Today Epic Games have announced the acquisition of Cubic Motion, a real-time facial animation capture company.  Cubic Motion’s technology has been used by several of the most successful games of the current generation including SpiderMan and HellBlade, as well as powering several of Unreal Engines previous GDC and SIGRAPH presentations.   This company is a good fit for Unreal Engine and 3Lateral, the 3D character creation company Epic acquired last January.

Details of the acquisition from the Unreal Engine blog:

Today we are thrilled to welcome Cubic Motion to the Epic Games family. Cubic Motion is a longtime Epic partner and a leading provider of automated performance-driven facial animation technology and services for video games, film, broadcast, and immersive experiences. By joining forces, our teams are solidifying our commitment to advancing the state of the art in the creation of believable digital humans for all Unreal Engine users.

Cubic Motion’s talent will work hand in hand with 3Lateral, developer of innovative technologies that enable digitization of human appearance and motion at unprecedented levels of realism. 3Lateral joined the Unreal Engine team in January 2019 to lead development of the state of the art in real-time capabilities for the creation of virtual humans and creatures.

“We are delighted to be joining Epic Games and look forward with excitement to this next chapter in our story,” said Cubic Motion CEO Dr. Gareth Edwards. “Together, we are uniquely positioned to push the boundaries of digital human technology, bringing ever more realism and immersion to all forms of visual entertainment.”

“Digital humans are not only the next frontier of content creation, but also the most complex endeavor in computer graphics. With Cubic Motion bringing their computer vision and animation technology and expertise to our digital human efforts, Epic along with our team at 3Lateral are one step closer to democratizing these capabilities for creators everywhere,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games.

Cubic Motion’s existing Persona facial capture technology is currently unimpacted by the acquisition.  You can learn more about the deal in the video below.

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GameDev News Unreal

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Symphony of the Night launched on the original Sony PlayStation (PSX) in an era that seemed to hail the end of 2D games. With Mario gone three dimensional the previous year and the Legend of Zelda soon to make the switch, releasing a 2D platformer seemed incredibly shortsighted. But Konami knew exactly what they were doing.

Of course, Symphony of the Night quickly became a cult hit and is now a frequent contender for the top of “greatest games of all time” lists. It launched not one but two well-received trilogies on Nintendo handhelds and became grandfather to its very own subgenre: the ‘metroidvania’. As the indie revolution arrived, the freedom, creativity, and room for narrative that the metroidvania formula offered within a 2D space led to an explosion of games in this style.

Where would modern indies be without Cave Story and Shadow Complex?

Emerging from this indie scene, mobile gamers have seen some phenomenal ‘metroidvania’ and metroidvania-inspired titles. Underwater variant Aquaria, beautifully animated Dust, criminally underrated Dandara, rougeish Dead Cells, the fantastic mobile exclusive Grimvalor and even Apple Arcade game Shinsekai. The continuous, iterative gameplay of the genre makes it a great fit for hardcore gamers playing on mobile. It is now the perfect time to revisit the game that inspired them all: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Presumably as part of a promotion for the third season of the surprisingly good Netflix anime series, Konami has just dropped a mobile port of Symphony executed by the experts at Dotemu. The version hitting mobile is the same one that came with PSP title The Dracula X Chronicles. Compared to the PSX original, it has an ‘improved’ script and voice acting that loses some of the original’s b-movie jankiness (including the infamous line: “What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets!”) Players who remember the original may be disappointed, but overall it’s for the best. You do also get the option to play as Richter or Maria from the start.

Other differences from the classic are refined item menus that function with touch controls and higher-resolution text and (static) artwork. In terms of live assets, the game’s pixels are chunkier than the retro games that have lifted its style. Played on a larger screen, you may be surprised by how few tiny squares the original animators had to work with. That said, the animation holds up. It’s incredibly detailed and lifelike for the era, and a masterclass for today’s pixel artists.

