoft Garage project! Now, people can get paid for contributing accepted photos to AI projects in the Trove marketplace with new PayPal integration. Anyone can try Trove via the new web app and a now open app for Android, expanding participation in the experiment beyond the select set of users at the time of the initial May 2020 launch. At this time, please note that photo contributions are only available in the United States. Trove is accepting AI projects from anywhere.

Start an AI project or get paid for your photos via Trove today. Learn more about Trove in the Microsoft Ignite 2020 session.

Payments now enabled in Trove

Trove is a marketplace app that allows people to contribute photos to AI projects that developers can then use to train machine learning models. They’ve tested early versions of the experience with thousands of users, inspired by the desire to create a place where people can get rewarded for their photos, the Trove team has enabled payments for accepted photo contributions.

Now, users can set up or connect a PayPal account, scroll through available projects and their associated photo offer prices, and submit new or existing photos using the newly released Camera Roll feature. When photos are accepted, users will be notified of payment and can find the reward in their PayPal balance.

Today, users might find AI projects looking for photos on books, magazines, and newspapers, hand-written notes, or numerical digital displays (such as a digital watch or clock). The reward per photo varies by the project, but users might expect to be paid roughly 50 or 60 cents per approved photos.

Feedback loops and quality inputs for research projects are also driving objectives of the marketplace, so the new feature also gives AI researchers and developers the opportunity to provide payment upon approval of photos, and optionally, to set per user photo contribution cap to ensure a variety of submissions.

Responsible AI starts with responsible data collection

Trove was created and imagined by an incubation team who was inspired to bridge their passion for AI advancement with their vision for people-first gig work that promotes transparency and choice. In Trove, they’ve built a marketplace that enables researchers to build machine learning models using responsible data collection. Read the full origin story and inspiration behind Trove in our May 2020 launch blog.

Photo contributors have reported being drawn to the opportunity to contribute to AI and the ideals of a transparent, empowering marketplace. Sebastian, a photo contributor in the earliest versions of Trove, shared, “These little projects are fun to do and it feels like I am doing something bigger than I could ever do on my own.”

“Again and again, we heard from our earliest users that they were excited to be contributing to the march of progress and science, to be part of something bigger than themselves,” shared Christian Lisenberger, one of the Trove project leads. “It is so rewarding to see that we’re able to provide an alternative, responsible way to both advance AI and give people more agency over data and gig work.”

To learn more about Microsoft’s approach to Responsible AI and learn more about Trove, watch Mitra Azizirad’s Microsoft Ignite 2020 talk, available live at 9:55 – 10:40 AM Pacific Time and later, on demand.

New features inspired by community feedback

In addition to being more broadly available, the team has added new key features to the user experience. When the team set out to create Trove, they were inspired to make a people-first solution. They’ve spent the past few months working with customers to understand how to improve their photo contribution or AI project experiences.

Notably, many users expressed excitement for uploading photos from their camera roll, in addition to taking new photos directly from the app. The team is hopeful this will make it easier to bulk upload existing photos and expand the photo variety and volume researchers can include in their computer vision projects.

What’s new

• Payments for accepted photos Receive monetary compensation for every approved photo that you submit.
• Camera roll upload Upload photos from camera roll or take a new picture via the app
• Community forum Submit feedback via answers.microsoft.com

For the full list of key features and trial details, see the Trove Garage Workbench page.

Try it out

Trove is now available as a web app experience, or for download via the Google Play Store for users in the United States. The team continues to be excited for feedback and encourages users to share their thoughts and ideas.

Art is one of the few languages which transcends barriers of country, culture, and time. Most people view art subjectively through a lens shaped by their experiences and environment. Finding commonalities among pieces from different eras and mediums calls for an open mind and a sharp eye. The Mosaic project is taking this intellectual and human approach and augmenting it with the help of artificial intelligence to find connections between works of art from diverse artists. Working with data from The Rijksmuseum – the Museum of the Netherlands and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), a group of MIT students implemented a new algorithm for visual search that finds similarities across cultures in the museums’ collections as part of their externship project at Microsoft Garage.

