Azure

Visual Studio Live Washington, D.C. – Xamarin + Azure Mobile Services

Rick G. Garibay — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:32:16 GMT

Long overdue, here are my slides from VS Live DC last month.

I plan on getting my demos up on Gitbub and will update this post when I do.

Secure, federated identity. A durable, reliable and scalable backend. Scalable messaging fabrics that unlock assets both in the cloud and behind the firewall. All of these are table stakes when delivering modern mobile enterprise applications. Whether you are building responsive web apps for devices or targeting iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Windows Store apps, as a mobile developer, you must focus on delivering a beautiful and functional user experience if you want your apps to be adopted. What if you could have all of this plus the power or Visual Studio 2013 and Windows Azure? Well, now you can! Instead of reinventing the wheel each and every time you need to target a new device platform, learn how Visual Studio 2013 and Xamarin allow you to target iOS, Android and Windows devices while promoting reuse of code assets across platforms. And when you're done with the front–end work and are ready to wire up your mobile app, come see how Microsoft Azure Mobile Services provides a simplified stack that tackles security, durability, reliability and modern messaging all with just a few lines of code. In this session, you'll learn how you can harness the power of Visual Studio 2013 with the flexibility of Xamarin and the power of Microsoft Azure Mobile Services to tackle all of your cross platform and back end chores quickly and easily so you can focus on what your users really care about.

Visual Studio Live D.C. – BizTalk Services Bridges & Hybrid Connections

Rick G. Garibay — Wed, 12 Nov 2014 00:28:16 GMT

Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services is a new breed of PaaS middleware capabilities (iPaaS) for building a new generation of applications and solutions that extend beyond the traditional business, network and security boundaries of the enterprise. More than just messaging, MABS delivers robust routing, transformation, mediation and enrichment capabilities to your hybrid applications enabling a whole new generation of connectivity across the enterprise, devices and clouds. In this session, we'll wire up a responsive mobile web app to a back-end application residing behind the firewall using a low friction, RESTful approach. We'll cover how to map from your application domain to other system, application APIs and options for pushing data to multiple destinations including Microsoft Azure, Web Services, and FTP. You will learn how MABS can take the pain out of sharing information behind the firewall, support many of the rich mapping capabilities you've come to expect from BizTalk making integration with 3rd party service providers and assets behind the firewall a breeze.

Service Assisted Communications on Microsoft Azure

Rick G. Garibay — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:20:51 GMT

I had the privilege of presenting at Azure Conf in Channel9 studios a couple of weeks ago. This is the second time I’ve had the pleasure to present at AzureConf (see my 2012 talk on WebSockets here:http://channel9.msdn.com/events/windowsazure/AzureConf2012/A01)

I covered a ton of content in just over 60 minutes including a command demo with a Fez Spider board and Azure Service Bus and a sneak peak of Azure Device Gateway (code-name Reykjavik) deployment on my Azure subscription to demonstrate deployment, telemetry, inquires and commands with a software emulator.

Direct Link to Channel9 http://bit.ly/1DBVLxk

Visual Studio Live Redmond – 8/18 to 8/21

Rick G. Garibay — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 23:38:01 GMT

The Goods...

Thank you Redmond, 1105 Media, Microsoft, fellow speakers and all attendees for a great show. I had a blast!

Code: https://github.com/rickggaribay/IoT

Code: https://github.com/rickggaribay/neurl

+++

I’m thrilled to be speaking at VS Live Redmond next week. The show starts on Monday August 18th and goes through Thursday the 21st on Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA.

Events in Redmond are always a special treat as it gives everyone a chance to see the campus, interact with product team members and as always, meet and hang out with some of the best, most recognized speakers in the industry like Ted Neward, Michael Collier, Brian Noyes, Eric Boyd, Rachel Appel, Miguel Castro, Rocky Lhotka, Andrew Brust- the list goes on.

I’ll be delivering two Azure focused presentations on the Internet of Things and API development with NodeJS.

Since there is only so much space available for the abstracts themselves, I thought I’d elaborate a bit on what you can expect from each session in this short post. You can find more details about both talks on the VS Live Redmond website or go directly to the abstracts by following the links below.

From the Internet of Things to Intelligent Systems: A Developer's Primer

In this talk, I lay the foundation for IoT and why you, as a developer should care. I’ll show off a handful of devices ranging from Arduino, Netduino and Fez Spider and demonstrate a number of common patterns currently in the wild including default communication, brokered and service assisted. We’ll explore the challenges that exist today in supporting commands, notifications, inquiries and telemetry. I’ll then spend some time giving you an in-depth tour of Reykjavik, Microsoft’s code name for its reference architecture focused on delivering highly scalable messaging fabrics for modern IoT solutions.