Gamers without dedicated controllers will be stuck with on-screen controls, of course. These are not ideal – you have a simple touch pad rather than the more-intuitive swipe-anywhere controls used by games like Dead Cells. The jump button is easy to hit, but the various attack buttons are fiddly-er. There are a few allowances made to touch gamers: hotkeys are available for the spells and transformations, although one does wonder why it’s still d-pad-up+attack to use special weapons. The touch controls are also not customizable for sizing and position, which is a weird oversight for an experienced developer of emulated classic games to make.

The game works best with a dedicated controller, naturally. One bizarre choice is binding the map to a flick (in any direction) of the second analog stick, especially when L2 is just sitting there doing nothing.

But the game itself? It’s still incredibly good. You have a massive, varied castle map that’s literally twice as big as you think and packed with details that tell you a story without the need for lengthy cutscenes. It’s challenging, but not frustrating, with plenty of secrets for hardcore gamers. Combat, especially boss combat, requires thought, skill, and judicious use of your abilities. There’s some light RPG elements in building your stats and finding new equipment. Yes, there are ways to break the game and make Alucard incredibly overpowered, but honestly that’s part of the fun. This version is even enhanced with the ability to instantly continue from the last room you entered rather than get dragged back to the last save point. (If this gets you stuck in a tight spot, you can reload from the last hard save.)

At a mere three dollars at launch, this is definitely the cheapest Symphony of the Night has ever been, unless you fancy scouring garage sales for the original CD-ROM. Even with the poor on-screen controls, I’d say it’s worth trying at that price. If you missed the original, it’s a chance to experience one of the pillars of a now-trending genre. If you remember it fondly, that’s a small price to pay for the waves of nostalgia you’ll feel from hearing That Music and fighting That Boss again. If you do have a controller, you have no excuse. Get this game now. Maybe if enough people buy it, a port of Rondo of Blood will be just around the corner!

This year’s BAFTA Games Awards is the latest event to feel the effect of the ongoing concerns surrounding the new coronavirus outbreak. Rather than hosting its traditional red carpet event, BAFTA has decided to change up the format and livestream the winners online.

A statement regarding the change has been shared today, confirming that the livestream will broadcast on the same day that the original event was planned to take place, 2nd April:

Amid growing concerns over the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and the number of nominees due to travel from overseas, we have made the decision to change the format of next month’s BAFTA Games Awards from a red carpet ceremony at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London to an online live stream, which will broadcast globally on the same day as scheduled (Thursday 2 April).

The health and wellbeing of our guests and our staff remain our top priority, so there will be no live audience and we are now in the process of informing all our nominees, guests, partners and suppliers of the change. The new format will include the announcement of the Games Awards winners and we look forward to sharing more updates in the coming weeks.

The nominees for the show were revealed just last week, with Luigi’s Mansion 3 doing particularly well for itself.

Other gaming events recently cancelled or altered by the coronavirus include GDC, the 2020 Pokémon Europe International Championships, and of course, E3 2020.

… Without Working Full-Time Hours!         

In this article, you are going to learn my exact strategy how to earn $3000 per month as a Python freelancer without actually working full-time and without sacrificing time with your family!

This article is based on the following webinar I gave to my community of Python coders. You can also watch the webinar if you prefer video (100% Free)!

At the end of this article, you will know the exact steps you need to perform to become a well-paid Python freelancer. So stick around, if you like the idea of working part-time as a Python freelancer receiving a full-time income.

Are you broke?

Especially in the US, but also in Europe, many people are broke. What is the definition of broke? You don’t have any leftover money to account for special circumstances. It’s that easy.

It is reported that the average debt of college students is $27,225. But is this debt really a problem? The popular consultant Dan Lok (he calls himself world’s highest paid consultant), has a somehow different view on debt. Let me read one of his statements for you:

“You don’t have a debt problem, you have an income problem. You don’t have an income problem, you have a SKILL problem!”.

Because if you are skilled, you can always sell your service at a higher rate.

Suppose there are two employees: Bob and Alice. Bob has $10,000 in assets and a yearly income of $31,524. Bob is debt free. So many people would consider Bobs financial state as convenient (when in fact he is broke). Alice on the other hand has an inconvenient $100,000 in debt. BUT, Alice can sell her skills at a rate of $131,000 per year. What happens after two years? Alice can easily outsave Bob by tens of thousands of Dollars – even if she starts with a lot of debt. You can also see this scenario on the right-hand figure. The higher the skills, the more you can expect to earn.