Based on a starting image of a Banyan, the algorithm finds similar works of art from different artists in the Rijksmuseum and The Met collections.

The MIT externship with Microsoft Garage takes a traditional semester-long internship experience and condenses it to a month of rapid development where students take an impactful project from concept to reality. Microsoft Garage at NERD was the home base for the externs during the month of January, where a culture of innovation is fostered, and growth mindset is put into action. Some of the externs have since returned to Microsoft as Garage Interns, as part of a virtual summer internship experience where students collaborate online through Microsoft Teams and other productivity tools.

The idea started with long-time Garage collaborator and Mosaic project sponsor Mark Hamilton, Research Engineer pursuing a PhD at MIT alongside his full-time job on the Cognitive Services Research Group at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center (NERD). Mark was inspired by a visit to an exhibit at the Rijksmuseum. This exhibit compared works from the studios of Rembrandt and Velazquez, two prolific artists that never met, yet told similar stories in their works. He began thinking of possible ways the same idea could be enhanced by AI, and developed an algorithm which searches for similar works of art based on a starting image and a feature of that image such as the medium, a color, or the culture (e.g. “French”). Last January, Mark began working with The Met’s Open Access collection with the previous cohort of MIT externs, and out of that effort grew Gen Studio, an interactive tool giving people the ability to generate new art from trained generative adversarial networks.

This year’s MIT students had a different goal with Mosaic.

Mosaic website exploring connections in art.

“This project leverages existing collections of art from both The Met and the Rijksmuseum to find connections between various cultures and time periods,” Mark explained. “With Mosaic we can shine a light into areas of the collections that may not be as well-known and discover really interesting things.” Curators and visitors can use Mosaic to explore art in new ways, such as charting trends that underlie works from different cultures and finding evidence of cultural exchanges and influences throughout history. One example Mark described was how the algorithm found similarities between a Ming Dynasty porcelain vase, a Dutch violin, and a banyan from the Netherlands. “The algorithm picked up on commonalities of form between the banyan and a string instrument, but also the color of the blue and white motif which originated in Ming Dynasty and spread through Europe. You can see evidence of cultural exchanges happening through the outputs of this algorithm.”

For a deeper dive into how this new way of conditional image retrieval can help improve GANs, Mark hosted a Microsoft Research Webinar on the topic.

Before the machine learning model could be implemented, however, there was the complex task of cleaning the data associated with each piece of art.

Meet the team behind Mosaic

Students Mindren Lu and Stephanie Fu study computer science at MIT and worked closely to comb through data from both museums. No small feat, the two data scientists organized descriptive metadata like keywords, authors, and tags associated with each artwork into consistent datasets that could be fed into the algorithm. “There was a lot of manual processing since much of the data is written in another language, sometimes there were misspellings or missing information,” said Stephanie. “It took a lot of time to boil all that down to a nice, formatted dataset that the back-end team could work with.”

Marina Rogers was part of the team building the back-end of Mosaic that interfaces with various Azure products and services. “We’d bring the cleaned datasets and collections in and create the machine learning models based on Mark’s research. Then, we’d deploy the models and different APIs for sharing that connect to the front-end website,” explained Marina, who is an electrical engineering and computer science student with a minor in design.

“Being able to share our work with others is definitely a highlight,” said Johnny Bui, also studying electrical engineering and computer science. He reflected on how getting technical pieces and services to “talk” to each other in novel ways behind the scenes was a challenge. Felix Tran and Maggie Wang completed the team working on the back-end systems that provided uninterrupted end-to-end data flow, described by Jean-Yves Ntamwemezi, Software Engineer on the Microsoft Garage at NERD, as “the glue that brings the pieces together.”

Jean-Yves joined the Garage team just before the externship began, coming from a long tenure as a software engineer on the Office Docs team. “It was a very interesting, fast-paced learning environment, jumping in to lead the externs in many ways.” In addition to general mentorship and support, Jean-Yves readied the Azure DevOps environment for the project, set up pull requests so the externs could have their code reviewed, and introduced them to the right tools and engineers with the expertise to help unblock progress. He also leads the Blacks at Microsoft employee resource group local chapter, building culture and leadership within the company.