We’ll take a look at the reference architecture and how it maps to components on Microsoft Azure. I’ll then demonstrate what a first-class Reykjavik device looks like and demonstrate live telemetry and commands for an end-to-end tour of Reykjavik. I’ve been spending a lot of time with Clemens and team over the last several weeks so this promises to be an inside look at the reference architecture and general shape of things you're unlikely to find publically anywhere else.

Learn more about this talk here: http://bit.ly/VSLRIOT or follow the conversation on Twitter #VSLTH04

Building APIs with NodeJS on Microsoft Azure Websites

This is a talk that I’ve been working on for several months now and continues to evolve. As I discuss in my latest article in CODE Magazine, it started off as a spike for teaching myself basic NodeJS and kind of evolved into a little project for work that needed a hosting environment. After exploring various options, Azure Websites made the most sense and this talk focuses on the key features and functionality of a little URL shortening API along with key ALM considerations like IDE, unit testing, continuous integration and deployment.

I’ll walk you through each step I took in building this API from scratch and deploy it live to Azure Websites as well as show you some really cool things you can do with the Kudu console when things go awry (as they almost always do in a live demo :-))

More about this talk here: http://bit.ly/VSLRAPI or follow the conversation on Twitter #VSLW09

If you plan on attending either of my sessions please stop by and say hi or after the talk. I hope to see you there!

Building a Simple NodeJS API on Microsoft Azure Websites from Start to Finish

Rick G. Garibay — Fri, 20 Jun 2014 19:41:14 GMT

NodeJS is a powerful framework for building IO-centric applications with JavaScript. Although it hasn’t yet reached a major version number (as of this writing, the latest build is 0.10.28), the level of developer, community, and industry support for NodeJS is nothing short of astounding. From Wal-Mart to LinkedIn, NodeJS is powering more and more of the experiences with which you interact every day.

Although there are many options for hosting NodeJS applications, Microsoft has been an early supporter of NodeJS from the beginning by making direct investments in the framework and demonstrating a commitment to making NodeJS a first class citizen on Windows, both on-premises and on Microsoft Azure.

In my new article for CODE Magazine, I provide a lap around NodeJS and Microsoft Azure Websites by showing you a simple but functional API that I recently developed from the ground up. I’ll start by discussing the design of the API, go on to reviewing implementation details, and then proceed to pushing the API live on Microsoft Azure Websites.

You can read the article here as well as on Amazon and at your local news stand.

http://bit.ly/1nT4K6h

Visual Studio Live Chicago Recap: Building APIs with NodeJS on Microsoft Azure Websites

Rick G. Garibay — Sat, 10 May 2014 00:10:11 GMT

My first talk at VS Live Chicago this week (if you’re looking for my IoT talk, please click here) was based on a talk I started doing last year demonstrating fundamental unit testing techniques with NodeJS and Mocha. Since then, the code and the talk has evolved into a real API currently is early alpha at Neudesic.

In this session, we started with looking at the problem – and opportunity- with long, ugly URLs and how most URL minification APIs like bit.ly, tinyurl, etc. solve the problem today.

From there, we looked at why NodeJS is a great choice for building a Web API and proceeded to build the 3 key APIs required to fulfill the most fundamental features you’d expect from a URL shortening API including:

Shorten
- When I submit a long, ugly URL to the create API, I should get back a neurl.
Redirect
- When I submit a neurl to the submit API, my request should be automatically redirected.
Hits
- When I submit a neurl to the hits API, I should get back the number of hits/redirects for that neurl.

With the API up an running on my laptop, we proceeded to create an Azure Website and push the Node app via my local Git repository, taking it live. All was not well unfortunately as initial testing of the Shorten API returned 500 errors. A quick look at the log dumps using the venerable Kudu console revealed the cause: The environment variable for the MongoDB connection string didn’t exist on the Azure Website deployment which was quickly remedied by adding the variable to the website from the Azure portal. Yes, this error was fully contrived, but Kudu is so cool.

With the API up and running, we exercised it a bit, verifying that the Redirect and Hits APIs were good to go and the scaled out the API from one to six instances with just a few clicks.

As the API continues to mature, I’ll update the talk to demonstrate how this level of indirection brought forth by virtualizing the actual URL (as with traditional services and APIs) introduces many opportunities to interact with the person consuming the API (all via URIs!) as they take the journey that starts with the click and ends with the final destination.

