Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

I’ve attempted to list events of interest to the local Azure community – not just topics specific to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform. Know of any more cloud events of interest? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let everyone know about them by adding a comment.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

January 2012 Events

1. Cloud Mixer + talk featuring Satya Nadella

• when: Thu 26-Jan-2012
  5:00 – 6:15 – Networking with MassTLC’s Cloud Community
  6:15 – 7:15 – Presentation and Q&A with Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft
• where: NERD
• wifi: (usually)
• food: (perhaps during the networking segment?)
• cost: FREE,
• what:First a networking social – get to know other area folks interested in cloud, then the following:The transition to cloud computing has been talked about as one of the most profound shifts occurring in technology in decades. With the huge growth and broad range of computing devices increasingly available, we see a shift in “design point” to a world of connected devices and continuous services. In this talk, Satya Nadella, President, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft, will share what he learned running a global online service, Bing, and how these lessons are informing the direction of Microsoft’s cloud strategy.Nadella is one of very few people in the world who can speak first-hand about running an extremely large-scale cloud computing business. Having previously led R&D for Microsoft’s Online Services Division, which includes Bing and MSN, Nadella has practical and deep experience with cloud both from a technical and business perspective. Today, Nadella brings these experiences to bear in his current role, which includes accountability for the overall business and technical vision, strategy, operations, engineering and marketing for Microsoft’s $17+ billion Server and Tools Business.Join us to hear how Microsoft is focused on building a platform that spans public and private clouds to enable businesses to take advantage of this new design point.
• more info: http://126cloudmixer.eventbrite.com/
• register: http://126cloudmixer.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: @MassTLC and #CloudMixer

February 2012 Events

2. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is Different & Hadoop

• when: Tuesday February 7, 2012, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: FREE
• what: Architecting for Failure: Why Cloud Architecture is different – a talk by Michael Stiefel + a shorter intro talk on Hadoop on Windows Azure (currently in CTP) by Bill Wilder
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38945872/
• twitter: #bostonazure

3. Mass TLC Summit: The Big Data Disruption

• when: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 from 8:00 AM to noon
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access expected
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: Costs money – see registration for details
• what: (quoted from registration site): “Join us as we take a deep dive into the future outlook of big data and how it is going to impact the tech industry down the road.
  

  Keynote Speaker:  Living Smarter

Session 1 – Crossing the Big Data Chasm
Moderated by: Mike Stonebraker, Professor, MIT
Panelists to date:
Fritz Knabe, Distinguished Engineer, Netezza
Christopher Ahlberg, Chief Executive Officer/Co-Founder, Recorded Future
This session will explore the hype versus reality of Big Data. Discussion will include the transformational opportunity it represents for the technology industry and offer a true perspective on why One Size Doesn’t Fit All. Panelists will discuss the different tools and approaches for a variety of outcomes.

Session 2 – From Hype to Reality
Moderated by:  Andy Palmer, Startup Specialist
Panelists to date:
Puneet Batra, Chief Data Scientist, Kyruus
This panel session will take a deep dive into the challenges, successes, failures and lessons learned of the early adopters of big data initiatives. The panelists will give insight using their own case studies as evidence of what has and has not worked.

• more info: http://21512bigdata.eventbrite.com/
• register: http://21512bigdata.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: @MassTLC #BigData

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Solving Access Control in the Cloud: from WIF to ACS

• when: Thu February 23, 2012, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks expected
• cost: FREE
• what: Solving Access Control in the Cloud: from WIF to ACS featuring Brock Allen – a deep dive into Claims, Windows Identity Foundation (WIF), and the Access Control Service (ACS) from Windows Azure
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: RSVP here
• twitter: #bostonazure

March 2012 Events

5. Windows Azure: Focus on your application. Not the infrastructure.

• when: Thu March 8, 2012, 8:30 AM – noon
• where: 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA (directions)
• wifi: not needed
• food: coffee!
• cost: FREE
• what: (quoted from registration site)
  Microsoft Windows Azure and Microsoft SQL Azure enable you to build, host and scale applications in Microsoft datacenters. They require no up-front expenses, no long term commitment, and enable you to pay only for the resources you use. Windows Azure is about flexibility and adaptability; whether your application can or should run 100% in the cloud, or leverage components on-premise in a hybrid cloud, Windows Azure is the most comprehensive cloud platform.The #1 question we hear, from our customers, is “How can my business benefit from Windows Azure?”.

  Come join us in Waltham, MA on Thursday, March 8, 2012 to learn the business benefits of Windows Azure and SQL Azure and hear real world customer examples of how Windows Azure improves your business Agility while directly Reducing your Costs.

  The target audience for this event includes BDMs, TDMs, Architects, and Development leads. The sessions are targeted at the 100-200 level with a mix of business focused information as well as technical information.

• more info: See the registration page for more info
• register: RSVP here
• twitter:

—–

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Jim introduced cloud and presented specifics on Blob and Table storage services and SQL Azure. I had the opportunity to present one of the sections – mine was a combination of Windows Azure Compute services + the Windows Azure Queue service with some basics around using these services to assemble “cloud native” applications. The official slides for the Windows Azure DevCamp series appear to be here, though my slides were a little different and are also available (WindowsAzureDeveloperCamp-FarmingtonCT-07Dec2011-BillWilder). At the end, Jim also ran through the creation of a RockPaperAzure “bot” and it was (literally!) game on as attendees raced to create competitive entries.

I took a few photos at the event – some of Jim presenting, some showing participants at the end coming to claim their prizes from the RockPaperAzure challenge – and none from the middle!

I spoke about Cloud Architecture Patterns like sharding, NoSQL, queue-based compute separation for scalability and reliability – with specific examples from the Windows Azure Platform such as SQL Azure Federations, Azure Table Storage, and Web Role + Queue + Worker Role patterns. The slides from my talk are here: nsnug-big-ideas-in-software-architecture-bill-wilder-14-dec-2011. (UPDATE: Note that I don’t seem to have the exact deck I used for the talk. As Ryan CrawCour pointed out, the deck I posted claims that SQL Azure is limited to 50 GB and Federations has not yet shipped, but at the talk I am certain I presented the 150 GB limit and a recently released Federations. I think I made the changes on the train en route to the event and somehow didn’t save them. Sorry! We’ll need to live with this small skew. Post a comment here if there are questions…)

There was definitely some good discussion and many questions. In fact, the following question came up, and I didn’t have a great response, but turns out there’s a timely response from Mr. SQL Azure Federations himself: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbiyikoglu/archive/2011/12/15/so-isn-t-the-root-database-a-bottleneck-for-federations-in-sql-azure.aspx

Also hope to see some nsnug folks at future Boston Azure User Group meetings and our planned Boston Azure Bootcamp in June 2012!

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

I’ve attempted to list events of interest to the local Azure community – not just topics specific to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform. Know of any more cloud events of interest? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let everyone know about them by adding a comment.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

November 2011 Events

1. Cloudy Mondays

• when: Mon 14-Nov-2011, 5:00 – ?:?? PM
• where: Small Business Development Center (note: NOT Venture Development Center!), 100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA
  wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and spirits were provided last time)
• cost: FREE
• what: Discuss Amazon’s cloud: launching projects on AWS, comparing AWS to other public clouds, etc. One speaker is Jason Haruska, Chief Architect at Backupify. Vikram Kumar, CTO and Founder of OfficeDrop.com, will also be discussing how OfficeDrop.com launched using AWS.
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/events/39091772/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/events/39091772/
• twitter: (not sure)

2. Cloud Roundtable – Business in the Cloud -

• when: Tue 15-Nov-2011, 3:00 - 5:30 PM (updated: start time is officially 3:00 PM)
• where: Boston College Club, 100 Federal St., Boston, MA
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (looks like cocktails and hors d’oeuvres towards the end)
• cost: FREE
• what: From the description on the web site: “The cloud is a fundamental paradigm shift from our current or past thinking about scalable architecture and there are security tradeoffs:  less control of data, new vulnerability classes, and compliance challenges.  However, if managed properly, these risks can be mitigated. This interactive seminar will discuss the challenges of cloud computing, demonstrate how to build a secure and redundant system, and touch upon real-world examples of cloud computing gone bad.”
• more info: http://web.securityinnovation.com/boston
• register: http://web.securityinnovation.com/boston
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Introduction to Cloud, Windows Azure, Azure Dev Tools

• when: Thu 17-Nov-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Get ramped up on Cloud and Windows Azure – what is this cloud thing all about? How does the Windows Azure Cloud Platform fit in? And how can you get started using Visual Studio and the Windows Azure tools? Get all these questions answered in one night!
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38944852/
• twitter: #bostonazure

December – 2011 Events

4. Azure is on the Road! December Road Trip…

At a variety of locations (far from Boston, but at least regional):

• Check out Jim O’Neil’s blog post on the road show: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimoneil/archive/2011/11/04/taking-the-cloud-on-the-road.aspx

5. Testing in the Cloud with Boston Web Performance Group

• when: Tue 06-Dec-2011: 6:30-7:15 Eat pizza and meet other members, 7:15-8:15 Presentation, 8:15-9:00 Q&A, general socializing and more pizza eating
• where: Wayfair Offices – 177 Huntington Ave, 177 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA (map) Come up to the 24th floor, call 802-522-6294 with issues
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Speaker: Dan Bartow on Testing in the Cloud – description from event site: “Achieving real performance on the web begins with realistic testing and an understanding of the application and it’s infrastructure.  Testing realistically and for real results across web & mobile applications means leveraging the
  cloud.  Agile development processes, complex multi-tier architectures, and the potential for massive (and sudden) load all require a different approach than
  historical apps.  Come hear from Soasta, the makers of the CloudTest platform and CloudTest Lite, about their experiences and why companies need to change their expectations about what “testing” means. Dan Bartow is Vice President and CloudTest Evangelist at SOASTA, the leader
  in performance testing from the cloud. Prior to joining SOASTA he was Senior Manager of Engineering at Intuit, where his team was responsible for the speed and stability of TurboTax Online, the #1 rated, best-selling online tax software. Over the past decade he has been responsible for the speed and
  scalability of websites for such well-known brands as American Eagle Outfitters, AT&T, Best Buy, Finish Line, J.Crew, Neiman Marcus and Sony Online
  Entertainment, among others. Dan has set multiple industry precedents including launching the worlds largest stateful JBoss cluster and using over 2000 cloud computing cores to generate load against a live web site.  Dan is a frequent industry presenter and has spoken at leading testing and cloud computing
  conferences such as Software Test & Performance (STP), O’Reilly’s Web2.0 Expo, Amazon Web Services Road Show, and SYS-CON’s Cloud Computing Expo.” Visit the event web site to view the Cloud Testing Bill of Rights.
• more info: See http://www.meetup.com/Web-Performance-Boston/events/38442872/ for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Web-Performance-Boston/events/38442872/
• twitter: @JonathanKlein

6. Boston Azure User Group December

• when: Tue 13-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: Yes
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Azure-related topic(s) to be announced.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/38945582/
• twitter: #bostonazure

7. Cloud Architecture Patterns at North Shore .NET User Group

• when: Wed 14-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: EBSCO Publishing, 10 Estes Street, Ipswich, MA (map)
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (Food is either available … or provided .. not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: Cloud Architecture Patterns (generally), then see how the Windows Azure Platform helps you realize these patterns. Speaker is Bill Wilder, Boston Azure user group leader, Windows Azure MVP, and an Independent Azure Consultant.
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/North-Shore-NET-User-Group/events/40679722/?a=ea1.2_lnm&rv=ea1.2
• register: http://www.meetup.com/North-Shore-NET-User-Group/events/40679722/?a=ea1.2_lnm&rv=ea1.2
• twitter:

8. Using Windows Azure to Build Cloud Enabled Windows Phone Apps at Microsoft DevBoston

• when: Wed 14-Dec-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 (?) PM
• where: Microsoft Corporation 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA Hosted at NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA (directions)
• wifi: I don’t think so (given the location)
  food: (I am guessing there will be pizza, but not 100% sure, please check with the group organizers)
• cost: FREE
• what: “Speaker: John Garland This presentation will discuss how Windows Phone applications can be enriched by leveraging the power of the Cloud that is made available by Windows Azure. The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone will be explored to show how to quickly tap into resources in the cloud for computation, storage, identity, and communication from within a Windows Phone application.”
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/DevBoston/events/39064112/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/DevBoston/events/39064112/
• twitter: (not sure about the event, but John Garland can be found at https://twitter.com/#!/search/dotnetgator)

—–

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Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/thewazir/4232029536/sizes/s/in/photostream/

I believe we are the oldest Windows Azure user group in the world, still going strong. Our first meeting was held in October 2009, less than a year after Windows Azure was announced at PDC 2008, and a few months before it went RTW for real (which was, I believe, January 2010).