How much money do you earn per hour?

Do you actually know how much money you currently earn? An average employee works for 1811 hours per year. As an employee it is very hard to earn more than $90,000. In fact, the median wage of all workers in the US is $24. For example, if you are a student, you are earning -$4 per hour, school teachers earn $37 per hour. If you push yourself very hard and become an extremely skilled employee, you might become a university professor with a yearly salary of $98,423. This is $54 per hour. First, know your hourly wage. Second, improve it.

Develop your new high-income skill: Python development!

So how to increase your value to the marketplace? This article and the associated free webinar have two goals:

• First, creating a new high-income skill for you: Python development.
• Second, show you how and why to switch the road from being a full-time employee to being at least part-time self-employed.

On the graphic, you can see the income distribution of Python freelancers. The median wage of a Python freelancer is $51!

Let me repeat this: the median wage of a Python freelancer is $51! This means that an average, self-employed Python freelancer easily reaches the income level of a university professor. Think about this: can you become a university professor? It’s totally up to you to answer this question. But you can certainly become average-skilled Python freelancer, can’t you?

About me

You are probably wondering why I am qualified to teach you this topic. Let me quickly introduce myself so that we can go to a more personal level. I’m currently in a transition phase from being an employed doctoral researcher working at the university in Germany (for maybe $24 per hour) to becoming self-employed in the Python education sector. My research included processing large graph data sets (like the web document graph). However, for a few months now, I have parental leave caring about my two children. In the evenings and weekends, I create courses, write books (like my newest book “Coffee Break Python“, and create code puzzles for my Python learning app Finxter.com).

Why to become Python freelancer?

How would your life look like if you only needed to work part-time as a Python freelancer doing projects you like?

I have already stressed the first point: Imagine you work from home and see your kids growing up and having the flexibility to spend more quality time with your wife or husband. But there is also an equally important point if you need to take care of your family. And that is: you can increase your value to the marketplace. And there is virtually no upper limit of your hourly rate. If you are and employee you basically have an upper limit – you have seen that a professor earns $53 per hour. But I have seen many freelancers earning $100-$200 per hour. It all depends on how expensive you can make yourself for the marketplace.

For some of my students, being a Python freelancer is also a lifestyle choice. For example one of my students is successfully employed in the US and earns good money there. But his dream is to go back to India to his family working as a Python freelancer. Doing this, he earns dollars and pays rupees for his living expenses. Why not enjoying the benefits of globalization?

It’s also good to diversify your income streams. You could spend one day per month to earn $400-$500 per month as an additional source of income that you can spend for you or your family (or even safe it for later).

Finally, being a Python freelancer is also a lot of fun. You have to stretch your abilities regarding Python but also regarding soft skills such as communication ability and language skills. If you are not a native speaker (like me), it’s very nice to improve your skills that way while you are getting paid for doing good work for other people.

Can you already see yourself working as a Python freelancer?

How to sell your Python skills for money ($$$)?

There are basically three ways of becoming a Python freelancer. The first is being a consultant working for a big company. The second is to be a freelancer working on a platform such as Upwork or Fiverr doing mostly smaller tasks. The third option is to create your own platform that you own (for example, creating your own website and drive traffic to it). I call it the hybrid approach because you have some elements of both previous options.

Now, we will dive a bit deeper into each of these options.

Career path 1: Work for a big client as a consultant

The first way of becoming self-employed is to work for one or a few big clients as a consultant. Working as a consultant has some advantages. You work in a business-to-business setting which allows you to tap into large earning potentials. There is a lot of money in business-to-business — especially if you focus on high-ticket sales.

However, many people I know working as consultants heavily rely on one or two big clients. They are not diversified at all. And if you work for a single big company, you will have very limited freedom in terms of your projects and working conditions. Many Python consultants report that the pressure is hard and it feels like working as an employee.

This is not the focus of this article, however. So if you prefer to work as a consultant, I would NOT recommend that you take this specific course.