MIT externs: Stephanie Fu, Mindren Lu, Ben Chen, Felix Tran, Darius Bopp, Maggie Wang, Marina Rogers, Johnny Bui

“The Garage is a perfect mix of working on exciting technologies and leading a team of engineers toward a solution,” said Jean-Yves. “Interns and new hires inform what the culture becomes, affecting what the work looks like, what teams look like, what the focus is in our working environment. Working in a technical space where empathy is a priority in your thought process – that’s a place where I want to grow.” For Jean-Yves, an important part of his day-to-day was making sure the students were building camaraderie throughout the process.

Darius Bopp and Ben Chen were responsible for the front-end website that is a culmination of all the work the team performed packed into a visually engaging web experience that finds connections among art in new ways. “They took this nebulous design of a website and made it into something that looks great and is easy to navigate,” said Mark. “The front-end team was so fast that we were able to spend a lot of time thinking about what was absolutely necessary on the site, making the website less complex and more intuitive.”

Visualizing machine learning

Though the data science team performed a lot of critical work with Mark’s original algorithm, they didn’t stop there. As a stretch goal, Mark introduced the SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) algorithm to Mindren and Stephanie, a game theoretic approach to explain the output of any machine learning model. The two were immediately intrigued, delving further into the research and how to apply it to their ML model for Mosaic. “SHAP is a tool that tries to explain why the ML model made the decisions that it did, why out of all of these paintings it chose this particular one as a match. ML models don’t think like humans, even though it seems like they do,” said Stephanie. What resulted is a fascinating visual representation of what the algorithm is looking at when it finds objects “similar”.  This can show what the model “sees”— like a window into the brain of machine learning — but it takes extensive memory and space to run. For that reason, and because their externship was ending, the team could only implement a few rationales to show on the website as an example.

Machine learning algorithm behind Mosaic identifying parts of pictured sculptures to query and find matches in other artworks.

Though the weekly development cycles went quickly, the externs had solid guidance from Mark throughout the entire process. Mark brings his deep appreciation for art to the work and enjoys applying his knowledge of AI to create new contexts in how art is explored and studied. “So many artists are trying to embody the metaphorical in the visual domain, and this algorithm just can’t help but see that and pick up on it when it finds these matching works from all over the world,” Mark explained. “Art is aesthetic and beautiful, but a lot of times artists are trying to say really deep things about the nature of perception, of feelings and emotions.” In most instances one could almost say the AI managed to extract the intent or idea of the paintings, not just the pixels, to find commonalities.

Art also resonated in Marina’s life as she grew up with a mother who studied fine art. Marina found the most important part of the experience was “the culture of improvement and personal growth. The overall environment was one of learning and encouragement.”

Johnny and his peers agreed the structure of the externship experience set them up for success. “Working on a project of this scale as well as interfacing with third party tools, and collaborating with other people, was a great learning experience. We had a running start on the project within the first couple of days,” he explained, referring to the mini-hackathon that kicked off their experience at the  Microsoft Garage where each person could try out what data science, back-end, and front-end development work on the project might look like.

“It was my first real work experience in a big company on a fast-paced project team. It helped inform what direction I want to take in my career,” said Mindren, who found the most exciting moments to be researching about the rationale tool and when he received those first matching artworks from their ML model. “You have a lot more fun than expected, and the culture was cool and super friendly.”

Explore more on the Mosaic website

Check out the Microsoft Research Webinar

Read about 2019 MIT externship project Gen Studio

Learn about the Microsoft Garage Internship Program

What do a forester, a developer, and a software architect have in common? A passion for problem-solving and, as it turns out, stopping illegal timber trade. Antonio de Marco, James Mundy, and Mauro Petrini came together from different corners of the world to participate in the 2019 Microsoft Hackathon. Their objective was protecting biodiversity through sustainable forestry by solving one piece of the complex puzzle: the real-time identification of imported or exported timber species, verified against an endangered species database using a mobile app. As we look forward to an all new virtual experience for Hackathon 2020 this summer, we are spotlighting this team’s achievements and the spirit of Windows Insiders at Hackathon.