Now, back to our Oct meeting. Here are links to a few topics mentioned:

• The Enterprise Library Integration Pack for Windows Azure includes two new blocks: Autoscaling Application Block (“WASABi”) and Transient Fault Handling Application Block. Beta bits are available. http://entlib.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=EntLib5Azure, http://blogs.msdn.com/b/avkashchauhan/archive/2011/10/14/windows-azure-autoscaling-application-block-wasabi-beta-is-ready-for-you-to-try.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/10/27/microsoft-lowers-storage-cost-for-blob-and-table-storage-in-windows-azure.aspx
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2011/10/19/announcing-improved-in-place-updates.aspx
• http://www.cumulux.com/fall-2011-and-build-azure-related-new-features/
• http://www.davidaiken.com/2011/10/10/implementing-windows-azure-retry-logic/

Also, here is the slide deck from the main presentation – given by yours truly (that’s me, Bill Wilder) – called Big Ideas in Software Architecture (Cloud and Otherwise):

• PPTX file: boston-azure-big-ideas-in-software-architecture-cloud-and-otherwise-bill-wilder-27-oct-2011

At the meeting we also discussed some topics for future meetings. Here is that list (okay, I actually can’t find the list – may have forgotten to save it – sorry – so going from memory here) — note this list is in no particular order:

1. Introduction to Cloud, Azure, and developing for Windows Azure
2. More hands-on with the platform
3. Using languages, libraries, and software other than .NET/Microsoft – e.g., Java, Python, Node.js, NoSQL (MongoDB), …
4. Idempotency – look at a more challenging case than a simple thumbnailer
5. Security in the Cloud
6. Comparing Cloud platforms
7. Azure AppFabric topics: Service Bus, Caching, Access Control Service (can Curt come back?), …
8. More architecture patterns

WHAT ARE OTHER TOPICS YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE? Please leave a comment, email me, or suggest via twitter (me: @codingoutloud or to the community: @bostonazure).

Like last year, the class was engaged, asking tough and interesting questions… which is all the more impressive since this class meets on FRIDAY NIGHT. Must be a Harvard thing… Anyhow, we went from around 5:30 – 8:00… ON FRIDAY NIGHT.

Below are the resources I mentioned at the end of my talk, and the slide deck I used is here: Harvard-WhyAzureIsAwesome-Bill-Wilder-04-Nov-2011

Also, hope to see all of you at Boston Azure user group meetings! Feel free to contact me with any follow-up questions.

The slide deck Jim O’Neil used is here, plus here are a few action shots of Jim doing his thang:

I also attended some cool talks – Brock Allen spoke about WIF, David Padbury on node.js, and Dominic Denicola on various Async approaches like Promises. Good time as usual! No after-event celebrating – everyone is running for cover due to the Nor’easter!

If you are interested in learning more about the Windows Azure Platform, please come join us at a Boston Azure cloud user group meeting. Details at www.bostonazure.org. We meet every month to learn about Azure. Sometimes we learn through prepared talks, sometimes we hold training events, and sometimes coding/hackathons. We are the oldest such user group in the world, turning two years old this month. Hope to see you!

Our next meeting is Thursday November 17 (the Thursday before Thanksgiving), featuring a very Azurey talk by Chris Rolon of Neudesic.

Got Azure Question? I am also a Windows Azure MVP for Windows Azure and know a thing or two about the platform. I am happy to answer questions you may have. Feel free to contact me on twitter (@codingoutloud) or by email (which is my twitter handle at gmail.com).

Azure On!

For my part, I attended a number of interesting sessions (especially the frighteningly entertaining talk by Francis Brown on using Google and Bing to hack (or protect) web properties). Due to scheduling challenges, I missed Andrew Wilson‘s talk on Reversing Web Applications, which I wanted to check out.

For my part, I offered a Birds-of-a-Feather session on Securing Applications in the Cloud (with examples drawn from Windows Azure Platform). In this session, I reviewed both pros and cons of cloud deployments from a security point of view, and attempted to make the case that, ultimately, either your applications will simply be safer in the cloud, or at least if you want them to be sufficiently safe, it will be more cost-effective to let the specialists at Microsoft (or some other trusted cloud vendor) handle much of the dirty work.

This session was interesting for me to put together and then go through with an intimate crowd (due, at least in part I suppose, to (me) changing the scheduled time slot after the conference schedule went to the printer… D’oh! … that combined with the seeming invisibility of the BoF sessions generally). Anyhow, it was still fun to discuss, and here is the slide deck I used: OWASP Boston – BoF – Securely Running Applications in Cloud (examples drawn from Windows Azure Platform) – Bill Wilder – 08-Oct-2011.

Here are a few links that folks attending might have been told about, plus a couple of answers I offered to gather offline.

Where can I get the materials used in the Bootcamp?

• The materials live here: http://www.azurebootcamp.com/materials
• However, as I explained at the bootcamp, the actual materials used at our sessions were a mix of what is posted on the web and some slide decks that had been updated (mostly for the Azure SDK 1.5, but also other changes in some cases). So you can pull the materials as linked to above and you’ll be pretty close, but the updated ones are not yet publicly posted.

How can I see what’s in Windows Azure Storage?

• In addition to the tools we showed (such as Visual Studio and Cerebrata Cloud Storage Studio), there’s a useful, free storage browser on the web: https://www.myazurestorage.com/Containers, and an Explorer-like browser as Open Source on CodePlex here: http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

How can I track changes/upgrades to Windows Azure Guest OS?

• (There might be an RSS feed, but I can’t find it if there is..) A lower-tech approach is to use a service like https://www.changedetection.com/ for monitoring the Windows Azure Guest OS page at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff729422.aspx

Does Azure use Hyper-threading?

• No

Where can I learn more about the Windows Azure Platform?

• Start coming to Boston Azure User Group meetings! Check out http://www.bostonazure.org - meetings are monthly at NERD – schedule now managed at http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure

Where can I read more?

• Insight from the big brains at Microsoft:
• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/whitepapers/
• http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazurestorage/

Who should I thank for this event?

• You can thank our TWO MAJOR SPONSORS: This event was provided free to you because our Gold Sponsor SNI TECHNOLOGY generously sponsored the food, and Microsoft NERD donated the space. Many thanks to these major sponsors!
• Without these sponsors this event would simply not have happened.
• You can thank our swag sponsors: O’Reilly (books), Pluralsight (training), Cerebrata (licenses), Packt Publishing (books), and Microsoft (books and licenses).
• And you can thank the Boston Azure Bootcamp team which included (in alphabetical order): Andy Novick (who led the SQL Azure segment), Arra Derderian (helped during labs), George Babey (“swag guy” – and helped during labs), Jim O’Neil (lab-time tech support, lecture-time answer-man), Joan Wortman (ran the registration), Maura Wilder (who led the Azure Table Storage segment – and helped during labs), Nazik Huq (“twitter guy” – plus made sure there was food – and helped during labs), and William Wilder (yes, that’s me; you can call me “Bill” but wanted to be listed last…). Also, many thanks to Martha O’Neil for baking us a cloudy cake.

We are planning another Boston Azure Bootcamp in 2012. Stay tuned!

Update 22-Oct-2011: Here is contact info for our Gold sponsors at SNI TECHNOLOGY:

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

updates: Added Tech Boston event + more details on Boston Azure

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

October Events

1. Mongo Boston

• when: Mon 03-Sep-2011, 9:00-5:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Provided
• cost: $30
• what: The main Azure-related content is a talk by Jim O’Neilon using Mongo with the Windows Azure Platform – from the published program description: “MongoDB in the Cloud, Jim O’Neil - Developer Evangelist, Microsoft: MongoDB is synonomous with scale and performance, and, hey, so is cloud computing! It’s peanut butter and chocolate all over again as we take a look at why you might consider running MongoDB in the cloud in general and also look at the alpha release of MongoDB on Azure, a collaboration from 10gen and Microsoft.”
• more info: http://www.10gen.com/events/mongo-boston-2011
• register: http://www.10gen.com/events/mongo-boston-2011
• twitter: @mongodb

2. Cloud Camp

• when: Thu 06-Oct-2011, 5:15 – 8:30 PM (then after-party)
• where: CloudCamp Boston #5 is Co-located with the OpenStack Design Summit. Intercontinental Hotel, 510 Atlantic Ave, Salon A (between Congress St & Fort Hill Wharf), Boston, MA 02210
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and beer were offered last time)
• cost:
• what: (from the event description on cloudcamp.org) “CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas.  With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place where we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions.  At CloudCamp, you are encouraged to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing.  End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.”
• more info: http://www.cloudcamp.org/boston
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Boston Tech: What Can Cloud Do for YOU?

• when: Mon 24-Oct-2011, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: “You’ve probably seen the “to the cloud” commercial and are aware of the hype
  that makes cloud computing sound like the next best thing since sliced bread,
  but do you really know what cloud computing is? And what it’s not? When does it
  make sense? And when doesn’t it? What does it mean to us as software developers,
  startup entrepreneurs, and end-users? And how do you sort through all of the
  vendors and offerings to determine whose cloud portfolio offers the most value
  to you? We’ll look at all of these questions and more as we spend the evening
  navigating through the cloudscape.” (text taken from the Meetup listing)
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/BostonTech/events/33357482/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/BostonTech/events/33357482/
• twitter:

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Cloud Architecture Patterns

• when: Thu 27-Oct-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Featured talk: “There are some big ideas in software architecture that are particularly relevant for cloud platforms. In this talk we will introduce a few of these big ideas – eventual consistency, scale out, and design for failure – and discuss the implications of these big ideas on cloud application architecture generally, with specific examples of useful patterns and services drawn from the Windows Azure Platform.” There will also be a shorter opening topic.
• more info: See our (new) Boston Azure Meetup.com site for more info
• register: http://www.meetup.com/bostonazure/events/35904052/
• twitter: #bostonazure

5. New England Code Camp #16

While not strictly an Azure-only event, there will be Azure content at this community-driven event. Hope to see you there!

• when: Saturday, October 29, 2011 9am–6pm
• where: Microsoft Office on Jones Road in Waltham
• wifi: (usually just for speakers)
• food: (usually pizza, sometimes donuts)
• cost: FREE
• what: It’s a Code Camp!
• more info: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cbowen/archive/2011/08/24/new-england-code-camp-16-october-29th-save-the-date.aspx
• register (for speakers and all attendees): http://codecampboston.eventbrite.com/
• twitter:

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

I presented a talk in the morning called Cloud Architecture Patterns for Mere Mortals (with Examples in Windows Azure). If you are interested, my slide deck is attached: Vermont Code Camp III – Cloud Architecture Patterns for Mere Mortals – Bill Wilder – 10-Sept-2011 (also available on Slideshare)

Also, you are all invited to the (free) Boston Azure Bootcamp to be held in the Boston area (Cambridge, MA) on Friday September 30 and Saturday October 1. Sign up here, and please help spread the word. Hope to see some Vermont Code Camp friends there! Let me know if you have a strong desire to “couch surf”, especially on the middle night, and I’ll see if I can help out. Tickets won’t last forever, so I encourage you to sign up sooner than later.

Thank you to all the Vermont Code Camp III organizers, volunteers, and sponsors - like last year, this was an inspired event and I’m glad I made the trip. Find them on Twitter at @VTCodeCamp.

A handful of Vermont Code Camp photos follow… (and a couple from Sunday night on Church Street in Burlington)

This month’s July Boston Azure User Group meeting was up for the challenge.

• In the opening act, Bill Wilder (that’s me) introduced the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games (see also the Cloud Cover episode 52 which also talks about the toolkit). You can find Bill on Twitter @codingoutloud.
• Mark Eisenberg of Microsoft then shared some great insights about the cloud and the Windows Azure Platform – what they really are, why they matter, and how they fit into the real world. You can find Mark on Twitter @azurebizandtech.
• Marshall Rosenstein then talked about building social games for Facebook with an Azure back-end. Marshall’s slides are on his skydrive here (the slides are here, the code download is here). You can find Marshall on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/marshall.rosensteina) and on Twitter @mrosenstein.
• We wrapped up the meeting with a short live demonstration of the Windows Azure Portal doing its thing. Then a few of us retired to the Muddy.

Hope to see you at the Boston Azure meeting in August (Windows Phone 7 + Azure), two meetings in September (one in Waltham (first time EVER), and the “usual” one at NERD), and then kicking off a two-day Boston Azure Bootcamp!

Details on ALL upcoming Boston-area events of interest to Azure folks (that I know about) can be found in this blog post about Boston-events in August and September. Those hosted by Boston Azure are also at www.bostonazure.org and the upcoming events page.

[Note - this post originally was mis-titled to say July and August instead of the correct August and September. I have not changed its URL, but did fix the title.]

Since this summary page is – by necessity – a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

Events are listed in the order in which they will occur.