Without further ado, the code and more details on the talk can be found below.

Code: https://github.com/rickggaribay/neurl

Abstract: http://bit.ly/1iEEbNV

Speaking of which, if you haven’t already, why not register for Visual Studio Live Redmond or Washington DC? Early bird discounts are currently available so join me to see where we can take this API from here! hhttp://bit.ly/vslive14

Visual Studio Live Chicago Recap: From the Internet of Things to Intelligent Systems - A Developer's Primer

Rick G. Garibay — Fri, 09 May 2014 23:41:19 GMT

I had the pleasure of presenting at Visual Studio Live! Chicago this week. Here is a recap of my second talk “From the Internet of Things to Intelligent Systems- A Developer’s Primer (if you’re looking for a recap of my “Building APIs with NodeJS on Microsoft Azure Websites” you can find it here).

While analysts and industry pundits can’t seem to agree on just how big IoT will be in the next 5 years, one thing they all agree on is that it will be big. From a bearish 50B internet connected devices by 2020, to a more moderate 75B and bullish 200B, all analysts agree that IoT is going to be big. But the reality is that IoT isn’t something that’s coming. It’s already here and this change is happening faster than anyone could have imagined. Microsoft predicts that by 2017, the entire space will represent over $1.7T in market opportunity spanning from manufacturing and energy to retail, healthcare and transportation.

While it is still very early, it is clear to see that the monetization opportunities at this level of scale are tremendous. As I discussed in my talk, the real opportunity for organizations across all industries is two-fold. First, the data and analytical insights that the telemetry (voluntary data shared by the devices) will provide will change the way companies plan, execute and the rate at which they will adapt and adjust to changing conditions in their physical environments. This brings new meaning to decision support and no industry will be left untouched in this regard. These insights will lead to intelligent systems that are capable of taking action at a distance based either on pre-configured rules that interpret this real-time device telemetry or other command and control logic that prompts communication with device.

As a somewhat trivial but useful example, imagine your coffee maker sending you an SMS asking you permission to approve a descaling job. Another popular example of a product that’s already had significant commercial success is the Nest thermostat. Using microcontrollers very similar to the ones I demonstrated, these are simple examples that are already possible today.

Beyond the commercial space, another very real example is a project my team led for our client that involved streaming meter and sensor telemetry from a large downtown metroplex enabling real-time, dynamic pricing, up-to-the-minute views into parking availability and significant cost and efficiency savings by adopting a directed enforcement approach to ticketing.

So, IoT is already everywhere and in many cases, as developers we’re already behind. For example, what patterns do you use for managing command and control operations? How do you approach addressability? How do you overcome resource constraints on devices ranging in size from drink coasters to postage stamps? How do you scale to hundreds and thousands of devices that are sharing telemetry data every few seconds? What about security?

While 75 minutes is not a ton of time to tackle all of these questions, I walked the audience through the following four scenarios based on the definition of the Command message pattern in the "Service Assisted Communications" paper that Clemens Vasters (@clemensv) at Microsoft published this February:

1. Default Communication Model with Arduino - demonstrates the default communication model whereby the Arduino provides its own API (via a Web Server adapted by zoomcat). Commands are sent from the command source to the device in a point to point manner.

2. Brokered Device Communication with Netduino Plus 2 - demonstrates an evolution from the point to point default communication model to a brokered approach to issuing device commands using MQTT. This demo uses the excellent M2MQTT library by WEB MVP Paolo Patierno (@ppatierno) as well as the MQTT plug-in for RabbitMQ (both on-premise and RabbitMQ hosted).

3. Service-Assisted Device-Direct Commands over Azure Service Bus - applies the fundamental service assisted communications concepts evolving the brokered example to leverage Azure Service Bus using the Device Direct pattern (as opposed to Custom Gateway). As with the brokered model, the device communicates with a single endpoint in an outbound manner, but does not require a dedicated socket connection as with MQTT implicitly addressing occasionally disconnected scenarios, message durability, etc.

In the final, capstone demo, “Service-Assisted Device-Direct Commands on the Azure Device Gateway”, I demonstrated the culmination of work dating back to June 2012 (in which Vasters first shared the concept of Service-Assisted Communications) which is now available as a reference architecture and fully functional code base for customers ready to adopt an IoT strategy today:

As a set up for the demo, I discussed the Master and Partition roles. The Master role manages the deployment of partitions and the provisioning of devices into partitions using the command line tools that ship with the code base.