Imagine a customs officer inspecting shipments of timber where, in some cases, the wood origin is not clearly noted on the accompanying documentation. TimberAI, the project which Antonio, James, and Mauro collaborated on would help the custom’s officer identify if the species is endangered or commercial with the snap of a photo using Microsoft Cognitive Services and Azure. The app can reduce instances of illegal timber being traded but also protect critical forests and habitats as a tool for officials to enforce more sustainable, legal logging.

TimberAI team at Hackathon 2019 – James Mundy, Mauro Petrini, Antonio de Marco. Photo Credit: Windows Insider Program

Windows Insiders bring fresh perspectives to Hackathon

The three team members shared something else in common—all are Windows Insiders. Spanning the globe with millions of participants, the Windows Insider Program is a free program that enlists the help of consumers to improve Windows. One of the largest fan programs at Microsoft, Insiders can choose when and which Windows 10 Insider Preview Builds they would like to install on their devices, and after trying it out, provide valuable feedback directly to Windows engineers.

Another benefit of becoming a Windows Insider is the opportunity to win exclusive experiences to Microsoft events like Microsoft Build or, in this case, the company’s global Hackathon produced by the Microsoft Garage.

After reviewing hundreds of submissions to the Windows Insiders Hack at Microsoft contest, ten Insiders were chosen to come to Redmond to participate in the 2019 Hackathon last July. “We try to align our offerings with what our Insiders tell us they value most, like talking to the teams that build the products they love and early access to the latest technology,” said Michelle Paison, a program manager who oversees the contests and giveaways for WIP. “It’s definitely a cool experience, getting to be on the inside of what’s traditionally an internal event and work on hackathon projects with Microsoft employees.”

Windows Insiders who participated in Hackathon 2019: Stefan Malter, Mark Lunney, Michelle Spaul, Josh Cardif, Clint-Roy Mukarakate, Dr. Robert de Graaft, James Mundy, Dan Flores, Mauro Petrini, Antonio de Marco. Photo Credit: Windows Insider Program

A large part of what makes a hackathon project successful is having teammates who are willing to solve problems in new ways. Insiders expressed an openness to collaborate with other talented individuals, and most contest entrants had an entrepreneurial spirit, taking initiative in their job or for a cause they were passionate about. Insiders brought a wide range of skills and represented global perspectives from countries like Kenya, Argentina, and Germany.

Meet the team and the TimberAI potential on a global scale

“It was nice to put my skills to good use to create a solution that might, in the future, make a discernable difference towards preserving trees — one of our best weapons against rising CO2 levels,” said James. “I was struck by the idea and the unique product we could build, and also how feasible it was that we could lean on Azure Cognitive Services and Antonio’s image library to build a prototype in just a few days.” The team created a working prototype using Xamarin to build the mobile app front-end with Microsoft Cognitive Services to recognize and classify wood image samples.

James is a Freelance Software Developer and Product Builder based in London. Teammate Mauro works as a Software Architect for a financial company in Argentina. In addition to his day job, Mauro volunteers with a nonprofit that makes prosthetic hands.

Leading the project is Antonio, who brought the concept behind TimberAI to the Hackathon and project manages the app development. Antonio is a forestry engineer currently collaborating with the Wood and Science Technology Laboratory from the Forest and Natural Environment Engineering School at the Technical University of Madrid. The idea for an app started in the Wood and Science Technology Lab with Antonio and Professor Luis García Esteban, who is also the TimberAI project Resource Manager.

“Illegal timber trading is one of the biggest factors leading to the loss of global biodiversity. With more sustainable legal logging, we would have greater biodiversity and greater forest cover, which helps remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the impact of climate change.” – Antonio de Marco

Antonio explained, “This project acts as a straight knowledge-tunnel between some of the most renowned wood technology investigators and the daily users at customs, who need powerful but simple tools to work with. Illegal timber trading is one of the biggest factors leading to the loss of global biodiversity. With more sustainable legal logging, we would have greater biodiversity and greater forest cover, which helps remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the impact of climate change.”

