Windows Azure Dev Camps - Fall 2011 Series Re-Cap

Well, five cities and two weeks on the road and the East Coast Windows Azure Dev Camps have come to a close. The tour started in Raleigh, NC on 12/5, and then made its way through Farmington, CT (Hartford), New York City, Malvern, PA (Philly), and Chevy Chase, MD (DC).  Brian, Jim, and I had a lot of fun talking about the cloud and Windows Azure with the many folks we met on the road.

Thanks & Kudos

Thanks & kudos go out to Bill Wilder for helping Jim with the Farmington, CT event on 12/7.  Likewise, to Sanjay Jain for helping me deliver the New York City (12/8) and Malvern (12/12) events too! 

I’d also like to thank Microsoft Partner Aditi for delivering a special lunch session at the New York City event. The folks from Aditi detailed their experience from start to finish using Windows Azure to implement an application system used by one of the major airlines.

Thanks for Bill Zack, Lindsay Lindstrom, Zhiming Xue, a.k.a. “Dr. Z”, and G. Andrew Duthie for helping out with the Rock Paper Azure hand-on portion of the events in NY, Malvern, and Chevy Chase respectively.

And of course, thanks to all of the attendees for giving us the privilege of your time to talk to you about Windows Azure!

Content & Resources

The content & resources from this event series has now been posted on our US Cloud Connection site.  This includes the presentation slides for the sessions delivered during the first half of the day:

• The Case For The Cloud
• Storage In The Cloud
• Code In The Cloud

Also listed on our Content & Resource page are links and instructions on where to find the demo applications & code reviewed during the sessions.  This includes:

• Babelcam
• Tankster
• Thuzi’s Facebook/Azure Helper Kit
• Azure Toolkits for iOS/Android/Windows Phone
• Azure Toolkit for Social Gaming
• Windows Azure GuestBook
• Cerebrata’s Cloud Storage Studio

Windows Azure Dev Camp Fall 2011 Series – Content & Resources

US Cloud Connection

If you haven’t visited it yet, US Cloud Connection is a site where you can keep up with all things related to the cloud and Windows Azure that Brian, Jim, and I post about. 

The site features a “cloud filtered” aggregate of our three blogs. So you won’t see our more ‘local’ blog posts about other topics and events in our home areas of North Carolina, NY/NJ, and New England.

US Cloud Connection is also the location for where you can find the content for all of our Azure-related events.  This includes past Firestarter & Tech Jam events, as well as the Rock Paper Azure Challenge and Azure @Home. 

Have a look around over there and let us know if you have any feedback!

Fun Tidbits

Some interesting facts about this event series…

• Food – To try and add a “camp” feel to the event, we decided to go with grilled food, including hamburgers, hot dogs, and smores!
• Fire – Between the sessions (in most cities), you may have noticed a “camp fire” burning on the projector. This was courtesy of a Yule Log video on YouTube which was ‘looped’ using a nifty utility called Infinite Looper. (Tip: If you ever want to “Rick Roll” someone, Infinite Looper makes the hysteria last longer. )
• Raleigh, NC was the only location where Brian, Jim, and I were in the same place at the same time!
• Candid Camera – In NYC, a professional camera crew was on hand to record activity during the event for the making of a DevCamp ad for Channel 9!

Rock Paper Azure Challenge

In each city, attendees participated in a “local” round of the Rock Paper Azure Challenge, coding a "bot” for a chance at some swag we had (XBox, etc) at each event. Many of the folks who participated in the RPA Challenge at each event also entered into our recent online Fall Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to Cancun, Mexico. 

The sweepstakes results were posted here on Friday 12/16.  Congrats to player “AmpaT”, who participated in the NYC event, for coming in 1st place on the leaderboard for the Fall Sweepstakes round online!

Below are results of the local rounds we played at each event:

Raleigh, NC – 13 bots

Farmington, CT – 11 bots (not including Jim – jimoneil)

New York City – 30 bots (not including Peter – jrzyshr2)

Note: In NYC, due to operator error, the ‘round’ was run a second time in the admin console. Given that many bots rely on randomness, results can change when the same bots are re-matched.  The results below represent the final score after the ‘round’ was run a second time. It is not the order of the leaderboard that was used for prizes given out to at the event.

Malvern – 20 bots

Chevy Chase – 19 bots (not including Jim – jimoneil)

For those that attended, I hope you enjoyed the events. I hope to see and meet more of you at events in the future!