Career path 2: Sell your micro-services as a freelancer

The second way — and this is the focus of this article and also the free webinar which comes with this article — is to sell your services as a Python freelancer on existing freelancing platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr.

These platforms are very convenient. You could start today creating your freelancing account and start with your first gig in the evening. Then you solve the jobs (which takes maybe a week or even only a day). You are very flexible, you can learn fast and without too much pain or commitment.

Also, you have a small feedback cycle: you can go over the whole cycle of acquiring a client, doing the work, finishing the job, and getting reviewed. Over time, you will become an expert in the soft skills and communication part, and you will learn about many different areas where your Python skills can help people out.

It’s the perfect option of getting a foot in the door and to converge, job-by-job, to your final specializations (in case you want to specialize to increase your earning potential on the freelancing market).

Finally, there is no startup overhead. Marketing is simple. We will learn later that you need to have two things: an attractive profile and good ratings.

Of course, nothing is perfect. When working as a freelancer, you don’t own the platforms. You don’t own the clients. As a default, if you don’t do anything against it (later we will see that you can also acquire the clients from the platform and creating your own database of clients to mitigate this last point. Also, these platforms get their significant cut of 25% for each job. That’s quite something.

So overall, working as a freelancer on these platforms is all about getting testimonials, skills, and experiences.

Career path 3: sell your services on your own platform

Finally, the third option is also the one with the highest income potential. You create your own platform (for example setting up a WordPress page where you offer your details and service offerings). You retain 100% of the control over your income, your projects, and even your testimonials. The sky’s the limit (you can earn hundreds of dollars per hour, if you are smart about it).

However, there is also the need for you to market your services. You need to install a marketing funnel. For example, you attract potential customers using Facebook ads. Then, you set up a landing page with a lead magnet so that they are motivated giving you your email address. Finally, you will nurture your leads sending them tons of value via email and build a relationship with them.

While this seems to be complex, it is definitely the most profitable long-term strategy. However, in the short term, it’s much better for most people to gain experiences and testimonials on the freelancing platforms and then gradually shift their focus towards their own platform as they get to know more and more clients.

So these are the three potential career paths for you. This article and the associated webinar focus on the second option as a starting point.

A simple formula for success

This article is about how to go full-time as a Python freelancer without actually working fulltime hours. The success formula is simple. You start working as a Python freelancer now (no matter your current skill level). Then, you keep increasing your value to the marketplace until you have reached at least average Python freelance level. At this point, you will charge $51 per hour.

Would you consider a daily income of $100 as a fulltime income? According to US statistics, earning $3000 per month is already above the median salary. Now, the plan is to work for two hours on your core freelancing activities. The rest of your time you are free to spend with your family, for rest, learning, or finding even better freelancing jobs. That’s it. The strategy is simple but none the less effective. It provides you a clear and manageable path to your new freelancing lifestyle.

The top-3 secrets to earn more money as a Python freelancer on Upwork

How can you increase your value to the marketplace such that you can easily work at average Python freelancing level? What’s the magic key that will allow you to open the doors to your dream clients?

Next, I will give you 3 secrets how you can connect with your clients.

First, use research insights of psychology to build trust. Second, become a specialist rather tan a generalist. Third, leverage network effects.

Secret #1: earn trust

The key is to earn trust and to be attractive. Clients pay more and you will get the better jobs if you are trustworthy and attractive to them. I made a small experiment and searched for the keyword “Python” on the Upwork.com freelancing platform. All proposed freelancers had a job satisfaction rate of 100%.

So how to earn trust? You collect positive ratings. The more ratings you have the better. And the better the rating the better. If you buy properties in the real estate sector, it’s all about location. Trust me, in the freelancing sector, it’s all about ratings. You NEED to engineer your ratings. If you have good ratings, you will always find jobs, no matter how good your external achievements are. You don’t even need an academic degree, you can find the best jobs if you have good ratings. With good ratings, you will always find good, well-paid and attractive jobs. Rating is king.

How to actually get good ratings? We have seen that good ratings are important. There are five basic ways.