According to Antonio, the world cuts around 4,000 million cubic meters of wood annually, which is roughly the equivalent of cutting about 30 soccer fields per minute for a year. It’s estimated that about 10-30 percent of all the wood is illegally logged. “We are losing species at an extinction rate not known in the geological record of the Earth,” said Antonio. Like others, he is driven to do what he can with the tools and resources he has to create a more sustainable future with the biodiversity that’s crucial in a thriving, healthy ecosystem.

Because of its geographical location, Spain is a hub of international commerce with large amounts of items, including timber, being funneled through its ports and redistributed to Europe, Asia, and even America. “This is why Spain must play a very important role in order to put a first barrier to the illegal traffic of those species of wood,” said Antonio. Outside of his work with the university, Antonio also runs a startup that improves air quality of indoor spaces. His expertise in forestry helped the team of three achieve a working prototype.

Screenshots of the TimberAI MVP. Photo Credit: Antonio de Marco

Winning the Sustainability Challenge

“Besides getting to work with two fantastic people, James and Mauro, the biggest takeaway for me was being able to link my forestry engineer profession to my techie passion. There is nothing better than enjoying yourself while working on something that could possibly have a positive impact on a lot of people,” said Antonio.

Each year for Hackathon, there are challenges issued by executive leadership focused on areas important to their business which teams can choose to hack on. After the Hackathon finished, Antonio, James, and Mauro received news their project was selected as the top project in the Sustainability Challenge. The company has long been a proponent of sustainability, but the 2019 Hackathon marked the first year a Sustainability Challenge was issued by Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, with a goal to fuel innovation and accelerate environmental sustainability across the company and around the globe.

“What they were able to accomplish is truly remarkable and a testament to their intelligence and innovation,” said Michelle. “There are just so many good ideas that exist within the Windows Insider community, with the improvements they suggest for Windows 10 daily, and that extends into different issues outside as well.”

AI for Earth and the path forward

While unrelated to the Hackathon, Antonio and Luis were also awarded an AI for Earth grant for the work they’ve continued to do at the Technical University of Madrid and working with the government of Spain.

“Customs agents have to make quick decisions about thousands of shipments every day, and it’s not feasible for them to be experts in every material they have to inspect. AI systems like TimberAI offload that niche, ever-changing expertise to technology,” said Dan Morris, Program Director for the Microsoft AI for Earth Program.

Antonio was also invited to speak at an AI for Earth Innovation workshop in Spain as part of a team of mentors. “He shared his overall experience with Microsoft in such a positive light and served as inspiration to the rest of our participants,” said Alma Cardenas, AI for Earth Senior Program Manager who attended the workshop.

In the time since Hackathon, Antonio and the team at the Wood and Science Technology Lab have been standardizing the process of wood species identification using macroscopic photographs from smartphones, creating a more robust library of species TimberAI can identify based on the CITES species guide.

“We were able to showcase our working prototype at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, so it’s been getting a lot of positive reception from other national entities,” said Antonio. “It was a pleasure getting involved in the Microsoft Hackathon. I have been part of other local hackathons, but this one was something special. Being on the same team as James and Mauro to get the first MVP of TimberAI working was possible thanks to this experience.”

Windows Insiders getting ready to hack at Hackathon 2019. Photo Credit: Windows Insider Program

A prime example of how hackathons can take ideas to the next level, from concept to prototype, embracing new challenges and different perspectives to form solutions, collaborating with the same goal in mind – sparked by a passion for positive impact on our shared planet.

In October, Microsoft Advertising began inviting small businesses to try Digital Marketing Center, a Microsoft Garage project. After working with many small businesses over the last few months, the team has received very encouraging feedback, has added additional features to serve user needs, and is now ready to extend the invitation to additional businesses. Small business owners can request an invitation to try Digital Marketing Center in this short, online questionnaire.

