Announcing the Microsoft AI Skills Fest: Save the date!
*Updated as of March 28, 2025 The best way to learn something new is by taking it one step at a time. We know all this talk of AI can be overwhelming, so how about we take it one skill at a time? At Microsoft, our mission has always been to create technology that empowers others to innovate and solve real-world problems. And it’s no different with AI—we want to help you learn to use this powerful technology to make your life easier, especially as it becomes an integral part of our daily lives. Sometimes, starting is the hardest part, so we want to make that part simple for you. This is why we’re excited to announce the Microsoft AI Skills Fest, a global event this April and May, designed to bring learners across the globe together to build their AI skills, from beginner explorers to the technologically gifted. Together, we can learn a new AI skill and maybe even set a groundbreaking record at the same time! Everyone everywhere is invited The AI Skills Fest is designed with you in mind, offering a wide variety of AI training for everyone, regardless of background or expertise. Join us to build your AI skills and unlock new opportunities for productivity, innovation, and growth. Tech professionals. Learn how to quickly build AI-powered solutions using Microsoft's AI apps and services. Gain skills and experience working with agents, AI security, Azure AI Foundry, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and more. Business professionals. Find out how much easier your work life can be when you use Microsoft Copilot to simplify tasks and let your creativity loose! Students. Explore technical skills to bring your ideas to life, with AI learning experiences for all skill levels and interests. Business leaders. Empower your teams with AI skills for future success through curated upskilling opportunities. Let’s earn a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title together on April 8, 2025! The Microsoft AI Skills Fest will begin with a spectacular Kickoff Celebration on April 8, 2025. Starting in Australia at 9 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time and wrapping up in the United States at 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time, this 24-hour, globe-spanning event will feature a variety of AI learning activities designed to engage and inspire learners of all experience levels. Together, we’ll have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to attempt a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for most users to take an online multi-level artificial intelligence lesson in 24 hours. Don’t miss this unique chance to learn, compete, and celebrate your achievements—and to be part of these unprecedented and record-setting global festivities. Check out the learning experiences we've prepared for this day. Mark your calendar and register now. Deepen your skills over 50 days of AI learning The celebration doesn't stop there! Following the kickoff, the AI Skills Fest will continue for 50 days— through May 28, 2025—offering a wide array of learning opportunities. Whether you're a tech professional, business leader, business professional, student, or AI enthusiast, there will be engaging and challenging training for you. Participate in hackathons, live in-person and virtual training, self-paced tutorials, on-demand training, community events, Microsoft Learn Challenges, and more. Mark your calendar for 50 days of AI discovery and learning. The countdown to make history together Save the date, attempt a world record, and get ready to unlock the future with 50 days of AI discovery and learning. Read all the details and register now. Now let’s get learning!Register now for the Microsoft AI Skills Fest!
*Updated as of March 28, 2025. And we’re live! The registration for the Microsoft AI Skills Fest is now open to everyone! Join us on April 8, 2025, as we kick off this global skilling event to bring learners of all levels, ages, and geographies together and attempt to earn a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for most users to take an online multi-level artificial intelligence lesson in 24 hours. We understand that the best way to learn something new is by taking it one step at a time, and learning AI is no exception. This is why we’re so excited to bring you the AI Skills Fest to help you gain valuable AI skills and to be part of a historic worldwide event. You can explore a diverse range of learning activities designed to help you build and enhance your business and technical AI proficiency—one skill at a time. After the kickoff on April 8, 2025, you can continue building your expertise with 50 days of AI discovery and learning, through May 28, 2025. Join us on April 8, 2025, to earn a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS TM title! We’ll kick things off in Australia at 9 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on April 8, 2025, and finish at 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time on April 8, 2025, with engaging AI learning experiences scheduled around the globe. While we know learning new things is a treat in itself, we thought it’d be extra fun for everyone participating on April 8 to be included in the attempt to earn a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title—a