Category Archives: BostonAzure.org web site dev

Boston Azure AI: Boston Azure is changing calls signs

Leave a reply

I was in the audience at the Microsoft PDC on Nov 3, 2008 where Windows Azure was unveiled on stage by Ray Ozzie in the conference’s opening keynote. At the 16:45 mark he graciously tipped his hat to Jeff Bezos and the AWS team, then announced Windows Azure – a platform with two services: Azure Storage (Blobs, Tables, Queues) and Cloud Services (Web Roles, Worker Roles) – all with the illusion of infinite scale. Later that same day I got hands-on Windows Azure coding experience in a special booth staffed by Microsoft engineers (and it turns out that the impressive engineer helping me was Sriram Krishnan (@sriramk)). I got to test drive those new super-cool Azure services. From my perspective this was the beginning of the conversation about Platform as a Service (PaaS) in the cloud – and the start of horizontal scale as a mainstream architecture pattern. What an event! Around 15 months from this initial announcement, on Feb 1, 2010, Windows Azure reached “GA” (general availability).

In between the initial announcement in 2008 and the GA date in 2010, Boston Azure was born. On Oct 22, 2009, Boston Azure debuted as the first community group of its kind – the first one dedicated to learning about the Azure platform. As of this writing, it has around 3.500 members according to Meetup.com.

(For a long time after we started hosting events we had people attending other events see our signage and curiously pop their head in to ask “What’s Azure?” When I’d answer “that’s Microsoft’s public cloud platform” they would very often react with a puzzled look and a follow-up question: “Cloud? What’s a cloud?” So yes, those were early days.)

That first event was held at the Microsoft NERD building in Cambridge MA. Mike Werner said a few words, I gave a short talk about cloud benefits and the coming opportunity (and somehow managed to reference “the Internet is … a series of tubes” comment by Alaska Senator Ted Stevens) and Brian Lambert (@softwarenerd) was the featured speaker who talked about queuing patterns in Azure Storage which was part of my journey of getting interested in cloud-relevant patterns (which culminated in me writing a book – Cloud Architecture Patterns – a few years later). Michael Stiefel was Boston Azure’s second-ever speaker.

Heady days from 2008 to 2010!

The times they are a-changin’

“You better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a-changin’.” –Bob Dylan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL_kPNFL3dY and do yourself a favor and check out the movie A Complete Unknown).

A few things have changed since then. The PDC conference is no longer – though content has been subsumed into the Build conference. Windows Azure is now just Azure. There are hundreds of Azure services, not two. And Ray Ozzie is no longer at Microsoft (but has the Blues in the best sense of the word).

And Boston Azure is still at it. We’ve delivered more than 150 free events and still going strong. Now also delivering events virtually since the you-know-what made in-person events so difficult. Back in the early days George Babey and Nazik Huq signed on to help me run things. These days – and for some time now – our leadership team is Jason Haley (@haleyjason), Veronika Kolesnikova (@veronika_dev1), and me.

But technology continues to evolve, and we need to evolve too. Today Artificial Intelligence is playing a role similar to the role played by public cloud platforms back 15 years ago: everything is different so what does that mean? what will come out next? what does this make possible? how can I make use of this? how do I learn this stuff? This is exciting, right??

Changing Call Sign to Boston Azure AI

With no end in sight for AI to slow down, the three of us running Boston Azure – Veronika Kolesnikova (@veronika_dev1), Jason Haley (@haleyjason), and myself (@codingoutloud) – have decided to update our community group for 2025 by changing call signs – Boston Azure is now Boston Azure AI.

We’ve been emphasizing AI topics for a while already. Veronika is a long-time Microsoft MVP for AI, Jason is a long-time Microsoft MVP for Azure who last year was reclassified to the AI category, and myself as a long-time Azure MVP was re-classified last year as Dev Tools (presumably due to giving so many talks on GitHub Copilot, the AI coding assistant, in the prior year), so this emphasis also aligns with where the group’s leadership is spending time. At any rate, this rename should at least help us more clearly communicate to the community what we intend to offer.

Where to Find Boston Azure AI

With the rename, we are retooling some of our properties. Some are new, some are renamed from bostonazure version. You can find us at the following destinations:

  • X/Twitter: 🐦 https://x.com/bostonazureai – renamed, so if you followed before you are still following
  • Bluesky: 🟦 https://bsky.app/profile/bostonazureai.org – yeah, we did the fancy domain version 😉
  • YouTube: 🎥 https://www.youtube.com/@bostonazureai (renamed) – we have more than 50 videos posted
  • GitHub: 🛠️ https://github.com/bostonazureai – created a new GitHub Organization for this and will be migrating over the old content, including the C# + Semantic Kernel + Azure OpenAI hands-on workshop materials shortly (see bottom of this post for more – we are running an event on Jan 31)
  • Meetup: 📅 https://meetup.com/bostonazureai – renamed, so if you were a member before you are still a member
  • Website: 🌐 https://bostonazureai.org – coming soon
  • Email: ✉️ hello@bostonazureai.org – we used a gmail address for the first 15 years, but now we are getting fancy with the bostonazureai.org domain. Hit us up if you want to offer a talk (in person or virtual) or have a suggested topic for us!

And, fittingly, we also have a shiny new logo.