Digital Marketing Center provides small and medium businesses with a central platform to grow their business. The tool allows businesses to efficiently manage their online presence and marketing activities across paid search advertising, paid social advertising, and organic social media management. The one-stop-shop tool allows business owners to manage their digital marketing across not just Microsoft Advertising, but also leading advertising and social media platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, and now, Twitter as well.

After working with small businesses from the first batch of the pilot, the Digital Marketing Center team added a number of new features to the solution.

In addition to adding support for Twitter, the team has also enabled private messaging on Facebook, a new home page experience aggregating social and ad metrics, and improved tools for ads. For example, users can now utilize a field for an extra headline, allowing advertisers to include more information in ads, leverage improved location targeting, and appeal most disapproved ads from Bing and Facebook.

The team is excited for additional feedback and would love to invite more small and medium business owners to attend. Request an invitation to join the experiment here. The tool is currently free to use—users can manage their social presence at no cost (pay only for search and social ads).

New Features

• Social management inbox A one-stop shop for liking, replying, and direct messaging on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Image ad suggestion With image ad suggestions, you can effortlessly create appealing image ads by just picking from suggested ads
• Improved tools for ads Users can now utilize a field for an extra headline, allowing advertisers to include more information in ads and leverage improved location targeting
• Appeal disapproved ads Appeal most disapproved ads from Bing and Facebook
• A new home page experience The new home page aggregates social and ad metrics in one view
• Twitter support Now enabled

See the full list of key features on the Garage Workbench page.

Request to join the experiment

Digital Marketing Center is currently available for trial and feedback with select small businesses. If you’re interested in participating in this experiment you can fill out this short, online questionnaire. To get early access to insights from the Digital Marketing Center experiment, request to receive insights and the team will be in touch.

In celebration of The Garage Wall of Fame reaching 20 Wall of Fame inductees, we are recapping highlights about each honoree and their achievements. Honorees have roots either as an experimental project released through the Microsoft Garage, or as projects from The Garage produced global Hackathon, the largest private hackathon in the world.

Read on to learn more about these incredible projects, and follow us on Twitter @MSFTGarage to catch new Wall of Fame announcements.

3D Models in Office is a feature that enables users to easily insert 3D models into PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. The project brought 3D content into Office products with ability to resize, animate, rotate, and morph objects, and was featured as part of the Windows 10 Creators Update.

Azure Quickstart Center is a step-by-step guide built into Azure Portal that enables Azure customers to easily create, configure, and manage cloud workloads. Guidance includes set-up, start a project, and online courses to help customers deploy to the cloud with confidence and ease, improving customers’ onboarding experiences to Azure.

Azure Resource Graph is a service in Azure that gives enterprise businesses an efficient way to explore their Azure resources, analytics, and querying across subscriptions for large-scale environments. The project provides customers a clearer picture of their activity and environments across Azure for smarter and more efficient management of resources, saving time and money.

Eye Control for Windows 10 is an eye-tracking technology that empowers people with disabilities to use a compatible eye-tracker to operate an on-screen mouse, keyboard and text-to-speech experience in Windows 10 using only their eyes. Eye Control worked with nonprofit Team Gleason as well as the ALS Association to make Windows 10 more accessible.

FarmBeats is an IOT solution that enables farmers to leverage real-time soil and climate data to optimize their harvest. Many weather apps present predictions that cover large areas that can vary greatly from a specific farm. This solution empowers farmers, especially those in emerging markets without access to inexpensive wifi to power solutions, with high precision analytics about their climate and farm conditions. Utilized by farmers in India to increase their harvest and grow their business.

FindTime is an Outlook add-in that gives users the easiest way to schedule meetings across companies without needing to see calendar availabilities. Over hundreds of thousands of professionals have utilized FindTime to quickly send meeting polls to streamline and automate scheduling, eliminating hours of emails back and forth.

Microsoft Health Bot Service is a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering that enables enterprise developers in healthcare to build custom personal health assistants and chatbots. These AI-powered health agents empower patients, nurses, and doctors with self-serve capabilities, helping to improve services, processes, and outcomes while reducing costs.