• The first way is communication: be very responsive, be very positive, be a yes-man and be generous with your offers.
• The second way is to acquire a lot of Python skills (and this is the focus on this article).
• The third way is to overdeliver. Always. If your task is to give him 100 Python puzzles and you send him 110 Python puzzles, you can almost be sure to get the 5-star rating on the platform. You not only delivered what he asked you to deliver, but you OVERdelivered the task. This is a simple but effective 3-step way to get great ratings.
• The fourth way is a very important and underestimated point: the reciprocity rule. If you give something away, the receiving person will feel the obligation to give back to you. That’s why they have free food in supermarkets. I have hired many freelancers for my website finxter.com and some of them were really smart. When applying for the project, they just gave me something for free. For example, the project was “develop 100 Python puzzles” and they just gave me 1-3 Python puzzles for free. I was feeling the strong urge to give back to those freelancers by hiring them (I even wanted to hire ALL of them to not miss out on giving back to them). This is a powerful mindset: give first, then you will receive.
• The fifth way is the following: on some platforms like Upwork, you can complete small Python tests. Certificates go a long way building trust with your clients. You can also solve Python puzzles and download your personal certificate on our Python online learning application Finxter.com.

Secret #2: Money flows to specialists!

There are other tricks that will impact your success on these platforms. One is the specificity of your skill set. The more specific, the better and the more trustworthy.

If you just sell your services telling them “I can program any Python program you need” then they will not really trust you that you are the expert in any Python field. But if you tell them that you are the go-to expert for anything regarding Python Django Authentication, then they will definitely go for you if they need just that. You are honest and authentic about your specific skill set – these signals confidence and expertise to the clients.

What are the skills that the marketplace seeks? There are some foundations which any good Python freelancer must master. These are basic and complex data types, lambda functions, list comprehension, complexity of data structure access, basic algorithms, keywords, and so on. Knowing about the foundations already qualifies you doing Python freelance jobs.

However, if you want to increase your earning potential, you need to specialize in more advanced knowledge areas. Examples are Machine learning, data analysis, web scraping, or web development (e.g. Django). Each of these area consists of subtopics like scikit-learn, regression analysis, numpy, etc. In each of these specialization, you become more focused toward this specific area which automatically increases your value to the client. But an important observation is also that every specialization builds upon a solid foundation. So don’t be lazy and skip the foundations!

Secret #3: Leverage network effects

Finally, just to motivate you again that it’s all about rating. The Internet follows a universal law: “The winner takes it all”. The rich get richer and the popular people get even more popular. If you are already winning on these platforms, you will win even more. People tend to simply reinforce the decisions of their peers. If all of them gave you 5 stars, most clients will simply default to giving you 5 stars as well. The network effect is a well-researched phenomenon in all kinds of networks like social networks, the web, and also freelancer rating networks.

There are two basic tactics that you can use to leverage this information to earn more money and increase your value to the marketplace.

• First, focus on your initial jobs. See your initial jobs as investments in your future. Even if you did them for free (and I’m not advocating this), they will be profitable in the future by attracting the better jobs and clients.
• Second, you should prefer many small jobs over few large jobs – because this way, you will gain your credibility faster (many people subconsciously have the simple heuristic: more jobs & more ratings = better freelancer).

How many skills do you need before starting with your freelancing career?

The short answer is to just start now and figure out how to solve the problems as you go.

You will be paid for your learning time. I have annotated the income scale of Python freelancers with the Python levels you can have. As you can see, if you are just beginning with your Python career, you will — of course — earn less, but you will still earn something, make a lot of experiences and gain practical insights into WHAT to learn and WHERE your knowledge gaps are.

The long answer is: if you don’t feel confident, yet, you can master the Python basics first. You can already specialize in a Python topic. And to gain even more confidence, you can even do some toy projects to learn. One of my secret tips for learning to freelance in Python is to learn with archived freelancing projects. You can already gain practical experience and learn the type of projects that people have paid freelancers for. Still – I would always recommend to just start doing real Python projects and then put in all the effort to earn your five-star rating.