August Events

1. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Special Guest John Garland on Windows Phone

• when: Thu 25-Aug-2011, 6:30 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Windows Phone 7 expert John Garland (a Senior Consultant at Wintellect) is the featured speaker. John’s presentation will show how the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 can be used to quickly create Azure-enabled applications for the Windows Phone platform.  This talk will also include a discussion of some of the new features available in the Windows Phone “Mango” release due later this Fall (update), and how they can be used to further enhance the experience of working with Azure-based applications.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date
• register: here
• twitter: #bostonazure

September Events

2. Vermont Code Camp 2011

While not strictly a “Boston-area” event, this may be of interest still. I attended Vermont Code Camp 2010 as both an attendee (hitting lots of great sessions) and as a speaker (spoke about Azure, of course). There was a great deal of buzz and energy at the event. There was also major swag – some really good stuff. I don’t know what this year will hold, but they did set a pretty high bar last year across the board. I will be attending again this year (and have proposed a talk: Applying Architecture Patterns for Scalability and Reliability to the Windows Azure Cloud Platform). Hope to see you there!

• when: Saturday, September 10, 2011 8am–6pm
• where: Kalkin Hall on the University of Vermont campus in Burlington, VT
• wifi: (I think so)
• food: (Pretty sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: It’s a Code Camp! (from http://vtcodecamp.org/):  “Last year’s event had four rooms with sessions on .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python, and more. Two of the rooms had .NET topics and another had sessions on free/open source software. There was a fourth room where developers were introduced to various technologies that they may not use every day. Check back for details about Vermont Code Camp 2011 or follow us on Twitter.”
• more info: http://vtcodecamp.org/
• register: http://vtcodecamp.org/register/
• twitter: @VTCodeCamp

3. Cloudy Mondays

• when: Mon 19-Sep-2011, 5:00 – ?:?? PM
• where: Venture Development Center, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA
• wifi: (not sure)
• food: (not sure, though food and beer were offered last time)
• cost: FREE
• what: (topics not posted yet, though generally cloud and cloud startup-related)
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Cloudy-Mondays/
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting in Waltham: Special Guest Thom Robbins!

In this special event, the Boston Azure User Group is combining forces with both the Boston .NET Architecture Study Group and the New England ASP.NET Professionals Group to host this talk from Thom Robbins. Note the location is Waltham (not NERD).

• when: Wed 21-Sept-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at Microsoft Office in Waltham (201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA 02451 – come to the 6th floor) – ample free parking is available
• wifi: Wireless Internet access is NOT available to attendees
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Special Guest speaker is Thom Robbins

Kentico CMS: A Case Study in Building for Today’s Web

Building software is a set of smart choices to meet the needs of your customers and the possibilities of technology.  Today’s Web demands that customers have a choice in how they deploy their applications. With over 7,000 websites in 84 countries, Kentico CMS for ASP.Net is delivered as a single code base for use as a cloud, hosted, or on-premise solution. With over 34 out of the box modules and everything built on a SQL Server backend – How did we do it?  What tradeoffs did we make? In this session we will answer that question and look at how to build a rich and compelling website using Windows Azure.

About Thom Robbins

Thom Robbins is the Chief Evangelist for Kentico Software. He is responsible for evangelizing Kentico CMS for ASP.NET with Web developers, Web designers and interactive agencies. Prior to joining Kentico, Thom joined Microsoft Corporation in 2000 and served in a number of executive positions.  Most recently, he led the Developer Audience Marketing group that was responsible for increasing developer satisfaction with the Microsoft platform. Thom also led the .NET Platform Product Management group responsible for customer adoption and implementation of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio. Thom was also a Principal Developer Evangelist working with developers across New England implementing .NET based solutions. A regular speaker and writer, he currently resides in Seattle with his wife and son. He can be reached at thomasr@kentico.com or on Twitter at @trobbins.

• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date.
• register: (registration will open in early September)
• twitter: #bostonazure

5. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Special Guest Brian Prince!

• when: Thu 29-Sep-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Brian Prince - from Microsoft, and co-author of the most excellent Azure in Action book – is our featured speaker.
• more info: See the Boston Azure cloud user group site for more info, or join the (low volume) Boston Azure mailing list to keep most up to date.
• register: (will open in early September)
• twitter:

6. Boston Azure Bootcamp

• when: Fri/Sat Sep 30 – Oct 1 (full days, but start/end times are tbd)
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Expected to be provided, but details being worked out
• cost: FREE
• what:This free event is a two-day, hands-on bootcamp with the goal of learning a whole lot about the Windows Azure Platform. The primary programming environment will be Visual Studio 2010 (a free version is available). Coding will be primarily done in C#. (Other programming environments and other languages are available for Windows Azure. If you plan to program in other than Visual Studio and C#, please let us know it advance in the “Any Other Comments” section of the sign-up form.)The two days will largely consist of a sequence segments where important general topics in cloud computing will be introduced, and the Windows Azure approach will be discussed in detail. Each of these segments will include both a lecture by an Azure expert followed by a hands-on lab where you code a basic solution to get these concepts to really sink in. Azure experts will be in the room to help you with any questions or issues during labs.At the end of this two days, you will have learned key cloud and Windows Azure concepts, and have hands-on experience building, debugging, and deploying real applications. You need bring your own Azure-ready laptop – or let us know on the signup form if you would like a loaner – or would like to pair with someone for the coding part.
• more info: See the Boston Azure Bootcamp page on Eventbrite for more info
• register: Registration is LIMITED BY SPACE - register here
• twitter: #bostonazurebootcamp

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

The deck is attached at the bottom, after a few links of interest for folks who want to dig deeper.

Command Query Responsibility Segregation (CQRS):

• I’m a big fan of Bertrand Meyer‘s work, and I just learned that CQRS is based on his earlier CQR pattern
• Martin Fowler has a entry on CQRS (recently added, I will now read this)
• CQRS on Windows Azure  (MSDN Magazine article)
• .NET Rocks podcast: Episode 639 Udi Dahan Clarifies CQRS (That same podcast episode is also included in the Azure Top 40 feed that I curate: Azure Top 40 http://bit.ly/azuretop40)
• http://abdullin.com/cqrs/

Sharding is hard:

• Foursquare down for 11 hours from imbalanced shards: http://blog.foursquare.com/2010/10/05/so-that-was-a-bummer/ (though the High Scalability blog says it was longer)

NoSQL:

• NoSQL and the Windows Azure Platform whitepaper from Microsoft (which I found to be a very good read)

CAP Theorem:

• Wikipedia
• HA MySQL (interesting links)

PowerPoint slide deck used during my talk:

• DotNetArchStudyGroup_ArchitecturePatternsForScalabilityAndReliability_BillWilder_20July2011.pptx

• Development tools for Azure are available for free
• Azure provides an excellent cloud simulation environment on your desktop
• Not every application is a good fit for the cloud – for example, a small app that doesn’t need to scale and need not be highly available might fit better with a less costly hosted solution
• When comparing costs of Azure with other approaches, keep in mind that Azure is a robust, highly available, scable, flexible platform – what you get for your dollar is often of much greater value than the dollar you spend for some other types of solution
• Azure affords fantastic cost-saving opportunities through the flexible scale down model – don’t need a data or compute resource anymore? stop using it, and you’ll stop paying for it. Try that kind of “on-a-dime” manuever with a hosted solution, with hardware you purchase, or rack space you lease
• Azure services are available a la carte – though of course they are also a fantastic approach when used all together
• There are a number of ways to auto-scale, though don’t underestimate the boundary conditions and there are also some nuances

Since I did only give a taste of the Access Control Service, the plan discussed was for me to come back after the summer for a deeper dive into that fascinating topic.

Although I did not proceed linearly through it, here is the deck I used: [neasp.net-bill_wilder-intro-cloud-azure-acs-for-asp.net-devs-15-june-2011]. The Access Control Service (ACS) content did not include any slides – all talk and demo – though I gave a similar talk at Boston Azure back in February that used the following deck: [Solving the Identity Crisis-using-azure-cloud-access-control-service-(ACS)-talk-24-Feb-2011-Boston-Azure-User-Group] (Since then, the final ACS v2 has been release and changed a few things.)

Here’s how my day went:

1. Spoke about the cloud and Azure’s role in the cloud. Special thanks to Corinne, Sandra, and Matthew for the excellent questions and discussion. Here is the slide deck (new-hampshire-code-camp-3-concord-bill_wilder-demystifying_cloud_computing_and_azure-04-june-2011.ppt) – though I didn’t use much of it! – we freestyled a lot. Of particular interest to attendees of this talk. check out my post called “Azure FAQ: How much will it cost me to run my application on Windows Azure?” (actually posted “tomorrow” – the day after I posted this note from code camp).
2. Was torn between Phil Denoncourt‘s talk on “25 Things I’ve Learned about C# over the past 10 years” and Andy Novick‘s talk on SQL Azure. Ended up hanging out for Andy’s talk to see if there was anything new in SQL Azure and to get his take on the awesomeness that is SQL Azure Federations.
3. Lunch break
4. Spoke about Architecture Patterns for the Cloud. Here is the slide deck: New-Hampshire-Code-Camp-3-Concord-_bill_wilder_-_cloud_scalability_patterns_in_windows_azure_platform_-_04-june-2011 – we talked focused on three specific scalability patterns and how you might implement those on the Windows Azure Platform: Sharding, NoSQL Data (and eventual consistency), and CQRS.
5. Watched Udai Ramachandran talk about Windows Azure AppFabric Caching in the final session.

Thursday morning at 5:00 AM – my time, which is Eastern Time (Boston) – I will be delivering one of these sessions to the world. This is also 2:00 AM PST, and 10:00 AM UTC. But the key for me is that it is 5:00 AM in the morning in my time zone. Just sayin…

My “talk” is scalability concepts and patterns that are relevant for cloud applications, with most examples given using Windows Azure. I put “talk” in quotes since the video is pre-recorded – I will be there however answering questions – live – via Twitter. The public can join the free and easy-access broadcast, and participate via twitter using the #24HitC hashtag. (My personal Twitter handle is @codingoutloud.)

Speakers and Sessions are listed on GITCA’s site. Here is the Cloud Scalability Patterns – 24 Hours in the Cloud presentation as a PDF. I will update this post when (if?) a direct link to the video presentation becomes avaialble.

I look forward to meeting you on the Twitters in a few hours! I look forward to your candid feedback and tough questions.

Since this summary page is – by necessity - a point-in-time SNAPSHOT of what I see is going on, it will not necessarily be updated when event details change. So please always double-check with official event information!

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

[10-June-2011 - added the New England ASP.NET Professionals User Group talk on June 15; I am the featured speaker. Moved Kyle Quest's cloud hackathon to new date: June 16.]

1. 24 Hours in the Cloud – Cloud Scalability Patterns for the Windows Azure Platform

Note: GITCA’s 24 Hours in the Cloud event begins on Wed June 1 and ends on Thu June 2. This post just highlights the talk I am giving. There are MANY OTHER talks you may wish to check out. Many of the talks are IT Pro-oriented.

