Azure is huge, and growing day by day. I’ve been wanting to bring more Azure content into the user group, and I’m happy to announce that as of now, we have a plan. Even months in 2011 will continue to focus on .Net and more specifically ASP.net content. Odd months will be controlled, hosted, and booked by our newest up and coming community leader, Chris Coneybeer. Chris brings years of experience in .NET, community, and general volunteer tech events. He’s vey active in the local give camp, laid-off camp, code camp, (and I’m sure more) and is an all around nice guy.

This is a HUGE win for the user group. With Chris focusing on on half the year, I’m free to focus on less meetings, but bring in better content. This is a great winning combination.

Thank you Chris, and a very warm welcome, we look forward to what you can bring to the AZ.net user group.

If you get a chance – blow him up on twitter @coneybeer!

My name is Scott Cate, and I have lived in Arizona nearly my entire life. I graduated from Chandler High in 1991, and since then have been in technology. Early in my career I found that working with others is better than working alone. Two heads are better than one kind of thing. I generally think everyone agrees with that philosophy. What about 30 heads are better than 2? What if some of those 30 heads disagree with you? How do you respond? The immature will get aggressive and defend their idea without listening to opposition, while the mature strive to get the core dispute out on the table, and openly debate pros and cons.

Ultimately your debate should not be about proving your way, It should be about finding the right (or better) way. And that can only be done with intelligent conversation. If you have 30 intelligent people in a room, you’ll always end up with a much better result than if you answered your own questions in a box. This is what’s so great about Gangplank. The technical conversation is always about the end result, it may not be how you actually get there.

Where am I headed?

I would like to invite all local web technologists to see what Microsoft has to offer on their web stack. I’m holding an event on April 22, 2011 at the Chandler Center of the Arts. We have Scott Guthrie speaking, who is the gentleman at Microsoft who invented ASP.net, and has lead that team over the years, managing many web products along the way. We also have Mark Russinovich who will be spending time on the Microsoft Cloud Offering, named Azure.

I’m specifically calling the Anti-Microsoft community. Many of you have very valid points, and can cite a hundred things you hate about Microsoft. Some of you are the opposite, and only look at Microsoft. (I’m getting better, but I’m guilty of being in this camp). Like Ford v. Chevy, some of you don’t like Microsoft because your friends don’t like Microsoft. Just hearing the name Microsoft makes some developers stop listening. Why not spend the day, and just see what it is. I’m ABSOLUTELY NOT trying to convert you, that would be stupid. I’m just offering a friendly invitation for you to see what’s on the other side. You may like some of it, or hate it all, but you’ll be more informed with what’s current, rather than running on legacy hate.

April 22, 2011 is Good Friday, so you probably already have the day off. Please consider joining us for the day, with free parking, free wi-fi, and a free catered lunch from Murphy’s Law.

Please consider registering for the event here.
http://azgroups.org/2011scottguevent.aspx

Thank you.
@scottcate

P.S. This is me, Scott Cate, and I’m a real person. I do not work for Microsoft, and this is not a Microsoft organized event. Sure it’s Microsoft tech focused, but what I mean is, this isn’t an event that Microsoft put together, and then said – “Hey Scott … can you help us promote …”. This is an annual event that I have been running for since 2003, growing bigger and better each year. I have a deep relationship inside Microsoft and I’m personally invested in the Microsoft Web Stack. Hopefully you don’t judge me, because you’re way might be better than my way.

You can read more, and register here for the Feb 5, 2011 Event.

Andrew posted a nice comment, with a basic into to What is Azure, and I wanted to cross post it here. Thanks Andrew.

to    AZGroups@yahoogroups.com
date    Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:39 AM
subject    Re: [AZGroups] Azure Bootcamp in Chandler Feb 5th

To answer Brandon’s question– Azure is a blueish color…[?]

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud offering. It’s different than many other cloud
services, in that it has primarily focused itself around Platform as a
Service (PaaS) instead of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). This has some
pretty cool implications for people who develop in .NET– because the
barrier to entry is not much more than a "right-click & deploy" setting.

There are, of course, many other exciting features available that you can
leverage via Azure as well. Non-Relational data storage, Roles, hybrid
hosting, CDN, and a Caching Framework being some of the primary ones.
Relational data is also available in the cloud via SQL Azure. There is
even a marketplace for sharing/selling components built.