The Boston Azure AI logo shows Boston skyline within a cloud outline and text Boston Azure AI
Boston Azure AI

Hands-on AI Coding Workshop: C#, .NET 9, and Semantic Kernel on Azure OpenAI

In another evolution, Jason Haley and I are experimenting with offering Boston Azure AI in-person hands-on AI coding workshops during the workday. The community events we’ve historically offered have been only nights and weekends – non-working hours. We’ll see how this works out. We have our second such in-person during-the-workday hands-on coding workshop focused on using C#, .NET 9, and Semantic Kernel on Azure OpenAI coming up on Fri Jan 31, 2025 held in Cambridge MA. You can sign up here. Free.

And we have a weekend event on the schedule to participate in Boston Azure edition Boston Azure AI edition of the Global AI Bootcamp in March. You can sign up here. Free.

Buckle in. Looking forward to an exciting next few years!

🤖 ☁️

Boston Azure User Group – Notes from November 2010 Meeting

1 Reply

Around 25-30 of us gathered together on November 18 to talk about Azure. What else would you expect us to do at a Boston Azure User Group meeting?

1. The featured talk led by Chander Khanna and Nazik Huq asked the provocative question Why choose the Azure cloud?  and (not surprisingly!) spirited discussion ensued. The slides are available (see link at the bottom of the page), and there is a blog post titled “Microsoft in the Clouds with Windows Azure Platform?” from Chander which considers some of the same material.

2. An Azure 101 talk was led by Mark Eisenberg. This is a challenging topic to cover, since the cloud has so many interesting concepts, and the audience at any given Boston Azure meeting always includes new faces. More Azure 101 to come at next meeting, Dec 13, 2010.

3. Several members discussed the Boston Azure Project. The most recent build includes some instrumentation changes made by Arra Derderian (part of which reused some code from Jason Haley).

4. After the meeting around 10 of us went down to the Muddy Charles Pub for a beer!

Follow me on twitter (@codingoutloud), follow the Boston Azure User Group on twitter (@bostonazure), join the low volume Boston Azure User Group email list, and come join us at an upcoming Boston Azure meeting such as our SPECIAL NIGHT FOR DECEMBER as we meet on Monday December 13, 2010 for a night of Azure-packed goodness!

As always, to see what’s COMING UP in Boston Azure meetings, check out our Azure-hosted web site at www.bostonazure.org – meetings beyond what is on the home page (if known) are listed on the Upcoming Events page.

Introducing the Boston Azure Project

7 Replies

Cloud Computing on Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is still new, but will be big. I believe that. That believe fueled my interest in starting the Boston Azure cloud computing user group (henceforth in this blog post, simply “Boston Azure”) back in the fall, even before Azure was released. Boston Azure is a cloud computing community group focused on learning about Azure.

Currently Boston Azure meets monthly on the 4th Thursday of the month in Cambridge, MA in the USA. This is an in-person meeting. I have received a loud and clear vibe from the Boston Azure membership that there is a thirst for more hands-on stuff. That was fueled further first by the hands-on Azure SDK meeting we held April 29, then again by the all-day Firestarter held May 8. But we need more. So, I had this idea for an ongoing community coding project that we can hack on together at Boston Azure meetings and other times… I bounced the idea off the community at the May meeting… since I received a really positive response, I now officially declare I plan to go ahead with it…

Introducing the Boston Azure Project

Why are we doing this Project?

The community wants to code. There is a desire to learn a lot about programming in Windows Azure – and what better way to get really good at programming Windows Azure than by programming Windows Azure.

The primary goal of the project is to learn – to get good – really good – at Windows Azure.

How will the Project work?

To be hands-on, we need a project… so here’s a project to provide us with focus:

We shall build a “gently over-engineered” version of bostonazure.org.

This “gently over-engineered” version of bostonazure.org:

(a) will provide a productive environment where participants (developers and otherwise) can learn about Azure through building a real-world application by contributing directly to the project (through code, design, ideas, testing, etc., …), and

(b) will do so by taking maximum advantage of the technology in the Windows Azure platform in the advancement of the bostonazure.org web site (though thinking of it as “just a web site” is limiting – there is nothing stopping us from, say: adding an API; exporting OData or RSS feeds; being mobile-friendly for our visitors with iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7 devices; etc.), and

(c) will serve the collaboration and communication needs of the Boston Azure community, and

(d) will provide an opportunity for a little fun, meet other interesting people, and enhance our skills through sharing knowledge and learning from each other.

When will we code?

We will reserve time at Boston Azure meetings so we can collaborate in-person on a monthly basis. Participants are also free to hack at other times as well, of course.

Wait a second… Does it make sense to port a little web site like bostonazure.org to Azure?

It does not make sense – not in isolation. Go ahead and crunch the numbers on Windows Azure pricing and compare with an ISP-hosted solution. However, this is the “gently over-engineered” part: we are doing it this way to show off the capabilities of Windows Azure and learn a bunch in the process.

What is the output of the Project?

This project will be feature rich, easy to use, accessible, flexible… and open source.

Keep in mind: Since bostonazure.org is the web presence for Boston Azure community…

It Has To Work!

This project is for and by the community.

Anyone can contribute – at any seniority level, with any skill set, with many possible roles (not just developers).

Then how do we reconcile anyone can contribute with it has to work? The community process needs to be able to make the code work before we put it into production. We have to make this work. And we will.

So, now you’ve heard it all – the whole idea – at least the Big Picture. I will post more details later, but for now that’s it.

Next Steps

Please contact me (on twitter or by comment to this blog post or by email) if you want to be one of the very first participants – I would like a couple of folks to be in a “private beta” to get some details squared away before I make the CodePlex site public.

Update 23-June-2010: The project is now live on CodePlex at bostonazure.codeplex.com.