• when: Thurs June 2, 5:00 – 6:00 AM (yes, in the MORNING, Boston time) [changed to earlier still! I was rescheduled to begin at 5:00 AM!]
• where: Online – see below for registration
• cost: Free
• what: Talk on scalability patterns that are important for cloud applications; my session consists of a 40 minute (pre-recorded) talk, followed by 20 minutes of live Q&A. Since the talks are pre-recorded, speakers will be able to respond to questions from Twitter during the talk (then again in the live Q&A at the end) via the #24HitC hashtag. My twitter handle is @codingoutloud.
• more info & Register: http://sp.gitca.org/sites/24hours
• twitter: #24HitC

2. CloudCamp Boston

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 5:30 - ??? PM
• where: NERD Center in Cambridge
• wifi: yes
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Vendor-independent bar camp-style conference on whatever in the cloud is interesting to the audience
• more info: http://www.cloudcamp.org/boston
• register: http://cloudcamp-boston-2011.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: (not sure)

3. Beantown .NET Meeting – Architecture Patterns for Scalability and Reliability

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: NERD Center in Cambridge
• wifi: yes
• food: (I think there will be pizza)
• cost: FREE
• what: Talk by Bill Wilder (me) on architecture patterns that will help your applications scale and be more reliable.
• more info: http://blog.benday.com/archive/2011/05/27/Beantown-NET-Meeting-on-622011-Bill-Wilder-quotArchitecture-Patterns-for.aspx
• register: See instructions to send an email here
• twitter: (not sure)

4. Hack the Cloud – Cloud Platform Bake-Off

Moved to June 16th – see below

• when: Thu 02-June-2011, 6:00 PM – ???
• where: Nokia – 5 Wayside Road Burlington, MA
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Hacking event on multiple cloud stacks in order that they can be compared
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• twitter: (not sure)

5. New Hampshire Code Camp – Concord, NH

• when: Sat 04-June-2011, 8:00 – 4:00 PM
• where: New Hampshire Technical Institute 31 College Drive Concord, NH 03301
• wifi: not sure
• food: I think they do dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: In the Code Camp spirit, come learn many things from many people!
• more info: here or at www.nhdn.com
• register: here
• twitter: (not sure)

6. The Architect Factory

• when: Thu 09-June-2011, 1:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: (not sure of details yet)
• cost: FREE
• what: Real, Practical Guidance on becoming and Architect, or becoming a Better Architect
• more info: http://architectfactory.com/
• register: http://architectfactory-eorg.eventbrite.com/
• twitter: #architectfactory or #af3 (not sure which is “official”)

7. New England ASP.NET Professionals Group

• when: Wed 25-June-2011, 6:15 – 8:30 PM
• where: Microsoft Office on Jones Road, Waltham
• wifi: no
• food: group does to dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: A talk that introduces Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform and shows how it relates to the ASP.NET developer – tools, libraries, and how to build and deploy.
• more info: http://neasp.net/
• register: see http://neasp.net/
• twitter: (not sure)

8. Hack the Cloud – Cloud Platform Bake-Off

• when: Thu 16-June-2011, 6:00 PM – ???
• where: Nokia – 5 Wayside Road Burlington, MA
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE
• what: Hacking event on multiple cloud stacks in order that they can be compared
• more info: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud/
• twitter: (not sure)

9. 4th Annual Hartford Code Camp

• when: Sat 18-June-2011, 8:00 – 5:30 PM
• where: Hosted at New Horizons Learning Center (Bloomfield CT)
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: In the Code Camp spirit, come learn many things from many people!
• more info: http://ctdotnet.org/
• register: see http://ctdotnet.org/ until a direct link is published
• twitter: (not sure)

10. Boston Azure User Group meeting: Rock, Paper, Azure Event!

• when: Thu 23-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM (come at 5:30 if you need help getting set up)
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Bring your Windows Azure-ready laptop (or get a loaner, or pair up with someone) as we go head-to-head in an Azure programming contest (it is a simple game, but you will compete with others in the room). Also, there will be prizes – like an Xbox 360, Kinect, and other goodies.
• more info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details or see Jim O’Neil’s blog post on the event. Of special note is to request your free account (no credit card, etc. – easy), following details on Jim’s post - takes only a minute of YOUR time, but will help make sure you don’t need to wait for it on Thurs night – do it NOW!
• register: here
• twitter: #bostonazure

11. Maine Bytes: Azure State of the Union

• when: Thu 30-June-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: Unum’s Home Office 3 building at 2211 Congress Street in Maine
• wifi:
• food:
• cost: FREE
• what: Ben Day will give a talk: “Microsoft’s Azure platform moves fast and new features get added all the time. It can definitely be tough to keep up. In this session, Ben will give you a tour around the current features and offerings in Azure with some tips on how to use them in your applications and how to integrate Azure into your software development process.”
• more info: See http://www.mainebytes.org/ for details
• register:
• twitter:

Coming in July:

• Boston Azure User Group meeting on July 28
• And more? Please let me know in the comments if you know about an event relevant to those who care about the Windows Azure Platform

Omissions? Corrections? Comments? Please leave a comment or reply on the Twitters!

Here is the slide deck I used for the talk: Demystifying Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform.

"Bird's Nest" Panel

Some of the topics discussed:

• SaaS vs. PaaS vs. IaaS, including the blurring of the lines between them
• Scale Up vs. Scale Out vs. Scale back down — elastic scale means you pay for what you use — just start (or stop) using the resources you need and the billing will reflect this usage
• Scale has many dimensions, some of which are Geographic Distribution of and Number of Users, Amount of Data, and Needed Computation Power
• Cloud applications are architected differently, often decoupling user-facing functionality from services – the front-end may communicate with the back-end using a reliable queue (such as offered by Windows Azure); see CQRS pattern
• There are many application architecture concepts that are shared across applications built for most cloud vendors – for example, the loosely coupled front-end/queue/back-end scenario mentioned above can be implemented on Windows Azure (which provides Web Roles, reliable queues, and Worker Roles) or Amazon (which allows you to build and upload a Virtual Machines for front-end and back-ends, plus offers a reliable queuing service), other cloud platforms, and even on-premise – the cloud services just make these more natural to implement
• Improving latency for cloud applications might be facilitated through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), geographic load balancing (such as through Windows Azure Traffic Manager), and other techniques

Many thanks to all who participated, including:

• Tina Stewart (Program Manager for Windows Azure Traffic Manager), Federico Zoufaly from Artinsoft, and a few other folks who offered questions or comments from the floor;
• Those who watched and contributed remotely (see Twitter stream below);
• And especially those who joined me on stage in the “Bird’s Nest” as very active contributors: Jason Milgram (Windows Azure MVP, CEO of Linxter), David Pallmann (Windows Azure MVP, GM at Neudesic for Azure practice), Aaron Drenberg (Software Architect), and Artem Kazmerchuk (Software Architect) – thank you guys!

The BOF events were very well run by the INETA team (Chris Pels and a few others).

If you want a more structured treatment of some of the same scalability concepts, feel free to check out my talk on Cloud Scalability Patterns coming on June 1/June 2 via the GITCA “24 Hours in the Cloud” event. Here is the generic event description – follow the link to find out when my talk is slotted in.

If you have more questions on the topic, feel free to put in on twitter (@codingoutloud), you can comment on this blog post, or you can email me (coding out loud at gmail). And, finally, below you can find the  Twitter stream from the live event – latest on top, earliest on bottom – (which I salvaged via research.ly). Scale on!

@techedbof20117 hrs ago
BOF12-DEV on Cloud Computing is now coming to an end. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Mobile apps are a big area for growth in the cloud computing area.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Talking about moving existing apps to the cloud as we near the session conclusion.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
When you scale you can select the instance size in Azure. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Decoupling front end from back end processing is an important concept. #bofdev
#msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
For scaling, one experience is knowing how much work to do and
how much an instance can process in an hour. #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Would be nice if the Azure platform would monitor and scale for you.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
@itagsubbu Great to have you join us. #bofdev #msteched

@itagsubbu8 hrs ago
@techedbof2011 Thanks for asking my question. I am watching this live event.
#bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
@itagsubbu Yes you can scale either on a scheduled basis or in a programmatically
#bofdev #msteched

@itagsubbu8 hrs ago
@techedbof2011 #bofdev #msteched Can we scale up for certain period in an year?

@rileybeebs8 hrs ago
RT @jmilgram: Getting ready to attend Bill Wilder @codingoutloud Designing Scalable
Cloud Applications #bofdev session at TechEd #mstech ...

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
Gmail is an example of SaaS #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
How do you get resources to the cloud platform? #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
IaaS eliminates the infrastructure but you admin, for PaaS both roles are eliminated
#bofdev

@techedbof20118 hrs ago
As you scale out across geographically dispersed data centers what is the impact on
SQL Aszure costs? #bofdev

@jimoneil8 hrs ago
blurring of IaaS and PaaS is something interesting as well... becoming less of a
differentiator? #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Silverlight app has 50K updates/sec #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Silverlight app that was not designed for the cloud. What to do? #bofdev

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
Thoughts on WPF app w/ Azure backend? Are you doing that? #bofdev #msteched

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
BOF12-DEV on designing scalable cloud applications is getting started
#bofdev #msteched

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
RT @jmilgram: Getting ready to attend Bill Wilder @codingoutloud Designing Scalable
Cloud Applications #bofdev session at TechEd #mstech

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
@rileybeebs I haven't forgotten about you! just haven't been able to leave the
#BOFDEV sessions at all yet!

@TashasEv9 hrs ago
The next #MSTechEd #BOFDEV : Designing Scalable Cloud Applications lead by
@codingoutloud

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
The next #MSTechEd #BOFDEV : Designing Scalable Cloud Applications
lead by @codingoutloud

@techedbof20119 hrs ago
RT @jimoneil: RT @codingoutloud my 1:30 TechEd session on Designing Scalable
Cloud applications #msteched #bofdev << will be heckling from afar!

@jimoneil9 hrs ago
RT @codingoutloud my 1:30 TechEd session on Designing Scalable Cloud applications
#msteched #bofdev << will be heckling from afar!

At my talks, I mentioned the Windows Azure Pass – a 30 day FREE pass for using Windows Azure Compute (IIS or Worker Roles), SQL Azure, Azure Blobs/Tables/Queues, etc. If you didn’t get a handout at talk, no worries! – You can still access the offer: Go here and use Promo Code BILLONAZURE. Let me know if you have any questions or if you use the promotion.

Talks I attended:

• Maura Wilder and Joan Wortman‘s talk on the Ext JS JavaScript framework (which I learned has an incredibly rich widget library and robust  programming model).
• Richard‘s talk on becoming a better developer.
• Ben Day‘s talk on 7 Lessons Learned during his first large Silverlight dev project. Find out more by reading Ben’s article on same topic, starting here.
• Steve Maier‘s talk on using Azure-hosted WCF services to serve as your mobile application’s back-end.
• Chris Bowen on HTML 5.

My presentations (including links to the PowerPoint slide decks):

• Demystifying Cloud Computing (slides: NECC15 – Bill Wilder – Demystifying Cloud Computing and the Windows Azure Platform – 07-May-2011.pptx)
• Windows Azure and Scalability Patterns for Windows Azure (slides: NECC15 – Bill_Wilder – Cloud Scalability Patterns in Windows Azure Platform – 07-May-2011)

Many thanks to Chris Pels, Chris Bowen, and especially Patrick Hynes for such a great event! Thanks also to Telerik and Wintellect for sponsoring our food!

Also enjoying hanging out afterwards at Uno’s with Maura, Joan, George Babey, John Garland, Jesse Liberty, Pat Tormey, Chris, Veronica and Shawn Robichaud, Ron, and several other folks I didn’t get to say hello to…

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. New England Code Camp

• when: Sat 07-May-2011, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM
• where: Microsoft Waltham (Jones Road)
• wifi: (unknown, but probably just for speakers)
• food: Provided (usually pizza & salad)
• cost: Free
• what: Developer-focused mini-conference on a wide range of topics
• More info & Register: http://thedevcommunity.org

2. Jeffrey Richter from Wintellect will be presenting a free, in-person Windows Azure Deep Dive

• when: Mon 16-May-2011, all day
• where: Waltham
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE (registration required)
• what: Deep Dive on Windows Azure
• More info: See Jim O’Neil’s blog post for details
• Register: Note there are two ways to register from this page – in person, or webinar – the webinar is a link, but the in person event form is on this page directly: https://www.wintellect.com/Training/Webinar/Registration

3. NHDN – New Hampshire .NET – Concord

• when: Wed 25-May-2011, 6:00 – 8:00 PM
• where: New Hampshire Technical Institute 31 College Drive Concord, NH 03301, Grappone Hall, Room 106
• wifi: not sure
• food: I think they do dinner afterwards
• cost: FREE
• what: Demystifying the Cloud and an overview of Microsoft’s public cloud platform, Windows Azure
• More info: here
• Register: here

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting on PowerShell and how to use it with Windows Azure

• when: Thu 26-May-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE (registration appreciated)
• what: What is PowerShell, why do you care, and how can you use its awesome power to help with Windows Azure. PowerShell MVP Joel Bennett is the featured speaker.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: here

Coming in June:

• 24 Hours in the Cloud
• Cloud Camp Boston
• The Architect Factory
• Boston Azure
• Beantown .NET (Architecture Patterns in the cloud)
• Hartford Code Camp
• New Hampshire Code Camp
• And more? Please let me know in the comments if you know about an event relevant to those who care about the Windows Azure Platform

• What is the Cloud
• How does SQL Azure compare with SQL Server
• What are the other storage options available on the Windows Azure Platform

There were many interesting questions from the audience of 20 or so people – One asked (paraphrasing here..) “Are the Microsoft Data Centers resilient to the radiation expected from a nuke” to which I did not have a good answer. To another question, Jeff Mlakar (@JeffMlakar) offered helpfully that the SQL Azure Data Sync service is an option for SQL Azure backups to on-prem and with geo-replicating SQL Azure across data centers.

