Yesterday I had a wonderful time speaking at the Yearly Edu Summit (YES) – Fall 2021. My presentation was about how to build and deploy an object detection model in Azure Custom Vision to save Santa Claus. I talked about AI and Computer Vision, explained the concept of Transfer Learning, and showed how Azure Custom Vision works. I hope that everyone enjoyed my festive session and learned new skills!
The session
Santa Claus has been kidnapped! The Christmas elves have called upon you to save Santa Claus by developing an intelligent AI-app.
Azure Custom Vision is an Azure Cognitive Services service that lets you build and deploy your own image classification and object detection models. In this session, you will learn how to use the pre-trained machine learning models in Azure Custom Vision service, build and deploy your own object detection model and consume the model in a Python app.
What you will learn in this session:
- Understand the concept of AI, Computer Vision and Transfer Learning.
- Use the pretrained machine learning models in Azure Custom Vision.
- Build and deploy an object detection model and consume the model in a Python app.
- Build a “real-time” object detection app with Python and OpenCV.
Self-paced learning from Microsoft Learn
- Detect objects in images with the Custom Vision service
- Create computer vision solutions with Azure Cognitive Services: Detect objects in images
Learning resources
If you are interested in getting started with Computer Vision in Microsoft Azure, you can read the articles that I have written about Azure Custom Vision.

Build a flower classification model with Azure Custom Vision
In this article, you will build and deploy an image classification model for flower classification with the Azure Custom Vision service.
Featured on the Educator Developer Blog – Microsoft Tech Community

Object detection model for grocery checkout with Azure Custom Vision
In this article, we will build a Custom Vision object detection system for a grocery store that identifies different vegetables.

Saving Santa Claus with Azure Custom Vision and Python
In this article, we will build and deploy a festive Custom Vision object detection model to help the Christmas elves find Santa Claus.
Featured on the Educator Developer Blog – Microsoft Tech Community
Sketch note
The following sketch note is a visual guide to my session presented at the Yearly Edu Summit and describes the basic features of Azure Custom Vision.