little “learn and earn” reward. Follow three simple steps to count your participation: Register for the Microsoft AI Skills Fest. On April 8, 2025, participate in one of the learning experiences that we’ve prepared for you. The details will be available on the event page shortly. Confirm your participation before 4 PM Pacific Daylight Time on April 8, 2025. Instructions will be provided during the various learning experiences. Check out all the learning experiences we've prepared for this day. Unlock the future! Build the skills to stay ahead After the Kickoff Celebration, the AI Skills Fest will continue for a total of 50 exciting days—through May 28, 2025—offering a wealth of training opportunities for learners of all skill levels and roles. Whether you're a business leader, tech professional, business professional, student or general AI enthusiast, the AI Skills Fest offers curated learning experiences for you. Engage in deep dives, experiential content, hackathons, challenges, and practical sessions. By the end of your 50-day skill-building adventure, you’ll have all the confidence you need to level up your AI skills that can unleash your creativity and increase your efficiency. I mean, who doesn’t want a few extra free hours in your day, right? Join us in making history and be part of the Microsoft AI Skills Fest, where you can build the skills you need to put AI to work for you. See you on April 8, 2025!Overcoming fear, uncertainty, and doubt in the era of AI transformation
Resistance to adopting AI in the workplace is real. For many, it’s not due to an unwillingness to change but rather from a genuine sense of “FUD”—that is, fear, uncertainty, and doubt—around AI. Constructively addressing FUD is essential to fostering a supportive learning culture that empowers people to thrive in the era of AI transformation so that you and your entire organization can thrive, too. At Microsoft, we’re the first to use and test our own AI technologies internally before releasing them to customers, so we recognize the need to understand the underlying causes of FUD, find positive ways to address them, and provide helpful solutions. We’ve also found that skilling up on AI and learning how it can streamline our workloads, improve our decision-making, and increase our productivity can reduce concerns and boost enthusiasm around this cutting-edge technology. Transforming fear into opportunity Probably the biggest fear in the workplace is that AI adoption might lead to job loss, but the reality is that a number of experts are optimistic. In Generative AI likely to augment rather than destroy jobs, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) predicts that AI “is more likely to augment than destroy jobs by automating some tasks rather than taking over a role entirely.” Many job roles will likely evolve to become hybrid—using AI to complement human work. Given this evolution of work, AI skills are in high demand, and this presents an opportunity for employees in nearly every discipline, field, industry, and role. Proactively building AI skills equips workers to adapt to the transforming workplace. And skilling up provides a meaningful way for them to overcome their fears and develop confidence in their capabilities and in the technology. Organizations that provide skill-building opportunities thus help not only their workers but also the organizations themselves. For details on resources, opportunities, and solutions for acquiring AI skills and competencies, read Get AI ready: Build skills with Microsoft Learn. Dispelling AI uncertainty with a learning culture The AI transformation is happening so fast that uncertainty is sometimes seen as the baseline, not the outlier. We’re all learning right now, in real time. As we test Microsoft AI apps and services, we’re actively figuring out what AI can do. Practically speaking, everyone in the workforce needs to put AI to work and see what it can do. An organizational learning culture can support these efforts and help dispel uncertainty. Ethan Mollick, Professor of Management at the Wharton School and a noted authority on AI and entrepreneurship, has found that the biggest gains come in organizations that encourage cooperative learning. In the Beyond the Prompt podcast episode titled What everybody’s missing about AI in business, he points out, “It starts with culture.” The episode also encourages listeners with this key takeaway: “Use AI for everything you can: The only way to truly understand AI's capabilities is to use it for as many tasks as possible.” Empowering your teams with AI training on Microsoft Learn for Organizations The consensus on overcoming AI FUD in organizations is that skills training and a learning culture are key, and a team training environment can greatly support this growth. Microsoft Learn for Organizations curates Microsoft Learn training for teams and organizations, including offerings to help build AI skills and confidence: Microsoft Learn for Organizations Playbook: A guide to skill up your team for AI and beyond. The playbook helps you to develop an AI skill-building plan, with resources to maximize your impact at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Links to AI skill-building for your organization, live webinars, and insights and strategies on