We didn’t get to the end of the material due to lots of discussion… but we did get through the most critical concepts.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. SQL Saturday #71

• when: Sat 02-Apr-2011, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM
• where: Babson College
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: Provided
• cost: Cheap (registration required)
• what: All about SQL and related topics
• More info & Register: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/71/eventhome.aspx

2. Cloud Platform Bake-Off led by Kyle C. Quest

• when: Fri 15-Apr-2011, 10:00 AM – ??? PM
• where: Hosted at Cafe On the Common, 677 Main Street Waltham, MA (but please DOUBLE CHECK the location at Meetup.com listing)
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: (unknown)
• cost: FREE, but pre-registration appears to be required
• what: “Putting different cloud platforms head to head is one of the original ideas for Cloud Hackathon. I’m sure lots of people are curious how each platform can measure up to its competition.” This is a coding/hacking event on Windows Azure plus Amazon EC3, Google App Engine, and maybe others.
• More info: See Meetup.com for details
• Register: See Meetup.com

3. Boston Azure User Group meeting with David Makogon as featured speaker

• when: Thu 28-Apr-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: Exact topics to-be-announced, but they will be awesome David Makogon from Microsoft will be featured speaker
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details (soon)
• Register: (soon)

Today at the Virtualization Boston Deep Dive Day 2011 event (put on by the Virtualization Group-Boston), I joined forces with the ITProGuru (aka Mr. Dan Stolts) to share some thoughts in a presentation on this megatrend – what’s going on, what it means for data centers, and what today’s IT Pro might expect from a Cloud-dominated future.

The slides are available here:

Cloud Computing Essentials for the IT Pro – Bill Wilder and Dan Stolts – 11-Mar-2011

The following was not a slide all by itself, but could have been – and I think I’ll use it next time for the simplest definition I can think of for understanding SaaS, PaaS, IaaS:

I also posted a twitter-sized definition of SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

They are listed in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Have any more information or corrections on the events listed? Please let us know in the comments.

1. TechNet Events Presents: Transforming IT with Cloud Computing Firestarter

• when: Tues 22-Mar-2011, 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM
• where: Hilton Garden Inn Boston/Waltham, Presidential Ballroom, 420 Totten Pond Rd, Waltham MA 02451
• wifi: (unknown)
• food: Provided
• cost: FREE (registration required)
• what: The day includes the following sessions:
  • Session 1: Cloud Computing Essentials for IT Pros
  • Session 2: Windows Azure for IT Pros
  • Session 3: Public Cloud: What, Why, and How
  • Session 4: Private Cloud: What, Why, and How
• More info & Register: https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032473675&Culture=en-US

2. Boston Azure User Group meeting with Casual Gaming Theme

• when: Thu 31-M ar-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• wifi: Wireless Internet access will be available
• food: Pizza and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: One of the fastest-growing cloud segments, casual gaming spans all age groups and regions of the world. Examine the architecture of one example of a casual gaming cloud app, review the common event logic used, learn how to add in-app purchasing and ways businesses can capitalize on these break-time diversions. Examples are draw from real-world development projects and use Windows Azure as the cloud platform. Jason Milgram is a Windows Azure MVP and the founder and CEO of Linxter, Inc., provider of message-oriented cloud middleware.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07e3h83p6o5f9da75a&oseq=

A Hackathon You Say?

Yes, a Hackathon. This is in-person event where folks show up and hack (write code). In our case, we will meet at Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA, and our hacking will be on Windows Azure-related code.

1. Rule #1: A Hackathon is fun! (Coding is fun when there is a lot of energy in the room… Plus, we’ll have give-aways – which always makes it even more fun, right?)
2. Rule #2: We learn something! (We all learn better by doing. Plus, we’ll have many book give-aways – another great way to learn!)
3. Rule #3: Aim to ship! (So don’t be overly ambitious with your idea – try to choose something that you can complete in the allotted time – then enhance it if you have extra time.)
4. Rule #4: Goto Rule #1! (Yes, recursion abuse. Extra credit at the Hackathon if you employ recursion appropriately.)

(Did you say Windows Azure? Yes, Windows Azure is Microsoft’s platform for writing applications that will run in the cloud.)

A code base that we expect will get a lot of attention is www.bostonazure.org, which is the community’s web site, but is also a real honest-to-goodness-in-production Azure application using features like Web Role, Blob Storage, Table Storage, SQL Azure (with OData), and Azure Diagnostics. (And also an open source project on CodePlex.)

We will break up into small teams based on which subprojects people want to work on and… get coding.

Here’s the approx schedule:

• 4:00-4:30 PM – Gather, get organized into teams, begin hacking! (We want this to be as efficient as possible so we maximize our time hacking. So please read the rest of this post to see how you can be prepared, such as by joining in the conversation on CodePlex in advance.)
• 4:30-8:15 PM – Hack! We will break for pizza, but otherwise will crank away.
• 8:15-9:00 PM – Show and Tell. What did you do? We will have fun seeing what everyone did, and some cool PRIZES and GIVEAWAYS. + +

Where and when?

Location: Microsoft NERD Center in Cambridge, MA. Parking available in the building (costs money), or take the T, or find on-street parking.

When: Wednesday February 16, 2011 from 4:00-9:00 PM. If you are late, that’s life, but something we can live with.

Food: Pizza will be provided.

What happens if I come late? Join a team when you get here. You will be “just in time” for something.

What do I need to do?

A few things:

1. Sign up so we know you are coming
2. Prepare your development laptop (www.bostonazure.org is running SDK 1.3)
3. Join the conversation in this thread on the CodePlex space for the Boston Azure Project (where we can discuss ideas in advance of the event so we can “hit the ground running”)
4. If you want to have access to a live, honest-to-goodness Azure-in-the-cloud instance of your own, please be sure to sign up A FEW DAYS IN ADVANCE for a Windows Azure Pass (use code: DPEA01). For very clear instructions, please check out Jim O’Neil’s screencast on signing up for Windows Azure Pass. Jim will be at the Hackathon helping out, and in case you don’t know him, Jim is definitely a friend of ours. [Note that an Azure development environment should be fine as well for most of us.]

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR OWN AZURE-CAPABLE DEV LAPTOP, then plan to pair up with someone who does…

What will we work on?

Here’s the rule: You can hack on anything you want that is either related to Windows Azure or related to the Boston Azure Community. The discussion thread mentioned above has some ideas. Add your ideas too.

This will break into three broad areas:

1. Ehancing or adding Azure capabilities to www.bostonazure.org (generally speaking, this is what the group calls the Boston Azure Project). This does not need to be limited to .NET or ASP.NET MVC. Post your ideas to CodePlex.
2. Writing Azure code unrelated to www.bostonazure.org (maybe a file upload utility, for example)
3. Enhancing the Boston Azure community in ways unrelated to using Azure itself. For example, if you want to build a WP7 app for the Boston Azure community, go for it (though that could have an Azure-enabled back end). If you want to add features to www.bostonazure.org in jQuery or make it HTML5-capable, go for it. If you want to create a favicon or a privacy policy for the site, go for it.

Use your imagination.

Wait – I am not an Azure expert – is that okay?

Yes, that’s okay. We will have some folks in the room who do understand Azure, so we will help you. However, of course, it is better if you get warmed up in advance. Install the Azure dev environment. Learn a bit about Azure in advance. Download the code from bostonazure.codeplex.com to see the code for the site.

Do you have a hashtag for Twitter?

Yes: #bostonazurehack.

The Boston Azure User Group has a twitter handle: @bostonazure. My personal twitter handle is @codingoutloud.

Who do we have to thank for all this awesomeness?

Microsoft NERD Center provides the space and the food (thanks Leah!).

Microsoft people help make it happen (thanks Jim O’Neil and Mark Eisenberg – each is a friend of ours!).

And the following sponsors are providing software and books for prizes:

+ +

The event is organized by folks from the Boston Azure User Group.

Here are the ones I know about, in the order in which they will occur.

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure community? Please let me know in the comments.

1. Maximizing Your Monthly Recurring Revenue

• when: Wed 02-Feb-2011, 11:30 – 2:00 PM
• where: Towne Stove & Spirits, 900 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, (near the T)
• food: Lunch will be served
• cost: FREE
• what: This is a business-focused lunch demonstration of how to incorporate the Zuora SaaS billing system into your cloud offering, including (of course) if the platform for your application or service is Windows Azure. Zuora has the Zuora Toolkit for Windows Azure.
• More info & Register: http://info.zuora.com/FY12Q1-BostonZ-TourRegistrationPage.html?mkt_tok=

2. Azure Hackathon hosted by Boston Azure User Group

• when: Wed 16-Feb-2011, 4:00 – 9:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: Food (pizza + maybe salad) and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused Hackathon – writing code for Windows Azure
• More info: Summary here, plus join the conversation on the Boston Azure Project’s CodePlex Discussion forum
• Register: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=v6qmy8dab&oeidk=a07e3aphcm081cb0d51

3. Azure Hackathon hosted by Cloud Hackathon Meetup Group

• when: Thu 17-Feb-2011, 6:30 – 9:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: (not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused Hackathon – writing code for Windows Azure
• More info: (tbd)
• Register: http://www.meetup.com/Hack-The-Cloud

4. Boston Azure User Group meeting with Cloud Security Theme

• when: Thu 24-Feb-2011, 6:00 – 8:30 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: Food (pizza + maybe salad) and drinks will be provided
• cost: FREE
• what: This is an Azure-focused event which will focus this month on Cloud Security with an emphasis on two areas: Data Security and Identity Management.In the main talk, Walt Lapinsky, VP Cloud Security at Purposeful Clouds, will dig into Data Security concerns for the cloud – generally, and as applied to Windows Azure. Walt has diverse background in this area, with over 40 years of proven expertise in supporting bet-your-business IT environments, including in the military and intelligence communities.In the opening talk, Bill Wilder will introduce how to create a Single Sign On (SSO) experience in the cloud using capabilities such as Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and Azure’s Access Control Service (ACS), including how to easily outsource your authentication to Facebook, Gmail, LiveId, or other existing providers – with Azure’s ACS and .NET’s WIF doing the heavy lifting.
• NOTE: If you are brand new to the Cloud and need to get oriented before jumping in deeper, check out the Boston WebsiteSpark item below which will happen on the same night and at the same location as the Boston Azure event.
• More info: See Boston Azure cloud user group site for details
• Register: http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=v6qmy8dab&oeidk=a07e3cxgt9k20c9c5bf

5. Introduction to Cloud Computing and Windows Azure

• when: Thu 24-Feb-2011, 6:00 PM
• where: Hosted at NERD Center
• food: (not sure)
• cost: FREE
• what: Mark Eisenberg  will tell us why cloud computing came to be and how it is defined and used.  As well as an overview of the development and deployment workflow. This is a great cloud computing 101 and how you can take advantage of cloud computing.
• More info: See Boston WebsiteSpark Group page for details
• Register: http://www.meetup.com/Boston-WebsiteSpark-Group/events/16409922/

Know of any more cloud events of interest to the Windows Azure cloud crowd? Please let me know in the comments.

Jim set up the platform, then in my half I focused on storage, then scaling and robustness architecture and design patterns for the cloud and how they are enabled by the Azure platform. My slides are here: bill-wilder-azure-services-and-patterns-for-cloud-native-apps-harvard-19-nov-2010.

The class was feisty – in a really good way - with lots of smart questions and spirited discussion. Due to all the questions and discussion, we went at least an hour over the scheduled class time, but nobody disengaged. A really good session.

1. Maura Wilder on JavaScript Debugging (@squdgy)
2. Jason Haley on Comparing the Azure and Amazon Cloud Platforms (@haleyjason)
3. Jim O’Neil on Dissecting the Azure @Home Application (@jimoneil)
4. Abby Fichtner on Lean Startups (@hackerchick)
5. MC’d by Abby, various folks talking about their experiences at startups — 4 talks jam-packed into a fast-paced one-hour session:
   1. Vishal Kumar of savinz.com (“mint.com for shopping”)
   2. Allison Friedman (@rateitgreen) of Rate It Green (“yelp for the green building industry”)
   3. Sean Creely (@screeley) of Embedly (“make friendly embedded links”) – a Y Combinator company providing a service for turning tweets containing media links into something more user friendly (e.g., embed inline YouTube video rather than a link taking you to YouTube)
   4. Marc Held (@getzazu) of getzazu.com (“alarm clock 2.0″)

At Uno’s afterwards, I enjoyed chatting with many folks, including Veronica and Shawn Robichaud (all the way from Maine!), John from BUGC and Blue Fin, Slava Kokaev, entrepreneurs Marc, Billy, Brian, Vishal, and Dan Colon, dev evangelists Jim O’Neil and Chris Bowen, Yilmaz Rona from Trilogy, and of course Maura.

At the Code Camp, I presented twice on Azure-focused topics:

1. Cloud Computing 101: Azure Style! – an introduction to cloud computing, and an overview of the services that Microsoft’s cloud stack offers
2. Building Cloud-Native Applications with Azure – a mind-blowing tour of some of the changes that await the technology community as we move our world into the cloud

The Boston Azure User Group is one year old! You can follow the group on twitter @bostonazure. You can also follow me on twitter @codingoutloud. And I hope to see you at the next Boston Azure meeting on Thurs October 21 from 6:00-8:30 PM at NERD (registration and more info).

I shared the stage with Mark Eisenberg of Microsoft who walked us through some of the features coming in the November update of Windows Azure. One of the sites Mark showed was the Open Source Windows Azure Companion.

