Month: December 2010

What is AzureFest?

• AzureFest is an event where you’ll see how quick and easy it is to develop and deploy cloud applications with Windows Azure.
• We’ll show you how to set up an Azure account and then take a traditional ASP.NET application and turn it into an Azure application.
• AzureFest is run by ObjectSharp with the assistance of Microsoft Canada. ObjectSharp is a Toronto-based company that specializes in building software for customers and training developers (and they‘ve helped us a great deal with TechDays!). ObjectSharp is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. They’re also very personable, very funny people.
• AzureFest happens this Saturday, December 11th at Microsoft Canada’s Mississauga office (1950 Meadowvale, off Mississauga Road, just north of Highway 401), and there are two sessions:
  • Morning session: 9:00 a.m. to noon
  • Afternoon session: 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• Azurefest is FREE! Just visit the AzureFest page for registration details.

What Will You Learn?

• How to set up your Azure account
• How to take a traditional ASP.NET application that would typically live in an on-premises server or at a hosting service and deploy it to the Azure cloud
• How to publish applications to the Azure Developer Portal
• How to set up the Azure SDK and Azure Tools for Visual Studio on your laptop
• How to use AppFabric

What Will We Provide?

• The tools you’ll need to install on your machine to prepare yourself for Azure
• Hands-on instruction and expert assistance
• Post-event technical resources so you can continue learning afterwards and take your skills to the next level
• Power and network access
• Snacks and refreshments

What Do You Need to Bring?

• Your own laptop, which should be capable of running Microsoft’s developer tools (A machine with a decent processor and RAM running at least Windows Vista, or preferably, Windows 7)
• A credit card – the event is free, but activating an Azure account requires a credit card, even if you’re setting up for a trial period.
• Some experience building ASP.NET applications and services

What’s This About a Bonus for My User Group?

• For each Azure account activation by a member of a Microsoft/.NET user group at AzureFest, we’ll donate $25.00 for that person’s user group. So invite all your friends from your user group to come to AzureFest and give your user group some extra funding! (When you register for AzureFest, the registration page will ask them which user group they belong to, so we’ll know how much to give each user group.)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

For most people, TechDays ends after the last speaker has finished his or her presentation, the requisite goodbyes have been said, the last of the cookies has been taken from the snack tables and everyone has shuffled out the door and back into reality.

For us, TechDays stretches on a little longer. Even though we’ve got support staff like Starshot, our event planning team, and AVW-TELAV, our A/V specialists, we do a fair bit of the legwork ourselves, which includes setting up and tearing down the demo machines in all the session rooms, the internet access stations spread throughout the conference and the “Ask the Experts” and computers and Xbox in the Collaboration Lounge.

For Starshot’s perspective of TechDays, see their article Microsoft TechDays 2010: Calm at the Centre of a Perfect Storm.

Pictured below are Developer Evangelist John Bristowe playing the part of “Teamster Foreman”, supervising new Developer Evangelist Frederic Harper and IT Pro Evangelist Rick Claus as they put the computers into their shipping cases bound for the next destination, TechDays Calgary.

Once the machines have been put away, it’s time for the Day 2 post-mortem meeting, which is attended by both the TechDays organizers (which includes Yours Truly) and the Starshot folks.

Here are Fred checking his mail before the meeting starts, as Jenna Prada from Starshot chats up the rest of us:

John captures the moment on his phone as Damir Bersinic and Fred do some last-minute social networking:

And so begins the post-mortem! Here are Damir, Rick and Fred, each listing what worked, what didn’t and what could be improved. We do this at the end of each TechDays in each city, because if you’re not getting the most out of TechDays, we’re not getting the most out of TechDays either.

Here’s Jenna throwing in her two cents:

With TechDays Winnipeg wrapped up, we’ve got one city left: Calgary, which we’re visiting next week. TechDays Calgary takes place on Tuesday, December 14th and Wednesday December 15th at the Roundup Centre in Stampede Park. See you there!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

As one of the people behind TechDays, I have become a machine that turns caffeine into conferences:

Here are Dana Epp and John Bristowe chilling out in the speaker lounge:

At TechDays, we have a little post-mortem meeting at the end of each day to assess how the day went, what needs fixing, and to make notes for the next city.

TechDays Winnipeg wouldn’t been possible without our friends at Imaginet. Not only did they provide a large number of speakers (many of whom did more than one presentation), they also held an after party on the evening of Day 1. Here’s John Bristowe tearing up the dance floor playing Dance Craze – he’s making the “Superman” move to the tune Soulja Boy:

Here’s David Wesst talking about Visual Studio 2010 and web deployment:

Here’s the scene in the “Developing for Three Screens and the Cloud” track, where Aaron Kowall talked about Entity Framework 4:

Day 2 brought the second part of Mark Arteaga’s presentation on Windows Phone 7 development:

At the same time, Dave Harris presented on build automation with Visual Studio 2010:

The halls were busy with activity between sessions:

Here’s Damir Bersinic striking a rather Buddha-esque pose onstage at lunch:

Rick Claus did his usual excellent job MCing at lunch

Here’s D’Arcy Lussier practicing his Intimidating Luchador Look after his session on webforms and ASP.NET 4:

Francis Beaudet talked about making the best use of Expression Blend:

Aaron Kowall tossed T-shirts to people who correctly answered his pop quiz questions on web load testing:

Sitting at the back of the “Developing for Three Screens and the Cloud” room, these guys looked as if they were up to no good:

…but Jason The ignored them as he talked about SharePoint development for ASP.NET guys:

Final session of the final day! John Bristowe took the reins in the “Optimizing the Development Process” track with Visual Studio 2010 Tips and Tricks:

While Evan Hutnick schooled the audience on ASP.NET MVC:

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.