Summer Microsoft Community Updates

Episode 10

Author

Nicholas Chang
August 12, 2025

Hope everyone’s having a great summer! This time, we’re spotlighting some exciting updates from across the Microsoft Community.

I’m excited to announce I’ve been selected to speak at AgentCon Singapore next month! I’ll be delivering a session on Azure MCP and Visual Studio Code — diving into how developers can leverage these tools to build smarter, faster, and more secure AI agents.

AgentCon 2025 - Singapore | Global AI Singapore

Join us for the **AI Agents World Tour**, a global series of one-day conferences designed exclusively for developers building the future with AI agents. From San Francisco to Singapore, we’re bringing together leading engineers, researchers, and creators ......

globalai.community/chapters/singapore/events/agentcon-2025-singapore

News and Recommendations

GPT-5

Recently, GPT-5 is annouced — and it’s expected to shape the future of AI apps and agents. It’s now available in Visual Studio Code and AI Foundry. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/ai-foundry/

MCP Inspector

Ever wanted to test your MCP implementation for performance? Try the MCP Inspector, a local visual testing tool for MCP servers. check it out here github.com/modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Azure MCP Support Azure Quick Review

Azure MCP now integrates with the Azure Quick Review CLI, allowing you to generate compliance and security reports for your Azure resources. learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/developer/azure-mcp-server/tools/azure-compliance-quick-review

Announcing a flexible, predictable billing model for Azure SRE Agent

Azure Landing Zone Terraform Accelerator

Had a great time watching this session on the Azure Landing Zone Terraform Accelerator. Highly recommend it for anyone who’s never deployed or used it before.

Upcoming events

Visual Studio Dev Days

Discover the latest in VSCode and GitHub Copilot at this hands-on event series.

VS Code Dev Days | Microsoft Reactor

Attend Reactor Event Series for on-going opportunities to learn, connect, and build. Expand your skillset.

developer.microsoft.com/en-us/reactor/series/s-1571

WedoAI 2025

This community event is taking place on 28 August and I will be doing a demo on Building AI Agent using Visual Studio Code. The speaker wall is up. https://wedoai.ie/wall.html

Microsoft Ignite 2025 

Registration is now open for Microsoft Ignite, happening November 18–21 in San Francisco. Register below

Your home for Microsoft Ignite

Expand your skills and get the edge you need to drive impact in the era of AI at Microsoft Ignite, November 18–21, 2025. ​Register now.

ignite.microsoft.com/en-US/home

Experts Live US

This is happening on October 10th in New York at the Microsoft Office in time square. Get your ticket now https://www.expertslive.us/register

Call for Speakers 

Experts Live Denmark 2026

Speaker submissions are open for February’s event.  https://sessionize.com/experts-live-denmark-2026/

AgentCon 

AgentCon speaker calls are happening worldwide — highly recommend getting involved! https://globalai.community/events/agentcon-2025/

Cloud Tech Tallinn 2026

CTT returns to Estonia next January (29–30) and is currently accepting speaker proposals. https://sessionize.com/cloud-tech-tallinn-2026/

Community Highlights

Microsoft Azure Community User Group - Last night’s event featured sessions on Azure Bicep and AI Agents.

You can also watch other episode here: Click to watch it remotely.

Microsoft Community Insights Podcasts

If you're an Azure professional with a story to share, someone with a unique use case, or just embarking on your cloud journey, we want to hear from you. https://sessionize.com/microsoft-community-insights/

Episode 41 goes live this Wednesday at 9PM UK time, featuring Brian Swiger from Microsoft as we discuss AI at work.

If you would like to come on my podcast, please remember to subscribe to my channel so you can get a reminder.

 Courses and Resources

GitHub - microsoft/mcp-for-beginners: This open-source curriculum is designed to teach the concepts and fundamentals of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), with practical examples in .NET, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript and Python.

This open-source curriculum is designed to teach the concepts and fundamentals of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), with practical examples in .NET, Java, TypeScript, JavaScript and Python. - micro...

github.com/microsoft/mcp-for-beginners

New in Azure API Management: MCP in v2 SKUs + external MCP-compliant server support

Whitelist and Removing IPs from Azure DevOps and Storage Account Firewall
 
https://nicholaschangblog.com/azure-devops/whitelisting-and-removing-ips-with-azure-devops/

Preparing for Your Organisations AI Workloads – Student Learning Pathways

This learning plan from Microsoft Learn walks you through how organisations prepare their infrastructure for AI workloads using Microsoft Azure. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/educatordeveloperblog/preparing-for-your-organization’s-ai-workloads-–-student-learning-pathways/4432004

GitHub - ElYusubov/AWESOME-Azure-Bicep: A curated list of blogs, videos, tutorials, code, tools, scripts, and anything useful to help you learn Azure Bicep - by @ElYusubov

A curated list of blogs, videos, tutorials, code, tools, scripts, and anything useful to help you learn Azure Bicep - by @ElYusubov - ElYusubov/AWESOME-Azure-Bicep

github.com/ElYusubov/AWESOME-Azure-Bicep

GitHub - microsoft/mcp-gateway: MCP Gateway is a reverse proxy and management layer for MCP servers, enabling scalable, session-aware routing and lifecycle management of MCP servers in Kubernetes environments.

MCP Gateway is a reverse proxy and management layer for MCP servers, enabling scalable, session-aware routing and lifecycle management of MCP servers in Kubernetes environments. - microsoft/mcp-gat...

github.com/microsoft/mcp-gateway

Career Tips and Advice

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