My Session at Trivandrum Windows Azure Camp – Preview

I will be speaking on Cloud computing and Windows Azure at the Windows Azure camp conducted by Microsoft in Trivandrum on 30th of April. For more details, please visit the K-MUG site. I am hoping to kick off the session by giving an introduction to cloud computing and then will explain the current scenarios for deploying the appliciations.

After that I will be spending the next half hour explaining the Azure architecture, its various components and its working. I am also hoping to show some demos also along with this. I will round up my talk with an indepth coverage of the management portal and the developer experience.

So see  you folks at the venue and do drop in if you have any queries

Windows Azure Camp at Trivandrum on 30th April

 

Microsoft is organizing the Windows Azure camps in various cities across India.

As part of it, K-MUG in association with Microsoft is conducting a day long event on Windows Azure at Thiruvananthapuram on April 30, 2011.

If you are interested in learning more about cloud computing and Microsoft's offerings for that environment, come and join me and my fellow speakers on 30th

Venue

Zenith Hall, UST Global, Bhavani,Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram

 

Agenda

• Cloud Computing and Azure Overview
• Azure Architecture
• Azure Management Portal
• Services and Tools Needed
• Create and debug Azure Application
• Deploy application in Azure
• Lunch Break
• Moving ASP.NET application to Azure
• Moving SQL Express database to Azure
• SQL Windows Azure App Fabric Cache

Speakers  

Amal Dev works as a Senior Software Engineer with Gemini Software Solutions, Technopark. An avid techie who constantly articles in his blog, http://inquisitive-instincts.blogspot.com/ .He has been working with .NET technologies since its inception and his area of interests include C#, ASP.NET, WP7, Silverlight.

Shiju Varghese, Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET, is a Technical Architect on the Microsoft .Net technology stack with a focus on web application development and Domain-Driven Design. He has been working with .Net Technologies since beta version. Shiju focuses on C#, ASP.Net MVC, Entity Framework, Windows Azure, REST, WCF and Unity. Shiju holds number of Microsoft certifications including MCP, MCAD, MCTS, and MCPD: Web. He blogs at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/

   

Yanesh Tyagi is a technical architect with Millennium Consultants. He has extensive 16 years of experience working on different technologies, specially Microsoft Technologies. He has been with .NET since it's early days. Yanesh has worked in many domains inclusing BFSI, Travel, Education, Manufacturing, eCommerce etc. Yanesh is also involved in some open source projects.

                                                                                   

Microsoft WebCamp at Kochi on Feb 18, 2011

I am attending the webcamp happening at Kochi on Feb 18, 2011. If anyone is interested, please see the details below.

09:00am - 10:00am     Registration
10:00am - 10:30am     Opening Keynote     

                                           Nahas Mohammed,Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
10:30am - 11:30am     Introduction to WebMatrix    

                                           Nahas Mohammed
11:30am - 12:30pm     Forms and Data Access     

                                           Nahas Mohammed
12:30pm - 01:30pm     Lunch Break
01:30pm - 02:30pm     Helpers and Publishing     

                                           Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
02:30pm - 03:30pm     DotNetNuke on WebMatrix     

                                           Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu
03:30pm - 04:00pm     Audience Q&A and Closing Note     

                                           Nahas Mohammed,Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu

Venue Details

City        Kochin
Date       18th February, 2011
Venue     Abad Plaza
Address   M.G Road, Cochin-682 035
RSVP      080-4089 7010, +91-96636 82120

More details at http://www.microsoft.com/india/events/webcamps/day_events.aspx
 

Community Tech Days Kochi, October 23, 2010 - Part 2

 

For first part, click here

After the session by Raj we had a small tea break, which I normalize utilize to network with similar minded ones. Here, I met a couple of guys who were working on environments as diverse as from Linux to windows to mobile devices. When we were back, Vinod was back on the dais for his presentation on T-SQL tips and tricks. I had attended his session once and his knowledge on sql has amazed me. This time he started with a simple declaration and initialization statement, a new feature in SQL 2008 and showed us the various ways to fine tune it. 

Then he went on to demonstrate the common errors we may make while creating indexes, usage of ISNULL & COALESCE and also the options we may overlook while creating databases. But the one I like the most is the tip to use HIERARCHY_ID to use for sorting the a list of IP addresses. It was a wonderful session, which caused many seasoned people like us in the crowd to take  extra care while playing around with databases and while writing T-SQL scripts. As always time was a constraint here, so he has to cut short his session and invited Shalvin for his session ADO.NET Entity Framework.