Microsoft Kaizala is a mobile messaging app that enables large groups to communicate efficiently and facilitate work management both within and outside their organization. Kaizala helps millions of users worldwide including government entities, First Line Workers, business partners and customers stay connected securely as part of Office 365.

Microsoft Launcher is a launcher for Android that enables users with a Microsoft account to personalize Android devices with new home screens and enable cross-device experiences between phone and Windows PC. Microsoft Launcher became #1 launcher on the Android Play Store and celebrated 15 million installs.

Microsoft Learning Tools are free tools built into Office 365 and Microsoft Edge applications that empower users to improve reading, writing, and comprehension skills. Microsoft Learning Tools captured the Grand Prize at Microsoft’s 2015 Hackathon. It helps students of all ages and abilities, is an essential tool for teachers and classrooms, and has earned 10million monthly active users.

Mobile Sharing and Companion Experiences for Microsoft Teams Meetings are features in Microsoft Teams that enables users and meeting participants to seamlessly use computer and phone devices together in meetings including cross-device screen sharing, mobile video, photos, and PowerPoint presentations. This project won the Business category in Microsoft’s 2015 Hackathon and was showcased at Build 2017, before being officially integrated into Microsoft Teams.

Mouse Without Borders is a free app for Windows that enables users to control up to four computers from a single mouse and keyboard. This project created by a single developer was one of the first Microsoft Garage experimental projects and has achieved millions of downloads, top press accolades, and continues to be widely popular in the developer community.

New Data Types in Excel is an AI-powered feature recognizing data types beyond numbers and text strings that enables users to quickly retrieve relevant information from knowledge graphs based on context and directly populate cells or formulas. These new data types simplify the process of working with real-world data and enhances spreadsheets with richer content without needing to switch applications – relevant and contextual data can be injected directly into spreadsheets.

Personal Shopping Assistant is a browser plug-in that automatically identifies better deals for online shopping. The plug-in shows shoppers better deals and similar products when shopping. Shoppers can create boards of wish list products and the assistant will work for them in the background spotting deals.

Presentation Translator is an add-in for PowerPoint that allows presenters and audiences to display live subtitles in PowerPoint presentations with multi-language support. Presentation Translator is a vital resource for classrooms and people who are deaf or hard of hearing, helping audiences follow along with presentations and participate in discussions.

Seeing AI is a free app that empowers the blind and low vision community to navigate their day by narrating the world around them. Users can read labels, understand emotions and more, powered by Cognitive Services baked into the app. Seeing AI helps Microsoft empower the blind and low vision community while illustrating how AI can augment human potential rather than replace it. Multiple honors including American Council of the Blind, American Foundation for the Blind’s Helen Keller Achievement Award, CES Asia, Mobile World Congress.

Sports Performance Platform is a cloud-based, sports analytics platform that enables athletes and coaches to examine player and team data to make data-driven, predictive decisions that improve performance and inform strategy. Sports science staff from Seattle Seahawks, and other sports organizations local and global, have used Sports Performance Platform to support athlete performance and help reduce injuries and time off the field.

Video Indexer is a cloud service that enables users to extract insights from their videos using AI technologies. Video Indexer makes possible new forms of content discovery based on metadata, such as searching for spoken words, face, and even emotions in videos. Apps can leverage this service to build engagement experiences with recommendations, highlight clips, and interactive videos.

Watch For is an AI-powered computer vision system that enables livestreaming platforms and users to discover and analyze live video content, surfacing interesting parts of a livestream in real-time. This technology is what powers Mixer’s massively successful HypeZone channels and the livestream esports search results on Bing.

Xbox Adaptive Controller is an inclusive game controller that empowers everyone to play. The controller was named by TIME as a 2018 Invention of the Year in Accessibility.

Stay tuned to aka.ms/WallOfFame for more powerful projects that demonstrate what can be achieved with hackathons, experimentation, collaboration, and customer obsession. We announce new Wall of Fame honorees on Twitter @MSFTGarage.