I am thrilled to announce the 2nd Annual GWAB which has been confirmed for Saturday, March 29th, 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:
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:
Optionally (or if you will not be doing just .NET labs), the following can also be installed:
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!