Hope to see you next month when Ben Day will talk about how Windows Azure and Silverlight can play nice together.

For up to date information on Boston Azure, follow Boston Azure on twitter (@bostonazure),  keep an eye on the group’s web site (bostonazure.org), or add yourself to the low-volume email announcement list.

^[†] Yes, I also founded and run the Boston Azure User Group, but it is my first time having the honors as the main speaker.

I presented a talk on Building Cloud-Native Applications using Microsoft Windows Azure. My slides are available as a PPT download and on slideshare.net.

<aside>Maura and I went to Vermont a day early. We put that time to good use climbing to the summit of Vermont’s highest mountain: Mt. Mansfield. We hiked up from Underhill State Park, up the Maple Ridge Trail, over to the Long Trail, up to the summit, then down the Sunset Ridge Trail (map). It was a really tough climb, but totally worth it. I think the round trip was around 7 miles.

</aside>

My slides can be downloaded here (which is hosted on Azure Blob storage!).

I also have  plans for a few more Azure-related talks in the near future:

1. First up is Building Cloud-Native Applications with Windows Azure – at the Vermont Code Camp on Saturday, September 11, 2010.
2. I am the main speaker at the September 23, 2010 Boston Azure meeting – topic is Azure 101 – the basics. (Then for the October 21, Ben Day will be (most likely) talking about how to integrate Silverlight and Azure.)
3. I am also planning one or two talks at the New England Code Camp 14 on Saturday October 2 (I haven’t submitted abstracts yet, but probably talks similar to (a) Demystifying Windows Azure and Introduction to Cloud Computing with Azure, and (b) Building Cloud-Native Applications with Windows Azure)

Here is the abstract for the Building Cloud-Native Applications with Windows Azure talk at VT Code Camp:

Cloud computing is here to stay, and it is never too soon to begin understanding the impact it will have on application
architecture. In this talk we will discuss the two most significant architectural mind-shifts, discussing the key patterns
changes generally and seeing how these new cloud patterns map naturally into specific programming practices in Windows
Azure. Specifically this relates to (a) Azure Roles and Queues and how to combine them using cloud-friendly design
patterns, and (b) the combination of relational data and non-relational data, how to decide among them, and how to
combine them. The goal is for mere mortals to build highly reliable applications that scale economically. The concepts
discussed in this talk are relevant for developers and architects building systems for the cloud today, or who want to be
prepared to move to the cloud in the future.

The deck from this presentation is here: bill-wilder-two-roles-and-a-queue-AzureUG.net-windows-azure-virtual-user-group-14-july-2010

Follow me on twitter @codingoutloud.

Follow the Boston Azure User Group on twitter @bostonazure.

The first talk was an introduction to Cloud Computing, with a Microsoft slant towards Windows Azure. The second drilled into the Two Roles and a Queue (TRAAQ) design pattern – a key pattern for architecting systems for the cloud.

The PowerPoint slides are available here:

• Intro talk – bill-wilder-demystifying-cloud-computing-introducing-windows-azure-hartford-code-camp-19-june-2010
• More in-depth talk on the Window Azure Programming Model – bill-wilder-two-roles-and-a-queue-hartford-code-camp-19-june-2010

Also plugged the Boston Azure User Group to those attending my talks! Hope to see some of you at NERD in Cambridge, MA for talks and hands-on-coding sessions. Details always at bostonazure.org.

My talks were Azure Demystified – What is Cloud Computing? What is Windows Azure? and Why should we care? followed by Two Roles and a Queue – The most important design pattern for Windows Azure Cloud apps.

The PowerPoint slides are available right here:

• Intro talk – bill-wilder-intro-to-cloud-computing-with-windows-azure-nh-code-camp-05-june-2010
• More in-depth talk on the Programming Model – bill-wilder-roles-and-queues-nh-code-camp-05-June-2010

Also plugged the Boston Azure User Group to those attending my talks! Hope to see some of you at NERD in Cambridge, MA for talks and hands-on-coding sessions. Details always at bostonazure.org.

We had 60-something folks attend the Boston Azure Firestarter (more photos) on May 8, 2010 in Cambridge, MA. This event provided both talks about important Azure concepts and hands-on-roll-up-your-sleeves-and-write-some-code Labs. Yes, attendees brought laptops! Feedback was positive. Many thanks to all the folks who helped make this event possible. This was a Boston Azure cloud computing user group event, supported by and hosted at Microsoft.

Many Thanks!

Those who helped prepare for the event, work the sign-in desk, help with technical problems, and handle the pair-programmer matching service included Nazik Huq, Chander Khanna, Joan Linskey, and Maura Wilder. Jim O’Neil and Chris Bowen (our East Coast Microsoft Developer Evangelists) were also on hand for trouble-shooting and general support and help.

Here was our speaker lineup:

1. David Aiken from Microsoft’s Windows Azure team came from the left-coast in Redmond to the right-coast in Boston to keynote the event. David gave many demos, a couple of which were My Azure Storage and his new URL shortening service hmbl.me.
   David’s keynote was followed by:
2. Bill Wilder: Roles and Queues talk + lab (http://hmbl.me/1OHBMZ)
3. Ben Day: Azure Storage + lab
   
4. Andy Novick: SQL Azure + lab (http://hmbl.me/1H46PK)
5. Jim O’Neil: Dallas and OData (http://hmbl.me/1OHC5W)
6. Panel Q&A (in the order shown in photo below): Mark Eisenberg (Microsoft), Bill Wilder, Ben Day, Jason Haley, and Jim O’Neil
   

After hours, a smaller group unwound at the sports bar over at the Marriott. This included Jim O’Neil, Maura Wilder, Joan Linskey, Bill Wilder, Sri from New Jersey, (okay, other names are vague!) …

At the Firestarter event on May 8, 2010, I spoke about Roles and Queues and worked through a coding lab on same. The final code is available in a zip file. The Boston Azure Firestarter – Bill Wilder – Roles and Queues deck can be downloaded – though since there were so many questions we didn’t get to covering a number many of the slides! – this was a hot topic!

The remainder of this post contains the narrative for the LAB we did as a group at the Firestarter. It probably will not stand alone super well, but may be of interest to some folks, so I’ve posted it.

• The TEMPORARILY Running Visualizer: http://baugfirestarter.cloudapp.net/
• The TEMPORARILY Running Roles and Queues Sample: http://bostonazuresample.cloudapp.net/
• These are “temporary” since the tokens for the accounts they are running expire soon (mid/late May or early June); the live instances will automatically stop working at that time.

The following procedure assumes Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express on Windows 7. The same general steps apply to Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010, and Web Developer 2008 Express versions, though details will vary.

0. Open Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and select File | New Project

1. Select Windows Azure Service and click Okay:

If you have trouble finding the Windows Azure Service template, you can type “Azure” into the search box in the top-right to narrow the options. Also, if you don’t have the Windows Azure SDK installed, you will need to install that before proceeding – but there will be a link provided by Visual Web Developer 2010 Express that will direct you to the right page. Install it if you need to and try again up to this point.

2. You will see a special dialog box for New Cloud Service Project from which you will add both a Web Role…

and a Worker Role…

Verify that both WebRole1 and WorkerRole1 are in the list on the right side, then click OK.

3. Before you begin making code changes, you can run your new application. You can run it in the debugger by pressing the F5 key.

You will probably get the following error message:

The error message is telling you that you need to close Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and restart it with elevated privileges.

4. To start any Windows program with elevated privileges , right-click on the application then choose Run as administrator from the pop-up menu:

Before it obeys your request to run as administrator, Windows 7 will double-check by popping up a security dialog.

Now you can reload your project and try running it again. The app should run and you should see a blank web browser page.

5. Once you’ve proven your application runs, it is time to make some changes.

Make the code changes indicated for the Two Roles and A Queue Lab in CODING STEP 1.

Note: the “coding step 1″ and future coding steps were handouts (paper!) at the Boston Azure Firestarter on Sat May 8, 2010. In lieue of reproducing them here, I will post the final solution.

This lab will establish some WebRole basics.

6. When done applying CODING STEP 1, run the application again.

7. After demonstrating your application runs, Deploy it to Azure.

This is a simple application so it helps us get through the initial deployment with minimal challenges.

8. Apply CODING STEP 2 – Add Queue (in local dev fabric storage)

9. CODING STEP 3 – Add “DumpQueue” method and “FirestarterWebRoleHelpers.cs”

You will get the following dialog box – type “code file” into the search area on the top-right, select Visual C# Code File, and type in the filename “FirestarterWebRoleHelpers.cs” as shown and click Add:

The new file “FirestarterWebRoleHelpers.cs” will open in the editor. It should be empty to begin with. Cut and Paste in the contents from http://bostonazure.org/files/FirestarterWebRoleHelpers.cs.txt.

Why? The contents of this file has little to do with Windows Azure, so we don’t want to focus on it. But we want to use some utility routines from it so that we can focus on Azure concepts.

10. CODING STEP 4 – Adding Cloud-based Queue

First we need to configure the cloud.

Go to http://windows.azure.com and log in. You may wish to consult instructions on redeeming a token at http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2010/05/06/redeeming-an-azure-token/ or http://bit.ly/dgCuMn

Your storage account has a subdomain, as circled above. This – and the Access Key – need to be added to your Web Role and Worker Role so that they can access (and share the same queue within) cloud-hosted storage.

Right-click in Visual Studio on the WebRole1, select Properties, and select the Settings tab on the left. It will appear something like this:

Now click on Add Setting and give the new item the name “DataConnectionString”, the Type “Connection String”, and click on the “…”

This will bring up the Storage Connection String editor – fill in the fields – where your “Account name” is the same as the subdomain shown on the Storage Service (see above – in that screen shot it is “bostonazurequeue”) and the Key can be either Primary or Secondary Access Key (from same area in the Azure Portal):

You are NOT DONE in the screen yet. Also add a Setting named “StatusUpdateQueueName”– of Type “String” – with Value “updatemessagequeue1” as follows:

Click OK.

11. Now REPEAT BOTH STEPS for WorkerRole1.

Yes, add both Settings also to WorkerRole1 – they both will end up with the same settings. You can “cheat” with cut and paste in the .cscfg and .csdef files.

12. Enable Cloud-hosted Queue from Web Role

Now you are ready go on to make the code changes to use this new configuration item.

Apply CODING STEP 4: Enabling the Cloud-hosted Queue from the Web Role

Now run your application using cloud storage for the queue:

Note that you can also examine the contents of the queue online by visiting http://myAzureStorage.com and providing the same credentials you used when setting up the DataConnectionString above for both the Web and Worker roles.

13. Enable Cloud-hosted Queue from Worker Role

Now you are ALMOST ready go on to make the code changes to use this new configuration item.

Before applying the coding, we need to add a project reference (otherwise you won’t be able to Resolve use of networking classes used in the FirestarterWorkerRoleHelpers.). In Visual Studio on the right side, under the Solution Explorer, right-click on the References element underneath WorkerRole1 and select Add Reference, then from the .NET tab, select System.Web and click okay:

Also, similar to step 9 above, add a new Code File called “FirestarterWorkerRoleHelpers.cs” to hold some additional needed (but not core to Azure) code.

The new file “FirestarterWorkerRoleHelpers.cs” will open in the editor. It should be empty to begin with. Cut and Paste in the contents from http://bostonazure.org/files/FirestarterWorkerRoleHelper.cs.txt.

Now you can apply Apply CODING STEP 5: Enabling the Cloud-hosted Queue from the Worker Role.

14. Deploying to Staging Area in Cloud to Staging

15. Cutover from Staging to Production

16. Add in secret Twitter posting code from your Worker Role…

Yes, this can be done by including a hash character (#) as part of the message you type into your web application.