How to learn the Python basics?

My recommendation is that you use a personalized training plan which has a very practical focus. You divide your time into two blocks: one block takes 70% of your LEARNING time. You use this time to work on practical Python projects which can be archived freelancing Python projects that challenge you to go to higher levels. You could even spend this learning time on your dream projects – this is even better because it keeps you highly motivated and engaged. The key is to NOT STOP WORKING ON THESE until you have successfully finished them and created a minimum viable product.

The rest of the time (30%), you will invest in solving Python puzzles, work through Python courses, read Python books. You can see that this is a highly practical approach – I’m talking about your learning time which is mainly practical. The reason is that for any subject you want to acquire or even master, you need to have the practical motivation. You need to open your knowledge gap to see what you don’t know before stuffing things in your brain. Ask any expert on Quora – they will tell you that practice-first is the way to learn Python fast. There is no shortcut.

Puzzle-based learning Python

On the theoretical part, I recommend solving Python puzzles as your main lever for your personal improvement. Python puzzles are a powerful tool to become more and more proficient in reading and understanding Python source code.

What’s a Python puzzle? A Python puzzle is an educative snippet of Python source code that teaches a single computer science concept by activating the learner’s curiosity and involving them in the learning process.

The Python puzzles range from easy to complex – each puzzle will push your theoretical and practical code understanding skills one step further. The puzzle-based learning method is very effective and proven by tens of thousands of online students.

Here is an example of a code puzzle:

What’s the output of this code snippet?

Check your correct solution of this puzzle here.

How would your life change if you developed the high-income skill Python to become a Python freelancer?

In this article, I have shown you a simple way out of the rat race of working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 40 years.

In the free webinar with the title

“How to go full-time ($3000/m) as a Python freelancer — without working full-time hours” (Click to join),

I will give you a detailed training plan such that you can start earning money with your Python skills. I show you a new way of becoming a Python expert that is fun, that challenges you to reach higher levels of code understanding, and that gives you a highly practical tool for developing and sharpening your new high-income skill Python.

Last week, as COVID-19 cases continued to spread around the world, millions of people moved to remote work. We were right there with them. From Milan to Puget Sound, tens of thousands of Microsoft employees in impacted areas have begun working from home. Many of our customers have asked us to share the details of how we enable remote work for such a large workforce. My colleague Nathalie D’Hers is the exact-right person to do just that.

Nathalie and her team are part of Microsoft’s Core Services Engineering and Operations (CSEO), our internal IT team that builds and operates the systems that run Microsoft. They have spent the past few years transforming end-user productivity across the company and learning so much along the way. Here, she walks us through the top ways CSEO is enabling remote work. Over to you, Nathalie.

When people ask me about my job, I tell them my team and I make sure every Microsoft employee has the tools, resources, and solutions to be as productive, creative, and secure as possible—working from any location and on any device. For the last few years, that’s meant overseeing Microsoft’s journey to the cloud. Getting there has required that we manage identity and network access for all users; help ensure devices used to access the network are secure and healthy; and provide users access to the productivity-enabling apps they need.

Below, I’ve identified some of the top ways we are enabling remote work at Microsoft. I hope you find them useful, but I also understand that Microsoft has IT resources that many IT leaders may not. What is more, every company is at a different stage of their journey to the cloud. Maybe identity and device management are your top priorities, or you are digging into long-term projects like multi-factor authentication (MFA) or desktop virtualization. Maybe you are working to empower access to resources via a browser. Every IT leader needs to define the priorities to enable productivity from anywhere across their organization’s workforce. We get that, and we want to help. At the bottom of this post, you’ll find a link to our new Enabling Remote Work Tech Community. I hope you’ll join and share your own journey there. With that, let’s get into the top 9 ways our team is enabling remote work.