In the demo, I provided a look at the instance of Reykjavik deployed on our Neudesic Azure account including the Master and Partition roles. I showed the Azure Service Bus entities for managing the ingress and egress of device messaging for command, notification, telemetry and inquiry traffic (The Device Gateway is currently capable of supporting 1024 partitions with each partition supporting 20K devices today) as well as the storage accounts responsible for device registration and storing partition configuration settings.

I also discussed the protocols for connecting the device to the gateway (AMQP and HTTP are in the box and an MQTT adapter is coming very soon) and walked through the Telemetry Pump which dispatches telemetry messages to the registered telemetry adapter (Table Storage, HD Insight adapters, etc.)

The demo wrapped up with a Reykjavik device sample consisting of a Space Heater emulator that I registered on the Neudesic instance of the Device Gateway to acquire it’s ingress and egress endpoints, initialize fan speed, rpm and begins to send telemetry messages to it’s outbox every 30 seconds (fully configurable).

The beauty of the demo is in its simplicity. Commands are received via the device’s inbox and telemetry is shared via it’s outbox. The code is simple C# with no heavy frameworks which is really key to running on devices with highly constrained resources:

   1:  void SendTelemetry()

   2:          {

   3:              this.lastTelemetrySent = DateTime.UtcNow;

4:

   5:              var tlm = new BrokeredMessage

   6:                  {

   7:                      Label = "tlm",

   8:                      Properties =

   9:                      {

  10:                          {"From", gatewayId},

  11:                          {"Time", DateTime.UtcNow},

  12:                          {"tiv", (int) this.telemetryInterval.TotalSeconds},

  13:                          {"fsf", this.fanspeedSettingRpmFactor},

  14:                          {"fss", this.fanSpeedSetting},

  15:                          {"fon", this.fanOn},

  16:                          {"tsc", this.temperatureSettingC},

  17:                          {"hon", this.heaterOn},

  18:                          {"ofr", this.lastObservedFanRpm},

  19:                          {"otm", this.lastObservedTemperature}

  20:                      }

  21:                  };

22:

  23:              tlm.SessionId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

24:

  25:              this.sender.SendWithRetryAsync(tlm);

  26:          }

A screenshot from the telemetry table populated by the Reykjavik Table Storage adapter is shown in the Neudesic Azure Storage Explorer below:

As I discussed, this is an early point in a journey that will continue to evolve over time, but the great thing about this model is that everything I showed is built on Microsoft Azure so there’s nothing to stop you as a developer form building your own Custom Protocol Adapter and this is really the key to the thinking and philosophy around Device Gateway.

It is still very early in this wave and every organization is going to have different devices, protocols and requirements. So while you’ll see investments in the most common protocols as you can already see like (AMQP, MQTT, and CoAp) the goal is to make this super pluggable and fully embrace custom protocol gateways that just plug in.

As with the Protocol Adapters, there’s nothing to stop you from building your own Telemetry adapter or to use Azure Service Bus or BizTalk Services to move data on premise, etc.

Still with me? Great. The links to my demo samples and more details on the talk are available here:

Abstract: http://bit.ly/vsl-iot

Demo Samples: https://github.com/rickggaribay/IoT

Oh, and if you missed the Chicago show, don’t worry! I’ll be repeating this talk in Redmond and Washington DC, so be sure to register now for early bird discounts: http://bit.ly/vslive14

Speaking on Building APIs with NodeJS on Microsoft Azure Websites Next Tuesday, 4/15

Rick G. Garibay — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 06:06:00 GMT

I will be speaking at the Tucson .NET User Group next Tuesday on Building APIs with Node.js on Microsoft Azure Websites. This will be the 3rd time I speaking at this group, but first time I’m following Scott Hanselman (who spoke last month), definitely a tough act to follow!

You can learn more about the topic here: http://bit.ly/1hEzAJf

Configuring Custom Domain Names on Windows Azure Websites in 4 Easy Steps

Rick G. Garibay — Thu, 27 Feb 2014 03:26:17 GMT

Windows Azure Websites (WAWS) provides a very robust, yet easy to use container for hosting your web applications. This doesn’t just pertain to ASP.NET apps, but includes several templates like Drupal, Wordpress, Orchard, etc. and also provides very nice first class support for Node.js web apps/APIs, PHP and Python.