1. Azure Talk

• Title: Cloud Computing, Microsoft Style: What is Windows Azure and Why You Should Care:

• Slides: Intro to Cloud Computing with Windows Azure – NE Code Camp – 27-March-2010
• Abstract / description

2. Prism Talk

• Title: Demystifying Prism for Silverlight & WPF:

• Slides: Demystifying Prism – NE Code Camp – 27-March-2010
• Abstract / description

Steve Krug speaks at BostonCHI

Notes from 08-Dec-2009 meeting

• Steve’s new book - Rocket Surgery Made Easy - due in bookstores in a couple of weeks – material from this talk will be in his book…
• Passed a copy of his book around through the audience for quick peek
• 150 or so people in attendance

Writing process

1. writing process: collect years of notes
2. need deadlines to force you to write (and finish)
3. collect relevant articles for each chapter and post them all on a wall
4. once you’ve begun to panic, start throwing things overboard
5. Outline, write, iterate
6. get help
7. throw things overboard (save for next book?)
8. FAQ at the end of every chapter – good idea
9. Doing usability (vs How to Think About Usability)

Doing Usability

1. A morning a month – that’s all we ask
2. Run tests – with whole team – at our site – scheduled monthly and well ahead of time – and debrief immediately after over lunch
   1. maybe do right before iteration planning
   2. company-sponsored lunch
3. Start earlier than you think makes sense
4. The sooner you get information, the better use you can make of that information
5. Don’t wait until the site is “finished” – test it as soon as it is testable
6. Don’t worry that “you already know about the problems”
7. If you have nothing built, test other people’s sites
8. Are you working on the site? –> Yes ==> test now!
9. Recruit loosely and grade on a curve
10. Beware implied domain knowledge
11. Some testing can be done w/o your target audience
12. Usability testers say many things that are similar to what therapists say – “what did you expect to happen when you did that?”
13. Keep yourself out of it! It is about the user and what the user being tested is thinking.
14. Make it a spectator sport
15. Get everyone to come and watch the test – frequently the observers suddenly just “get it” that they are not their users
16. Have high quality snacks. Keep the sessions short and compact. Do them on site. Make it easy for everyone to join in, hard to have a good reason to skip it.
17. Record sessions with Camtasia ($300). Get a good USB desktop microphone ($25). Don’t record user’s face (“useless and distracting”). Use a screen sharing service (like GotoMeeting, $40/month?) to control the UI. High quality audio is important, and should be channeled to the observation room via GotoMeeting or Skype.
18. Focus ruthlessly on a small number of the most important problems
19. Serious because everyone will come across them, or serious because for those who do encounter them will be seriously impeded.
20. Don’t feel you need to come up with the “perfect” fix
21. Ask everyone in the observation room to write down the three most important issues they observed. These are raised at the debriefing session over lunch.
22. When fixing problems, always do the least you can do ™
23. Prioritize the list, then work your way down the list until you run out of time/resources
24. Sometimes a tweak is better than a redesign – don’t get suckered into a redesign – the perfect is the enemy of the good!
25. Focus on the smallest change we think we can make to address the problem we observed
26. Q&A
27. Remote Testing?
28. Remote testing is handy – saves travel time, recruiting pool grows, … do over skype or GotoMeeting.
29. How to get it off the ground? Try a group usability test of competitor’s site – everyone can get behind that. Do one and hope people get enthused about it. Make the cost of swinging by to watch the testing really small.
30. Be very cautious about asking users how to fix the problems they’ve encountered. “Users are not designers.” “Hopefully you know a lot more than they do about design.” Listen to them, but be careful that they’re ideas are not well thought out. The purpose of testing is to “inform your design intelligence”.

Technology + Communications + Business-Awareness = Influential Architect

The overall event was excellent. It was organized primarily by Bryan Tuttle of CodeRight, a Consulting/Training company. Many thanks to Bryan for a job well done!

Profiles

1. Will enable deployment with subset of JEE feature set – so can leave out parts you don’t use – thinner footprint, less complexity?

Theme = Loose Coupling

1. decouple server and client via well-defined types and “qualifiers” (beyond Interfaces)
2. decouple lifecycle of collaborating components via
   1. server-side lifecycle management by Container
   2. allow stateful components to interact like services via message-passing
3. decouple orthogonal concerns via Interceptors
4. decouple msg producer from consumer via Events

Theme = Strong Typing

1. eliminate lookup using string-based names
   1. enables smarter auto-complete, more power in compiler type checking

What’s unique?

1. implementations of a type may vary at deployment time – without need for central list of available implementations
   1. no need to explicityl list beans (e.g., Spring) or use Java-based DSL (Guice)

What kinds of things can be injected and how?

1. Most java classes
2. EJB session beans
3. Objects returned by producer methods
4. Java EE resources (e.g., JMS topics/queues)
5. Persistence contexts (JPE EntityManager)
6. Web service references
7. Remote EJB references
8. anything else can be supported through SPI (flexible extensibility via metamodel)
9. Can define business-sensible attributes to specify injection types (e.g., InformalGreeting extends Greeting class, then have an @Informal attribute)
10. Can use injected object in a JSF or JSP page – e.g., container will instantiate the right objects (construct as needed, etc.) and pass it is such as in: <h:commandButton value=”Say Hello” action=”#{printer.greet}”/>
11. Beans may need to be stateful – this is supported too – handled as lifecycle attributes such as @RequestScoped for per-request or

Scopes and Contexts

1. Extensible context model
2. Dependent scope, @Dependent
3. Built-in scopes
   1. @ApplicationScoped, @RequestScoped, for servlet we have @SessionScoped [e.g., Login state object may store username in a member variable], for JSF requests @ConversationScoped
4. Custom scopes – third party frameworks can support via SPI
5. KEY POINT: Client does NOT know anything about the lifecycle of the session-scoped object
6. Conversation context is scoped INSIDE OF (DOES IT NEED TO BE WITHIN, or is it just defined as more granular a SCOPE than) a session – can have more than one Concersation that don’t know about each other – supports multiple tabs, wizards, AJAX and other multi-step sub-tasks
7. Better abstracts some concepts – a set of mappings can be defined such that a class can loosely reference (my term), say, a value from another object (like the user’s first name, from the Login object), and the container will take care of all the heavy lifting and just insert that value – nicely separates lookup logic so your business logic code can stay cleaner and refer to (as in example above) their “first name”, not the Login object directly

Interceptors

1. ANOTHER APPROACH FOR WHAT ASPECTS ARE USED FOR TODAY
   1. Perceived to be more flexible, more generally useful (there are very few uses for Aspects now – nothing new in 5-10 years!)
2. Should be decoupled from implementation via semantic annotations
3. Should be deployment-specific – e.g., can turn off my transaction support during testing
4. Ordering of interceptors matters – so do this centrally so you can manage/understand it – don’t bing interceptors directly to components

Stereotypes

1. Reuse patters – not just Interceptor bindings!
2. Capture roles of components using stereotypes
3. A Stereotype packages up:
   1. a default scope
   2. a set of interceptor bindings
   3. the ability to specify that beans have names by defaults
   4. (more)
4. Uses @Stereotype annotation

Events

1. Can be injected – as in void Login(@Observes LoggedIn loggedin)…

Proposed final draft of JSR-299: http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=299

Seam Framework reference implementation: http://seamframework.org/WebBeans

JBoss doc: http://docs.jboss.org/webbeans/reference/current/en-US/html/

Blog: http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Everyone/Tag/Web+Beans

—-

Value of more Type Safety in a world where Dynamic Languages are gaining traction

Debugging might be more challenging

Performance issues?

Complexity / tooling issues?

How is this different / better / worse than Spring?

Talk about an identity crisis. Maybe we should just call it, more simply, the PDC Netabletible Convertilizer? 

If yours has trouble with “phantom mouse clicks” – where you are typing away, and it seems that somehow the left mouse button was just clicked, but you know you didn’t click it – that can be fixed with the simple act of installing the Synaptics driver for this machine that, weirdly, will not ever show up in Windows Update.  But since this is a pretty useful update, consider doing it the old fashioned way. 

Or at least it worked for me. Though belated, this blog post may save someone the challenge of finding the cure, which I thought more difficult than it oughta be. 

The PDC Netabletible Convertilizer may not be the only one out there with this problem.

As an aside, my PDC Netabletible Convertilizer also became more usable once I recalibrated the touch screen. (How does one do that? Type into the search field in the Start menu “calibrate touch” for a link to the right part of Control Panel to make this happen…)

Per Alex Barnett of Intuit – only 12% of 4m Small Businesses not willing to use hosted data with SaaS.

Webware 100 finalists… best software solutions.

How do cloud-based apps Integrate?

• Finance system know the project in Basecamp is done
• Calendar know about CRM

Simplify by mapping services to a COMMON DATA MODEL (this is a REALLY big deal, IMHO).

QuickBooks have 4 m customers who have effectively agreed on a database schema… exposed an API to this data store. Nice…

The “Small Business Data Cloud” – available today from Intuit – as the Intuit Partner Platform.

native apps

• Flex applications hold the logic
• Server-side Java coming in development

federated apps

• identity
• data
• billing
• most of the action is over here (rather than native apps)

They expect to ship 1.7 m units of QB 10 over next 6-12 months – this will really launch the platform.

4 m users spending 4 b hours per year of screen time

25 million users within these Small Businesses

FAST TIME TO VALUE through SaaS solutions.

Intuit keeps 20% of the rate, rest goes to developers

Can have trial-periods, entitlements (monthly-charged extra features), more options coming next year.

Developers support the apps – Intuit supports everything else.

http://code.intuit.com – some Open Source in here

• some code uses SAML
• support Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, and .NET versions of code, such as SAML gateway

http://developer.intuit.com

Intuit – SMB, 4m customers

Salesforce – Enterprises, 25k customers

Is it a per-user, or per-customer license? Intuit end-users don’t need a license.

Don’t need to license QuickBooks to use the overall platform – but there may be some synergies.

Intuit certifies apps for use in their marketplace. Federated apps go through a third-party security assessment – on Intuit’s dime today, though that may change in the future.

Top 10 Presentation Tips

The top 10 presentation tips I took away from Presentation Camp Boston

From Kenny Raskin‘s keynote:

1. “Have a Passionate Purpose”

When you are speaking, it is not only about the content. If you mean what you say – you really believe in it – (which I believe Dale Carnegie refers to as conviction) - then you are more likely to be successful at conveying your message and persuading your audience.

Kenny shared a quote which was something like the following:

Who you are being when you are saying what you are saying says more about what you are saying that what you are saying.

Not just sell it – it was believe it + sell it both at once. This tip resonates with me and is consistent with a lesson from studying and performing improv; one of my instructors, Erik Volkert, really got across the difference between acting it out and really committing – and the impact that has on stage.

2. “The presentation starts before you are even in the room”

• Find out who the audience is and what you want to say to them. What do you want them to FEEL. (“Know your passionate purpose!”)
• As you are preparing to enter as a speaker, take a breath. Focus. Clear your mind.
• As you enter, look your audience in the eyes. Before you say a word. Greet the audience. Pause… and let them respond.

3. Genuine eye contact != scanning

Eye contact is important. Don’t scan the audience and think that’s eye contact – you need to pause and connect with individuals one at a time – this may be for the duration of a thought or statement – or just until you feel you’ve connected. Some of your eye contact moments will be during pauses and are your opportunity to re-energize by breathing.

From Diane Darling‘s Talk about Networking:

Not about presenting to large groups, but focused on presenting to very small groups of one or a few other folks in a social / networking situation.

4. Business Cards from A-Z

Some wisdom on business cards:

• You need business cards. And they don’t need to be plain and boring… Diane’s cards have a list of tips on one side – useful and “sticky“.
• She advises to keep your business cards in one pocket, and the ones you collect in another pocket – just have a simple system to avoid fumbling.
• Write on the business cards – you may forget later otherwise that this card is from someone you offered to send a link to an interesting paper, or perhaps they might be a future business partner. Handy, easy hack.
• If you do give a talk to a group, be sure to have a stack of cards handy to share at the end.

5. “Own the room”

I am a highly functional introvert
~ Diane Darling, author of The Networking Survival Guide: Get the Success You Want By Tapping Into the People You Know

I love that quote! As a fellow introvert, that’s how I want to be. Diane builds a case for being highly functioning with a plethora of straight-forward tips on how to handle lots of business social situations. A couple of examples:

• Prepare several generic ice breaker questions you can use when you meet someone new. A good format for such questions is “Tell me about ______.” You fill in the blank with “your job” or “how you got into this line of work” or “how you ended up at this conference” etc.
• Wear your name tag close to your RIGHT shoulder (since that’s where the eye most naturally is directed during a hand-shake.
• Don’t start with your name! Introduce yourself by saying something about yourself, and end with your name – it is easier to remember there.
• Saturday Night “Live” != Saturday Night “Unrehearsed” — you will be more successful if you practice some of what you will say — like what is your brief introduction of yourself (your elevator pitch), ending with your name, of course!

6. Connect with the Gatekeepers

If you want to get access to key people who may be hard to get to, consider connecting with those people who control access – such as a personal assistant to the CEO.

From Edwin Guarin‘s talk, The Killer Presentation:

Edwin is an Academic Evangelist for Microsoft. His talk was called The Killer Presentation – Gettting to Point B.

7. Distributing Your PowerPoint Deck

Suppose you’ve given a talk, but now your audience wants a copy. Here’s how to do it, plus a couple of important benefits:

• File > Save As… and choose either PDF or PowerPoint Show.
• If you have Hidden slides – perhaps because you want “single source” for a slide deck that you use in multiple circumstances, but don’t want to maintain the bulk of the slides more than once – this will drop all those marked as hidden at the time you Save As.
• If you have Notes, they are not included either. Sometimes your Notes are just speaking points, but perhaps they are not something you want everyone to see.

8. Spruce Up Your Talk with Images

You are preparing a deck, and you want to be memorable. You want that “just right” image or text effect.