Shalvin, a .NET Corporate Trainer and Consultant is regular speaker a K-MUG events. His session was like an hands on session and I felt the need for a laptop, so that I can try it there itself. He started with explaining the advantages an ORM has over the relational model. Then he went to demo a small contact management application which was created using WPF and ADO.NET EF. He showed us how to create a data source, generate ORM mapping and then binding and displaying data in controls such as combo box and datagrid using LINQ. 

He wrapped the session by showing how easy is to maintain a data centric application developed using ADO.NET Entity Framework as it decreases the amount of code needed for CRUD operations and also it is loosely-coupled with the underlying schema, which makes it less error prone to changes made in the database. When Shalvin wounded up the session, everyone went to have lunch, which was a buffet arranged in the back section of the auditorium and the food served matched the expectation of many.

Community Tech Days Kochi, October 23, 2010

K-Mug organized the Kerala edition of the Community Tech Days at Kochi on 23^rd of October 2010. I arrived at Kochi a day before, on 22^nd and stayed at my friend’s place. I started my journey to the venue by boarding a bus bound to Kaloor from Kakkanad and the heavens opened up when I was about to get down from the bus. So I took an auto from the bus stop to the venue, which was behind the international stadium where the cricket match between India and Australia got cancelled recently and in my mind I was little bit worried about these conditions affecting the crowd participation .



I reached the venue around 8.40 AM, welcomed by Sathish, who like me landed at Kochi a day before at the registration desk. Sreeju was busy with finalizing the last minute arrangements and Vinod, Raj, Shalvin and Praseed were doing a last minute check on their presentation. So without wasting much time, I joined Sathish in the registration desk, which was getting busier by each minute. Although rain had played a spoilsport in the morning, it didn’t damaged the participants spirit as they turned up in huge numbers.

Although it was planned to start the event by 09.30 AM,  but delay in completing the registrations meant that the inauguration ceremony started only by 09.45 AM. Sreeju welcomed all the speakers and participants on behalf of K-Mug and then intimated us about the sad demise of Raj, passed away on .. due to an heart attack. He was looking after the academic activities of K-Mug and ever present face in all the activities of K-Mug.  So as a mark of respect Sreeju requested all to observe a minute silence in memory of fallen comrade.  

After that Sreeju went on to give a brief talk about K-Mug and its activities to the audience and then called Vinod on to stage. Vinod, a developer evangelist works with Microsoft Corporation is an expert in SQL Server. He thanked all the participants for making the community a big hit and an active one, which in turn has helped K-Mug to bag the Best Community Impact Award for the year 2010. Vinod then went on to present the trophy on behalf of Microsoft to K-Mug office bearers, led by Sreejumon. 

Community Tech Day - 23rd Oct 2010 - Kochi

K-MUG,one of the most successful technical community in India, is organizing Community Tech Days(CTD) in Kochi on 23rd Oct, 2010

Where
IMA House,
J. N. International Stadium Road,
Palarivattom P.O.,
Cochin, Kerala 

Agenda             

08:45 - 09:15 Registration Confirmation

09:15 - 09:30 Welcome and Community update by Sreejumon & Vinod

09:30 - 10:00 Plunge into Mono by Praseed

10:00 - 11:00 Telerik Productivity Tools by Raj

11:00 - 11:15 Tea Break (15 min)

11.15 - 12:15 T-SQL Tips and Tricks with SQL Server by Vinod

12.15 - 01:00 Entity Framework 4 by Shalvin

01:00 - 01:45 Lunch Break (45 min)

01.45 - 02:45 Security Auditing and Accountability under Windows 2008 by Manu

02:45 - 03:30 NoSQL databases in .NET Apps by Shiju

03:30 - 03:45 Tea Break (15 min)

03:45 - 04:30 Generics - A Revisit by Yanesh

04:30 - 05:15 .NET Serialization And XML by Praseed

05.15 - 05:30 Closing Ceremony

For more details please visit the K-MUG events page .

For registrations, click here or 

if you have a Live ID, then go to Community Tech Days Site 

Internet Explorer 9 Beta - First Impressions

The much anticipated release of the IE 9 beta is out and didn't waste much time in installing it. The first thing caught my attention was the interface. Less congested design with less icons and more screen real estate.

Layout & Interface

 

IE 9 brings significant changes to its layout, the address bar, icons and the tabs now appear in a single row which there by increases the area for the content. Also Reload, Stop, Compatibility buttons appears next to the address bar and the Home, Favorite and Settings button now appear to the right of the screen. These icons are gray in color by default and changes the color when we hover mouse over them. The status bar is turned off by default and I found it bit annoying coz most of the users want to see the progress bar during the loading of a page. 

Another one catches the user attention will be the absence of the address box. This explains why they integrated Bing right into the address bar, so it works either as an address bar or a search bar and Microsoft termed it as "Private OneBox".