If you are new to WAWS, you may think ‘big deal, this is just another web host’. You would be wrong. There is a TON of value that you get with WAWS that blows your congenital, commodity web hosters away:

The free version allows you to host up to 10 sites in a multi-tenant environment and provides a great dashboard, FTP and continuous deployment capabilities including first class support for git (local repos) and github.
The shared version adds support for seamlessly scaling your app up to 6 instances/nodes along with enabling Web Jobs which provide worker processes for executing jobs on a schedule, continuously or on-demand.
The standard version allows you to dedicate not instances, but full VMs to your application and supports auto-scaling your app based on metrics and triggers.

These are just the big rocks… there’s a ton more to WAWS and whether you are a .NET, Node.js, PHP or Python developer and there’s a ton of goodness to WAWS which you can learn more about here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation/services/web-sites/

When you create your WAWS application, you get both an IP and URL. The URL takes the form of [your app].azurewebsites.net. This is cool for development, testing and maybe corporate apps, but if you are building publically visible web apps or APIs, chances are you’ll want your own domain name so that instead of [your app].azurewebsites.net you can point your users to foobaz.com or whatever.

Microsoft has official docs on how to do this here, but I found that there was a lot of detail that might intimidate folks so I thought I’d break it down in 4 simple steps. I’ll assume that you’ve already bought your shiny new domain name from a registrar and that it’s parked at some annoying, ad infested landing page.

Step 1: Ensure your site is configured for shared or standard mode

Free doesn’t support custom domains which seems pretty reasonable to me. If you started with a website in free mode, simply click on the Scale option and choose from “Shared” or “Standard” mode and click OK:

Step 2: Copy the IP and WAWS URL

The next step is to make note of your URL and IP address which you’ll need for the third step in this process. Go to the list of WAWS sites, select the site (but don’t click on it) and click on the “Manage Domains” icon at the bottom of the command bar:

This will bring up a dialog that includes your current domain record ([your app].azurewebsites.net) and your IP:

Step 3: Update the A Record and CNAMEs

Make a note of each and login to your domain registrar’s console. You want to look for “DNS Management” and either “Advanced” or “Manage Zones” or “Manage DNS Zone File”. You want to get to whatever console allows you to configure your A Record and CNAMEs. I won’t get into a bunch of DNS theory here, but in a nutshell, these records allow for requests to your registered domain name to be forwarded to Windows Azure, and specifically your website’s host name. The result is that your website will resolve to both [your app].azurewebsites.net and foobaz.com (or whatever domain you purchased).

Each registrar will obviously look different, but this is what GoDaddy’s looks like (there’s several other entries like ftp, MX records, etc. which can be ignored):

The A record needs to point to the IP address you captured in step 2. Replace whatever value is there with the IP address provided. When someone calls up foobaz.com, your registrar will authoritatively answer that request and then pass it on directly to the IP address you provided.

Now there are various docs, posts, etc. that will tell you that you can choose to use an A name record or a CNAME alias but my experience was that I needed to configure both. If you want to try one or the other, go ahead and do so and skip to Step 4. If it doesn’t work, come back and do both (I had to).

For the CNAME, there are 3 entries you need to make:

Point www to [your app].azurewebsites.net – this tells DNS that [your app].azurewebsites.net should be the destination (canonical host) for any DNS queries that begin with www (i.e. www.foobaz.com)
Point awwverify AND awwverify.www to awwverify.[your app].azurewebsites.net – This provides for a DNS validation mechanism so that WAWS can validate that your domain registrar has been configured to allow WAWS to serve as a canonical domain in the event that a CNAME look up fails.

Be sure to save your file/settings.

Step 4: Enter your custom domain name in the Manage Domains dialog and check for validity

Pull up the “Domain Settings” for your website again, and this time, enter your new domain name (i.e. foobaz.com). If you want WAWS to respond to both www.foobaz.com and foobaz.com, you’ll want to create both entries. You’ll likely see a red dot indicating that validation and/or CNAME look up has failed:

Note that DNS can take up to 48 hours to propagate so as you move to this step, know that if it doesn’t immediately work, wait a few hours to a day and try again (Dynamic DNS providers solve this problem by acting as a proxy between your authoritative domain and canonical domains/IPs). It is very likely that you’ve done everything right, but the records have not yet propagated.

This is simply WAWS’ way of telling you that the records have not yet propagated. You can happily continue using your WAWS website using the [your app].azurewebsites.net URL. In time, when you come back to the dialog, the verification should succeed and any request for foobaz.com should automatically resolve to your WAWS app.

If you’ve followed these steps and still have issues after 24-48 hours, feel free to drop a comment or hit me on twitter @rickggaribay and I’ll be happy to help you out.