• Edwin recommends the use of royaty-free photos from http://sxc.hu.  You need to create an account to access them, then are free to use them in your PowerPoint slides.
• Note that you are not licensed to subsequently redistribute these images if they are embedded in your PowerPoint deck. I registered an account on sxc.hu web site asking for clarification – and there was a tad bit of ambiguity around the licensing (the license text seem to both suggest it was fine and also say it wasn’t) – so I sent in a specific question on this scenario. The response from sxc.hu support was that the PowerPoint cannot be posted for redistribution. I am not a lawyer. And I do not even play a lawyer on TV.
• [In my talk, I advocate searching through Google Images advanced search and filtering by Usage Rights to only include images labeled for reuse (usually through Creative Commons).]
• To embed an image that is too bright, overlay it with a rectangle – and set the transparency to accordinly to fade it a bit so that text can be seen on top of it.
• Use SmartArt to snazz up your text… transform a bullet list into a ring, or horizontal property or other eye-candy fanciness.

From Brainshark demo:

9. Sharing Your Presentation After the Fact

Brainshark has a cool way for you to post your slide-deck to their free http://my.brainshare.com hosted service: you can upload both the deck *and* an audio track.

This is way better than just distributing the PowerPoint deck, which may not be of any use for people who didn’t attend the talk. Of course, you do need to create (or record) an audio track.

I am not sure how the slides and the audio are sync’d – like when in the audio track should slide 7 pop in – but my guess is that you are expected to record your voice while delivering the talk – and some agent on your desktop keeps an eye on when you transition between slides. If so, I wonder if it can also capture screen shots of non-PowerPoint activities – like if I pop up a web browers, or use Visual Studio.

From Bill Wilder’s talk on Better Tech Talks:

Yes, I am recommending a tip from my own talk.

10. “It is a Talk, not a Read”

Don’t even thing of reading your slides to your audience.

• If you cram all the text for your talk into your deck , you will be guilty of promulgating support for Death By PowerPoint.
• Your audience can read faster than you can talk anyway – they will be done before you. And they won’t be listening to you while they read; they can’t do both at once.
• Your audience will resent being read to. As Jack Welch is reputed to have said to a presenter reading him the slides: if everything is on the slides, then we don’t need you.
• There are better tools for a stand-alone document – like blog posts, or word-processors. PowerPoint is a poor substitute when writing a document that is being prepared for general reading.
• If you do need to capture more info than belongs in the slides, consider putting it into the Notes section, and then using dual-monitor capabilities to have your laptop display different content than the projector, and configure PowerPoint to know about this via:  Slide Show > Set Up Show > Multiple Monitors.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to give code-centric talks to software engineers, plus the general problem of clear communication through presentations. Those in my session will recognize that my slides (Better Tech Talks – 24-Oct-2009) do not stand alone well! – but should serve as a good reminder for those who participated in the session.

Feel free to follow-up with me to continue the discussion!

How to Give Your First Code Camp Talk – 17-Oct-2009

If you attended my talk, you learned than I don’t advocate ensuring the slide deck makes sense stand-alone (since it is a framework for a talk, with purpose different than that of an article or blog post). You’ve been warned.

I will be giving an updated version of this talk at the upcoming Code Camp 12 in Waltham (Boston area) on Sat Oct 17, 2009.

Executive Summary – Key Take-Aways & Highlights

Notes from Javed Ikbal’s talk (http://10domains.blogspot.com) are in regular type. My editorial comments and thoughts are in italics or bold italics – so don’t blame these on Javed.

• Key take-away – going to the Cloud is waaaay more about Business Tradeoffs than it is about Technology.
• “There are 2 kinds of companies – those which have had a [data security]breach, and those which are going to have a [data security] breach” -Javed
• Centralization of data makes insider threat a bigger risk -Javed
• “On premise does not mean people are doing the right thing” –Javed – right on! I bet the majority of the fortune five-million (as 37 Signals refers to the medium and small business market) have insufficient IT – they just don’t know it. Any stats?
• Someone from the audience stated there are more breaches in on-premise data centers than in cloud. Therefore cloud is safer. I don’t buy the logic. There could so many more publicized breaches in on-premise systems simply because there are so many more on premise data centers today. So this is easy to misinterpret. We can’t tell either way from the data. My personal prediction: today if there is a data breach for data stored in the cloud, people will not be able to believe you were reckless enough to store it in the cloud; 5 years from now, if there is a data breach for data stored on premise, people will not be able to believe you were reckless enough to store it locally instead of in the cloud which everyone will then believe is the safest place.
• Someone from audience commented that business value of losing data will be balanced against business cost of it being exposed. This comment did not account for the PROBABILITY of there being a breach – how do you calculate this risk? I bet it is easier to calculate this risk on the cloud than on premise (though *I* don’t know how to do this)
• Comment from Stefan: We can’t expect all cloud services to be up all the time (we were chatting about Google and Amazon downtime, which has been well documented). I completely agree – And many businesses don’t have the data to fairly/accurately compare their own uptimes with those of the cloud vendors – and, further, if the cloud vendors did have 100% up-time, that may destroy the economies we are seeing on the cloud today (who cares if it is 100% reliable if it is 0% affordable – that’s too expensive to be interesting)
• Off-premise security != in cloud – different security issues for different data – Javed In other words, treat SSN and Credit Card data differently than which books I bought last year. But I can think of LOTS of data that is seemingly innocuous, but that SOME PEOPLE will balk at having it classified  as “non-sensitive” – might be my bookmarks, movie rentals, books purchased, travel plans/history, many more… not just those that support identity theft and/or direct monetary loss (bank account hacks). I think it would be a fine idea for data hosts to publicly declare their data classification scheme – shouldn’t we all have a right to know?
  
• I think IT generally – and The Cloud specifically – could benefit from the kind of thinking that went into GoodGuide.com.

Raw Notes Follow

The rest of these notes are a bit rough – and may or may not make sense – but here they are anyway…

Intros

• Pizza & drinks, some social (sat next to Stefan Schueller from TechDroid Sytems and enjoyed chatting with him)
• Went around the room introducing ourselves
• People who were hiring / looking for work spoke up
• Around 30 people in attendance
• Meeting host: Aprigo – 460 Totten Pond rd, suite 660 – Waltham, MA  02451 – USA
• Feisty audience! Lots of participation. This added to the meeting impact.

Twisted Storage talk

From Meetup description: Charles Wegrzyn – CTO at TwistedStorage Inc. (Check actually built an Open source cloud storage system back in ’05)

TwistedStorage is open source software that converts multiple storage
repositories, legacy or green-field, into a single petabyte-scale cloud
for unstructured data, digital media storage, and archiving. The Twisted
Storage Enterprise Storage Cloud provides federated search, electronic
data discovery with lock-down, and policy-driven file management
including indexing, retention, security, encryption, format conversion,
information lifecycle management, and automatic business continuity.

History of Building Storage Management software

• Open Source
• Been downloaded 75k times
• Re-wrote – now version 4 – in Python

Common anti-pattern observed in real world:

• Users storing “stuff” in Exchange since that was a convenient place to store it
• Results in a LOT of email storage (and add’l capacity is easy to keep adding on)
• Can’t find your data (too much to logically manage)
• Backups inadequate
• Complexity, complexity, complexity

The Twisted Storage Way

• Federated storage silos w/ adaptors/agents
• Provide enterprise capabilities spanning sites (access control, audits, search/indexing – including support for metadata, simplified administration and recovery)
• Petabyte-scale
• ILM = Information Lifecycle Management
• Open Source
• Work-flow (Python scripts, XML coming)
• Policy-driven (“delete this after 2 years”, “encrypt me”) (Python scripts)

Twisted Storage Design Goals

• Always available content (via replication)
• No back-up or recovery needed (due to replication)
• Linear scalability (scales out)
• Able to trade off durability with performance
• Supports old hardware
• Minimal admin overhead
• Support external storage systems and linkage
• Portable – will run on Linux, Windows, (iPhone?) – due to portable Python implementation
• Pricing: Enterprise Edition: $500 / TB up to 2 PB (annual), minimum $10k for first 20 TB (see web site for full story)
• versus competition like Centera which charge $15k/Silo + Enterprise Edition
• http://www.twistedstorage.com, cwegrzyn@twistedstorage.com

Info Security & Cloud Computing Talk

From Meetup description:  Javed Ikbal (principal and co-founder of zSquad LLC)- will talk about:   “Marketing, Uncertainty and Doubt: Information Security and Cloud Computing”

• What is the minimum security due diligence that a company needs to do before putting it’s data in the cloud?
• Since 2007, Amazon has been telling us they are “.. working with a public accounting firm to … attain certifications such as SAS70 Type II”  but these have not happened in 2+ years.
• On one side of the cloud security issue we have the marketing people, whohype up the existing security and gloss over the non-existing. On the other side we have security services vendors, who hawk their wares by hyping up the lack of security. The truth is, there is a class of data for every cloud out there, and there is also someone who will suffer a data breach because they did not secure it properly.
• We will look at Amazon’s EC2, risk tolerance, and how to secure the data in the cloud.
• Javed is a principal and co-founder of zSquad LLC, a Boston-based information security consulting practice.

Javed is a Security Consultant

Also co-founded http://www.layoffsupportnetwork.com

Formerly worked in Fidelity (in security area)

Cloud Definition

• Elastic – provision up/down on demand (technical)
• Avail from anywhere (technical)
• Pay-as-you-go (business model)

Cloud Challenges

• Data stored in China – gov’t could get at it
• We never have direct access
• May be locked in? (for practical reasons)
• March 7, 2009 from WSJ – Google disclosed that it exposed a “small number” of Google docs – users not supposed to be authorized were able to view them. Google estimated < 0.05% of all stored Google docs were impacted – BUT! – this is a LOT of documents. http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/08/1214/
• Sept 18, 2009 from NYT – a recent bug in Google Apps allowed students at several colleges to read each other’s emails – this impacted only a “small handful” of colleges (like Brown University, for 3 days)http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/09/18/18/18readwriteweb-whoops-students-going-google-get-to-read-ea-12995.html
• Google’s official policy for paid customers states “at your sole risk” and no guarantee it will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or free from errors
• Amazon states it is not responsible for “deletioreach” – Javedn, destruction, loss” etc.
• Google will not allow customers to audit Google’s cloud storage claims
• Amazon says PCI level 2 compliance is possible with AWS, level 1 not possible
• SAS 70 Type II reports not meaningful unless you can see which controls were evaluated
• “on premise does not mean people are doing the right thing” –Javed
• Perception of more breaches in on-premise systems – but there are so many more of them, it is easy to misinterpret
• Business value of losing data will be balanced against business cost of it being exposed – but this does not account for the PROBABILITY of there being a breach – how do you calculate this risk? I bet it is easier to calculate this risk on the cloud than on premise (though *I* don’t know how to do this)
• We can’t expect all cloud services to be up all the time – right, and many businesses don’t have the data to fairly/accurately compare their own uptimes with those of the cloud vendors – and, further, if the cloud vendors did have 100% up-time, that may destroy the economies we are seeing on the cloud today (it may be 100% reliable, but too expensive to be interesting)
• Off-premise security != in cloud – different security issues for different data
• “There are 2 kinds of companies – those which have had a [data security]breach, and those which are going to have a [data security] breach” -Javed
• Centralization of data makes insider threat a bigger risk
• Customers should perform on-site inspections of cloud provider facilities (but rare?)
• Ask SaaS vendor to see 3rd party audit reports – SalesForce has one, Amazon does not (Google neither? What about Microsoft – not yet?)
• Providers need to be clear about what you will NOT support – e.g., Amazon took 2 years to provide an answer… Amazon/AWS disclaimers are excellent models
• Providers need to understand they may be subject to legal/regulatory discovery due to something a customer did
• Unisys has ISO 27001-certified data centers (high cost, effort)

Creating Secure Software

• Devs care about deadlines and meeting the requirements
• If security is not in the requirements, it will not get done
• if devs don’t know how to code securely, it will not get done right (if at all)
• Train your devs and archs: one day will help with 90% of issues!
• Build security into your software dev life-cycle
• Let security experts, not necessarily developers, write the security requirements
• Secure Code Review can be expensive –  bake in an application security audit into your schedule, to be done before going live
• (high customer extensibility + low provider security responsibility) IaaS – PaaS – SaaS (low customer extensibility + high provider security responsibility)

The Boston Azure User Group will focus on Cloud Computing, specifically as it relates to Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform.

This group will likely kick-off in October 2009 – exact date to be determined - exact dates have now been determined – now working on the times   – see the Boston Azure User Group site for details and updates – and to join the mailing list.

What would YOU like to see covered in the meetings of the Boston Azure User Group? Please leave a comment with your thoughts / feedback.

And see you at the Boston Azure User Group!