1. User identity and access
   It all starts with managing identities. We have a hybrid environment that helps us both retain and expand existing systems while using a cloud-based control plane to enable people to work productively and securely. Whether they are an employee, partner, or supplier, every user who needs to access the corporate network receives a primary account synced to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). To learn more about our identity and access management practices, check out our IT Showcase covering user identities and secure access.
2. Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
   MFA is required to access any corporate resource at Microsoft. When a user connects remotely to our domain using their Microsoft work credentials on a device that we manage, MFA is almost transparent. We offer three authentication methods: certificate-backed virtual and physical smart cards, Windows Hello for Business (with PIN or biometric sign-in), and Azure Multi-factor Authentication. To learn more about enabling Azure MFA to support remote work scenario, check out this tutorial.
3. Managing devices
   At Microsoft, we manage a wide range of devices, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. Like many of you, we are making the transition to a fully cloud-based management environment. As we make that shift, we are using a co-management approach with Microsoft Endpoint Manager (MEM). MEM integrates Microsoft Intune and Configuration Manager into a single console where you can manage all your endpoints and apps and take action to ensure they are secure and reliable.
   

   With more employees working remotely and across devices, it’s important to support bring-your-own-device (BYOD) scenarios. We offer self-service enrollment so users can quickly and easily join Azure AD and enroll in MEM to access company resources. Once enrolled, MEM then applies appropriate policies, for example, to ensure that a device is encrypted with a strong password and has certificates for access to things like Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and WiFi. MEM can also ensure that devices are adhering to policy by checking-in the device’s health compliance status to Azure AD as it processes the user’s authentication. For guidance on deploying and using MEM, your teams can check out our MEM documentation and tutorials.

4. Productivity applications
   With this foundation in place, we are driving our employees to work in the cloud. This is particularly important for our large population of information workers working remotely. Microsoft 365 enables users to access resources and share files with Office apps across the web, mobile, and desktop, storing their content in the cloud by default. Outlook mobile, Microsoft Teams, and OneDrive are deployed on all of our corporate devices, so people can access their emails, calendars, and files within File Explorer on Windows, Finder on Mac, and Office Apps on mobile devices. We’ve made it easy for users to save their files to OneDrive the same way they traditionally saved files to their C: drive; this has been key to getting files to the cloud. Our users are also now able to do real-time coauthoring and commenting in documents in the cloud, which has proved extremely useful for a distributed workforce.
5. Meetings and collaboration
   All of us at Microsoft use Teams daily for chat, meetings, calls, and collaboration. Now that we find ourselves working remotely, we’ve been able to stay productive because we are accustomed to a digital workspace. Every meeting is now a Teams meeting, often with video. We‘re using features like background blur to block out our naughty kids, our barking dogs, and our mismatched furniture. As we rally to help our customers prepare for remote work, we’ve found that the ability to record meetings has become essential. All attendees can access recordings of meetings they’ve missed and then listen in to the most relevant parts. We also rely on the Microsoft 365 environment to empower employees to collaborate through self-service creation of Office 365 Groups or teams within Teams while ensuring appropriate security, compliance, and manageability are in place. To learn more about our experience enabling remote work with Teams, check out our IT Showcase post.
6. Access to line of business (LOB) applications
   Microsoft has migrated most of our legacy applications to the cloud. But even with most applications accessible in the cloud, some still require VPN. Additionally, we are in the process of rolling out Windows Virtual Desktop and are scaling up this offering to support the devices that our developers want to use (more on this later in the post). To get stated with Windows Virtual Desktop, you can point your teams to this tutorial.
7. Service monitoring
   With the increased load and usage from so many people working remotely, service monitoring has proven crucial to making sure everything is operating as it should. We carefully monitor application and network performance and we’ve built product telemetry monitoring into every solution so that we can check reporting for user satisfaction metrics and changes to service behavior.
8. Culture and change management
   Remote work can create challenges to maintaining a healthy work culture and managing change. Modern social and engagement platforms can help make sure messages are heard, leadership is visible, and best practices are shared. In our company, Satya Nadella and other executives connect with the organization using live events and Yammer. Our team recently held an 18-hour global live event to drive employee connections, engagement, and learning. And we educate employees to use Yammer to build communities that connect people across teams. For example, we recently set up a work-from-home (WFH) Yammer group with tips and tricks for making the switch to remote work.