Announcing the 2nd Annual Global Windows Azure Bootcamp (GWAB) Phoenix!

Rick G. Garibay — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 02:24:44 GMT

I am thrilled to announce the 2^nd Annual GWAB which has been confirmed for Saturday, March 29^th, 2014!

As of today, we have 119 locations in 48 countries and 111 cities!

For those of you who attended last year, you know what a blast we had writing and deploying code to Azure as part of hands on labs and our massive scale-out demo, the "Global Render Lab”. This exercise showed the power of distributed computing and we'll be doing something similar this year.

This year, we are taking the immense compute power of Windows Azure and putting it to work in the fight against diabetes. We’re partnering with Dr. Richard D. Smith in the Biological Sciences Division at Pacific Northwest National lab (PNNL) in collaboration with Minnie M. Sarwal and Tara K. Sigdel at the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute with the goal of discovering how our body’s serum protein glycosylation works. We want to know how high blood sugar levels present in diabetes patients affect the complex sugar production systems required for our health and ability to fight disease. We want to prove the theory that when small changes in this process start occurring, the disease can progress and lead to Type 2 diabetes. The results from this work will not only help understand the human diabetic state at the molecular level but also lead the way for early detection of diabetes. More details here: http://global.windowsazurebootcamp.com/charity

Our hope is that as our attendees are using this to learn about how to deploy to Windows Azure and how distributed computing works, we can help solve some of the world's problems at the same time.

Agenda and Speakers

Joe and I have been hard at work on the agenda and I’m pleased to share the final agenda below:

Start	End	Topic	Speaker
9:00	9:15	Welcome, Introduction	Rick G. Garibay and Joe Guadagno
9:15	10:15	A Lap Around Windows Azure	Rick G. Garibay
10:15	11:30	Big Charity Render Lab!	Proctored by speakers, GWAB leadership
11:30	11:45	Break. Grab Lunch, prepare for next session!
11:45	12:45	A Lap Around Cloud Services	Joe Guadagno
12:45	1:45	A Lap Around Windows Azure Websites	Rick G. Garibay
1:45	2:45	A Lap Around Windows Azure Mobile Services	Brendon Birdoes
2:45	3:45	Hands on Labs	Proctored by speakers, GWAB leadership
3:45	4:00	Break
4:00	5:00	Windows Azure ALM	Chris Myers
5:00	6:00	Windows Azure Data & HDInsight	Michael Collins

The class includes presenters and trainers (Microsoft MVPs, industry experts) with deep, real world experience with Windows Azure, as well as a series of labs so you can practice what you just learned. In fact, I am pleased to announce that the following Microsoft MVPs and community rock stars have already signed on for this year’s event:

Joe Guadagno – Microsoft MVP, President SEVDNUG, GWAB Co-Organizer, Speaker
Chris Myers- President Phoenix Connected Systems User Group, GWAB Speaker
Brendon Birdoes - National Solutions Director, Neudesic, GWAB Speaker
Michael Collins – Architect, Neuron ESB, GWAB Speaker

Awesome. How much does it cost?
This event is FREE to the attendees. Gratis! Gratuite! Libero! However, seating is limited so be sure to register and secure your seat today: http://bit.ly/1gCdCZb

What do I need to bring?
You will need to bring your own computer which can run Visual Studio 2012 or 2013 (i.e. Windows, OSX, Ubuntu with virtualization, etc.) and have it preloaded with the following:

Visual Studio 2012 or 2013
The Windows Azure SDK from http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/net/

Optionally (or if you will not be doing just .NET labs), the following can also be installed:

Node.js SDK - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/
JAVA SDK - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/
Doing mobile? Android? iOS? Windows Phone or Windows 8? - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/
PHP - http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/php/

More info here: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/documentation

Please do the installation upfront as there will be very little time to troubleshoot installations during the day.

You will also need to be signed up for a Windows Azure account. There are many options including a 100% absolutely free 30 day trial. Why not sign up now? http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

Is this for beginners?
Yes and no. We will focus on a series of lectures and hands on labs aimed at level 200, but ad-hoc white boarding, deep scenario discussions and Q&A are all part of the fun. Think you already know it all? Great, we still need volunteers, speakers and lab buddies. Drop me a note on Twitter @rickggaribay

And now, for a little fun…

Big thanks to fellow MVPs Maarten Balliauw, Alan Smith, Michael Wood and Magnus Martensson for running this event as our global leaders. Thanks also to Scott Cate at Event Day for providing free registration hosting. We couldn’t do this without them!