Tag: PaaS

Cloud this Week at VS Live! Redmond

The VS Live! Conference has begun. Cameron Skinner, General Manager of Visual Studio Ultimate at Microsoft is currently delivering the keynote and the conference is starting strong. Immediately following today’s keynote, I’m presenting Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role. Visual Studio Live! Redmond has a ton of great speakers, tracks and sessions and if you are attending VS Live, find me a say hello. If you have questions, concerns or ideas about Cloud Computing and Windows Azure, let me know that too and we can chat about that.

If you are not able to make it to Redmond, don’t worry, registration for VS Live! Orlando is open and hasn’t sold out yet. If you are like me and live in a cold winter area like Chicago, December 5-9 in Orlando, FL is extremely attractive.

In addition to my session, there is an impressive list of sessions in the VS Live! Cloud Track!. The following is a list of the Cloud Track sessions.
VS Live! Redmond Cloud Computing Track

Hope to see you this week in Redmond!

Talking Cloud – Tomorrow at Tulsa TechFest 2011

Friday, Oct 7th, aka tomorrow, is the sixth year of Tulsa TechFest. Tulsa TechFest is technical conference with many tracks covering lots of topics including architecture, web development, cloud computing, social media and even entrepreneurship. It has grown over the past 5 years, and this year there are 21 tracks and a keynote from Glenn Block on WCF Web API.

John Weston and I are presenting this year’s Cloud track and I’m excited to deliver two developer focused talks and John’s IT Pro talks look very interesting too. The following is the schedule for the Cloud track.

9:00AM – Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, what’s the Truth? – John Weston
10:30AM – Moving Web Apps to the Cloud – Eric D. Boyd
1:00PM – Hyper-V Virtualization to prepare for the Cloud – John Weston
2:30PM – Overview of the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket – Eric D. Boyd

If you are on the fence and haven’t yet registered for Tulsa TechFest, register and enjoy a great conference and a day of free training.

FREE AT&T Mobile App Hackathon in Chicago

AT&T is hosting a Mobile App Hackathon this Saturday, August 27, 2011, in Chicago. It will be a great event for developers to get together, network, learn about mobile technologies and build mobile apps. You will get fed and get to compete for some great prizes. This event is not targeted at a specific platform, so regardless of whether you are interested in Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad, Android or even the dead webOS platform, come out, learn and build apps.

Starting at 2pm, Will Welbes and I will be hosting a Mobile + Cloud Jumpstart. The majority of mobile apps today require a cloud backend. The Mobile + Cloud Jumpstart will get you started developing apps with Cloud platforms like Windows Azure, Amazon Web Services and Apple iCloud. If you are planning to attend Mobile + Cloud Jumpstart, you must register independently of the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon since space is very limited. You can register at http://mobilecloudjumpstart.eventbrite.com/.

You can register for the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon at http://mobileappchi.eventbrite.com/. This free event includes some great lightning talks, lunch, and a chance to win prizes.

Speaking at Dallas TechFest Tomorrow and Saturday

I am writing this post in-flight, on my way to Dallas from Milwaukee, via Atlanta of course. I am headed to Dallas for the weekend for Dallas TechFest 2011. Dallas TechFest is the premiere technology conference in Dallas, focused on delivering excellent, multi-platform, multi-language, technology content at a reasonable cost. And this year, for the first time ever, it is a two day event! The schedule is full of interesting topics and should be a great conference.

Online registration for Dallas TechFest is now closed, but if you aren’t registered and want to attend, you can register tomorrow morning on-site. I am really excited to present at this year’s Dallas TechFest and I am equally excited that the invite was for the following Windows Azure talks.

Data in Windows Azure
The Windows Azure Platform provides a plethora of options for data storage and trying to make sense of it all can be overwhelming. In this session we will explore the many Azure data services including SQL Azure, Azure Storage, Local Storage and AppFabric Caching. We will walk through the scenarios that each storage service addresses. Next we will dig into how to use each storage service and how they can complement each other when used together. Finally, we will explore the pricing and economic drivers that encourage one storage service over another when multiple fit into your solution.

Windows Phone + Cloud: Building Great Mobile Apps with Cloud Services And Azure
While today’s mobile devices are incredibly powerful, there is still processing and storage limitations that can be augmented by utilizing services in the cloud. In this session, we will explore scenarios where consuming web services make sense and consider how this benefits our users. Next we will create a Windows Phone application using available Web API’s. Then we will review the Windows Azure platform and discuss how Azure fits. Finally, we will integrate our own Windows Azure services into our Windows Phone app which will result in a Cloudy Mobile App.

One of the two things that I invest lots of energy into at Centare, and am extremely passionate about, is Cloud Computing with Windows Azure. The other is our new Chicago office, but expanding our business into Chicago is likely not interesting for the Dallas crowd. But, if you want to learn more about the Cloud, Platform as a Service, Windows Azure, Windows Phone and practical guidance for using Windows Azure, come checkout my talks this weekend at Dallas TechFest 2011.

I hope to see you in Dallas this weekend!

St. Louis Day of .NET Follow-Up and Slides

St. Louis Day of .NET was a blast! Thank you to everyone who made this event possible. This was truly one of the best events I had ever been to, both regionally and nationally. If you are in the St. Louis area, do not miss STLDODN next year!

I personally enjoyed meeting a ton of folks and presenting about OData, Windows Azure DataMarket, Massive Scalability and Making Money with Windows Phone. I also really enjoyed all of the side conversations about these topics and discussions of how they relate to the Cloud and Windows Azure.

If you attended my sessions and would like the slides, the following links are for you.
Consuming Data From Many Platforms: The Benefits of OData
Architecting for Massive Scalability
Overview of the Windows Azure Marketplace DataMarket
Making $$$ with Windows Phone 7

If you have questions or would like to know more, feel free to ping me and I’ll point you in the right direction.