building a learning culture. Links to the Copilot learning hub on Microsoft Learn, the AI learning hub on Microsoft Learn, and the Security hub on Microsoft Learn. Official Plans that cover the latest Microsoft AI apps and services, including “Build, test, and deploy applications securely with GitHub and Microsoft Azure,” “Implementing data integration and model grounding with Azure AI Studio and Microsoft Fabric,” and “Accelerate app development by using GitHub Copilot.” The latest Microsoft Credentials. These industry-trusted and Microsoft-verified credentials give learners the flexibility to grow the AI and cloud skills needed for critical roles or projects. Microsoft Certifications validate a wide range of skills required to be successful in a job role. Learners earn a Certification by passing an exam. AI-focused Certifications include “Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals” and “Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Scientist Associate,” among others. Microsoft Applied Skills validate skill sets specific to real-world technical scenarios. Learners earn them by passing interactive lab-based assessments on Microsoft Learn. More than half of the Applied Skills portfolio is focused on AI, including “Build a natural language processing solution with Azure AI Language,” “Create an intelligent document processing solution with Azure AI Document Intelligence,” and many more. Get started on your AI journey at Microsoft Learn for Organizations, and make the most of the many team training opportunities available there. As you and your teams begin to put newly acquired AI skills to use streamlining workloads, increasing collaboration, adding productivity, and more, we hope that the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around AI begin to fade and are replaced by enthusiasm for the many possibilities that the future of AI in the workplace presents. Learn Microsoft AI with our blog series: Get AI ready Check out other articles from our AI-focused series of blog posts exploring perspectives and opportunities to acquire critical AI skills. Get AI ready: Build skills with Microsoft Learn | Microsoft Community Hub Get AI ready: Inside the Copilot Learning Hub | Microsoft Community Hub Discover AI skill building with Microsoft Training Services Partners | Microsoft Community Hub Get AI ready: Empowering developers in the era of AI | Microsoft Community HubGet AI ready: What we’ve learned building AI competency at Microsoft
Like many organizations around the world, at Microsoft we’re constantly exploring ways to put AI to work—discovering how it can benefit our customers and partners, our workforce, and our business. One of our key findings is that AI skills and fluency are critical for making the most of this powerful technology. So organizations that provide their team members (technical and non-technical alike) with opportunities to cultivate and practice AI skills and fluency are building a solid foundation for the future, setting themselves up to lead in the AI era, and laying the groundwork to deliver incredible value for their customers. Microsoft Worldwide Learning Corporate Vice President Jeana Jorgensen understands this. She’s dedicated to inspiring and encouraging learners everywhere to build their digital skills so they can thrive in the era of AI. With her depth of knowledge and experience in this field, she recognizes that it can be challenging to plan modern and effective AI skill-building programs, that every organization’s path is unique, and that blueprints for successful AI training initiatives are scarce. Yet she has also witnessed firsthand that when new AI skills become daily habits, learners are more confident and empowered to achieve remarkable results—for themselves and for the business—and that this begins with training. In her blog post, Accelerate employee AI skilling: Insights from Microsoft, Jeana shares her insights about our internal employee skill-building initiatives. She offers practical ideas for skilling up your organization as you capitalize on the benefits of AI to support your employees and customers, create business value and growth, and foster innovation. For actionable approaches to AI learning, Jeana recommends our new e-book, 10 Best Practices to Accelerate Your Employees’ AI Skills. This e-book offers detailed guidance to support you in implementing innovative and effective AI skill-building programs for the many roles and proficiency levels at your organization. It explores helpful perspectives, best practices, and key takeaways from our experience as the first users of Microsoft’s AI apps and services and as creators and implementers of our own learning programs. The e-book points out that “those who effectively prepare their teams will be well-positioned to lead with AI,” and it shines a light on some of the best ways that we’ve found to develop and carry out crucial AI training initiatives. From establishing the foundations and making learning fun to setting guidelines for responsible use and working with existing resources, the e-book provides practical tips and principles for setting up your internal training programs to help launch your organization’s AI transformation. Discover more useful guidance in 10 Best Practices to Accelerate Your Employees’ AI Skills.