Here are some of the main points we emphasize in our end-user education:

• Save files to the cloud so you can coauthor within the Office 365 suite of products. Users should save individual documents and drafts in OneDrive, where files are private by default but can be shared. They should save shared documents to the Teams or SharePoint sites where your group works.
• Share links rather than attachments in email to make sure everyone’s using the latest version of a document.
• Use Teams to the fullest. We tell users to think of Teams as a virtual office. Hold every call and meeting on Teams. Use channels, rather than email or group chats, for team-level conversations. Turn on your camera to connect during meetings. Use Live Events for larger gatherings. If your organization allows, record meetings to access the transcript later. We also remind the Teams meetings aren’t just for 1:1s or small standups. They can range from informal “coffee breaks” in channels, to highly collaborative quarterly planning offsites with a hundred employees or more.

9. Designing for specific roles
   A lot of the resources we’ve discussed benefit information workers most. It makes sense, we have a lot of those at Microsoft. But it’s important to enable other types of workers to work remotely as well.

Developers: Engineers need to be able to collaborate on code and build their workflows into Teams for remote collaboration. We have a number of developers who typically work exclusively on desktops. We are providing them with laptops with a WVD solution so they can remote into their dev environment.

Call center and help desk: At Microsoft, we have walk-up help desks as well as online technicians. They all have Microsoft-managed PCs, which enables those who typically work onsite to switch instantly over to a remote work model and remain productive.

Firstline Workers: It’s key to connect all workers so that they are equipped with the knowledge to take appropriate steps for themselves, customers, and the community. Teams serves as the single productivity hub for retail employees and managers across Microsoft Stores, connecting remote sites, digitizing workflows, and ensuring workers have real-time access to the right information at the right time. During the COVID-19 outbreak, they’ve used the Store Portal application in Teams to communicate latest policies and procedures including sanitation updates, staffing changes, and event status. Additionally, the Stores team uses Teams to run daily standup meetings and for Q&As with associates and team members that drive dialogue and collaboration on key topics.

Enabling a team to work remotely is an ongoing challenge, and we get that this challenge is different for every organization. I hope that reading about our approach has been useful to you, and as I wrote earlier in this post, I’d love to learn more about yours. To share your experiences, ask other IT professionals and partners for advice or information, and find additional resources, join the new Enabling Remote Work Tech Community. Let’s keep the conversation going there!

Attention Fedora community members: Fedora is seeking submissions for supplemental wallpapers to be included with the Fedora 32 release. Whether you’re an active contributor, or have been looking for a easy way to get started contributing, submitting a wallpaper is a great way to help. Read on for more details.

Each release, the Fedora Design Team works with the community on a set of 16 additional wallpapers. Users can install and use these to supplement the standard wallpaper.

Dates and deadlines

The submission phase opened as of March 7, 2020 and ends March 21, 2020 at 23:59 UTC.

Important note: In some circumstances, submissions during the final hours may not get into the election, if there is insufficient time to do legal research. Please help by following the guidelines correctly, and submit only work under a correct license.

The voting phase will open the Monday following the close of submissions, March 23, 2020, and will be open until the end of the month on March 31, 2020 at 23:59 UTC.

How to contribute a wallpaper

Fedora uses the Nuancier application to manage the submissions and the voting process. To submit, you need a Fedora account. If you don’t have one, create one here in the Fedora Account System (FAS). To vote you must have a signed contributor agreement (also accessible in FAS) which only takes a few moments.

You can access Nuancier here along with detailed instructions for submissions.

Indie publisher Devolver Digital has made a name for itself over the past few years hosting parody presentations around the time of E3. Despite taking to Twitter yesterday to tell everyone to cancel their “E3 flights and hotels” before the annual expo was officially called off, the company will still go ahead with its own plans.

It provided a brief update via Twitter – stating how it was upset by the cancellation of the event. Fortunately, a livestream and “possibly more” is on the way:

On a related note, physical publisher Limited Run Games has confirmed it will still be airing its own press conference. As usual, it will be filled with announcements about upcoming physical releases. This will take place on 3rd June, via Twitch.

Will you be tuning in to either of these presentations? Leave a comment down below.