I do not say this lightly, but it’s my belief that this offering is going to
be critical for .NET developers to understand over the next few years.
Microsoft has made a huge investment in Azure and already has much of it’s
flagship software being offered on it.

Finally– one of the big misconceptions about Azure is that it only supports
.NET based languages. While it’s true that is a primary focus– one of the
single largest sites on Azure right now is a Java application. Language
Interop was an intentional focus of the platform from the beginning. Azure
currently has great tooling support for PHP & Java, and because much of the
offerings are RESTful, it can be further leveraged by other languages well.

We are intending through this event to cover many of the topics above– some
at a high-level and some bootstrapped to get you running with it. If any of
it sounds interesting, PLEASE RSVP so we can get an accurate head count.

Teach and Do.

That’s it – that’s what it all boils down to.

So we’re going to copy that same formula for an Azure boot camp, on Saturday, Feb 5th, 2011, starting at 8am.

We’ll spend the first half of the day Teaching, and we’ll spend the second half of the day doing. Four sessions that will introduce you to Azure in the morning, and then four hours in the afternoon where attendees will be challenged to create something new, that runs on Azure.

This is a FREE EVENT – Event the Azure team has given us a coupon that people can use to create 30 day free trial accounts.

LOCATION: Gangplank in Chandler (Maps Link)
260 S Arizona Ave
Chandler, AZ 85225

REGISTRATION: Simply email Scott and RSVP.

Here is a Pseudo Schedule that will outline the day

• Registration
• Coffee Welcome / Meet your neighbor / machine Prep
• Intro
• Azure Storage / Table / Blob / Queue
• Deployment Strategies
• Other Azure Features / Possibilities (Optional???)
• Build Your Own Azure App
• Prizes

AmEx Gift Cards - Come and get 'em

We only have 20 seats left for this event.

What is the event?

• It’s 12 hours, 8am to 8pm
• Lunch and dinner will be provided.
• Hard core code all day
• Learn. Code. Learn. code.
• Bring your own laptop
• Windows Phone 7 Training Event.

What’s in it for me?

• Free Training.
• $800.00 Amex Gift Cards

What? $800 in AmEx Gift Cards? Yes. The first half of the day is “Get to know Windows Phone 7″ with instructor lead training + labs. The second half of the day is “Build you own application”. Teams will break up, and spend the last half of the day, building whatever application they want. At the end of the day, We’ll vote on the apps, and the top 3 teams will win Gift Cards.

• $500 for First
• $200 for Second
• $100 for Third.

So it’s a day of free training – Plus you could win $500.

We also have a bunch of other goodies to give out!

REPEAT: As of this posting, there are only 20 seats left, and registration is required.

Click here to register NOW!

This special event, is being held @GangPlank in downtown Chandler.

GangPlank
260 S. Arizona Ave
Chandler, AZ 85225

Google Maps Link

#FAIL

But … 2010 is almost here, and we’re back in full swing for our 2010 event schedule.

I have some great user group meetings planned, as well as several great large scale events for the year.

We’ll be getting started in January with Joel Neubeck, talking about some Silverlight 4.0 features. Specifically the support for Camera and Audio (Mic??) support, and Commanding. I’m not sure if Joel is going to run these all together, or have a part1 and part 2 talk.

So let’s get 2010 started right, with a nice showing for Joel at the January meeting.

I’ll also be speaking in January for the Tucson.net user group meeting, on the asp.net Version 4 topic.

Happy Holidays everyone on closing out 2009, and we all hope to see you supporting your local community (and AZGroups in 2010

This (I think) will be only the second time that the Arizona.NET User Group meeting has been canceled. What makes this so hard, is that the cancelation comes so last minute.

1999-2000 Started  running the Arizona.net User Group, meetings were in Tempe.

2000-2001 Sometime. Group moved to Interface Technical Training.

2006 – Turned AZDNUG, into AZGroups, with the idea of sporting a calendar of events for all user group, instead of just the Arizona.net user group.

2007 (I think) Group moved to UAT, in Tempe.

2008-Present. Group moved back to PHX in the Microsoft Office.

Today, September, 7th, 2009  – I’m turning AZDNUG.com back on, with a redirect to http://AZDNUG.wordpress.com. This will give us a home page that we can use to start tracking the user group meetings, and other events.