Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers.  Windows Azure is currently in Community Technology Preview. Commercial availability for Windows Azure will likely be at the end of calendar year 2009.

Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP. To help developers and architects better understand how to leverage the cloud, Microsoft is offering INETA two "train-the-trainer" sessions for user group leaders, speakers and influential contributors. Here's a great opportunity to learn more and present back to your user groups and other community events.

The Train-the-Trainer session is offered twice for your convenience. Session times are:

• Wednesday, September 9, 2009 5:00 PM-6:00 PM (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
• Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:00 AM-9:00 AM (UTC-8:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Here's What You'll Learn:

• Development tools for Visual Studio
• Local debugging
• Data storage services
• Security
• Running your ASP.NET applications in the cloud
• Service hosting
• Interfacing Non Microsoft applications such as PHP

You'll get demo code and PowerPoint content ready for presentation delivery.

In addition to the monthly conference and code camp listing and scheduled INETA speaker appearances, this month's newsletter includes several opportunities for you to pick up some new topics for presentations.  The Birds-of-a-Feather team is looking for session hosts for PDC in November.  A few more of the regional speakers are highlighted.   The Component Code Challenge has wrapped up and the entries are in the hands of the judges. It's time to be sure to get your Community Champion entries in. Two offers for group leaders and members are included. Finally, there is a review of what by all accounts was a great community event, DevLink. Enjoy!

PDC09 Birds-of-a-Feather Session Host Proposals Now Being Accepted Visit www.pdcbof.com Once again INETA is organizing the Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions at PDC09 in Los Angeles, November 17-19, 2009. BOF sessions are moderated open discussions on technology related topics proposed by developers attending PDC ’09. BOF sessions are not formal presentations, no slides or software demonstrations. The format is casual and open with a microphone and whiteboard available to facilitate discussions. The PDC09 BOF sessions are organized by volunteers from INETA, the world-wide organization for .NET focused user groups.

The sessions are an opportunity for attendees to have technical conversations with their peers on technology related topics of interest. A topic may be related to conference content or any other topic that would be of interest to conference attendees. The BOF sessions are a great opportunity to meet with other attendees that have common interests and exchange ideas. All conference attendees with the exception of Microsoft employees are eligible to submit a topic proposal.

Proposals for hosting sessions are now being accepted and will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis through 10/31/2009. Details on submitting a proposal can be found at www.pdcbof.com.

Component Code Challenge The Component Code Challenge deadline was extended one week to September 1.  A quick note of thanks to everyone who participated in the INETA Component Code Challenge and a special thanks to the component vendors who sponsored the contest. The decision is now in the hands of the judges. The winners of two scholarships to PDC in November as well as an iPod Touch and prize packs of components from our sponsoring vendors will be announced soon.

Community Champs Just a reminder that you should submit your entries for Community Champs. The third quarter draws to a close at the end of this month. Don't miss your chance to be recognized for all you do for your local community. Or nominate your local community hero. Enter your tasks at the Champs website.

Regional Speakers Looking for a speaker for an upcoming meeting or event? Maybe one of the over 150 community-minded folks who have registered to be INETA regional speakers would fit your agenda. Visit the Regional Speakers Program page and search for a person interested in presenting on a range of topics in your area and submit your request to get the process started.  Topics span  the range from Agile development methodology through XNA. We'd like to focus on a few of the people who have registered for the program and are available to speak to groups or events in their areas across the country. We hope to focus on various people and regions over time to help you find the ones you need for your event.

Regional Speakers in focus this month:

• Arian Kulp of Corvallis, OR is an MSDN Coding 4 Fun author who speaks on C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, XAML, Expression, LINQ, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF), Visual Studio 2008/2010, SQL Server, and new managed Windows 7 technologies in Oregon.
• Craig Shoemaker of Corona, CA speaks on C#, ASP .NET, ASP .NET MVC, User Experience, ASP .NET Routing, Dynamic Data Website, JQuery, AJAX, Silverlight, and Architecture in California.
• Mickey Gousset of Tupelo, MS, speaks on ASP .NET, Visual Studio 2010, and Visual Studio Team System in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
• Carey Payette of Pickerington, OH speaks on C#, VBScript, JScript, JavaScript, Java, ASP .NET, ASP .NET MVC, XAML, Expression, User Experience, LINQ, Entity Framework, ASP .NET Routing, Dynamic Data Website, Object Oriented Principles, Design Patterns, Services (Web), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), JQuery, AJAX, Silverlight, Dynamic Languages, Silverlight 3, and Architecture in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario.
• Brian Peek of Glenville, NY speaks on C/C++, C#, XAML, Visual Studio, LINQ, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Forms, Robotics Studio, XNA, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 3, and Windows Mobile in Florida, Nevada, New York and Oregon.

If you are interested in becoming part of this program, visit the Regional Speaker registration page and register yourself.

You’re invited to attend the Development Tools Ecosystem Summit focused on Visual Studio extensibility on October 19-23, 2009 at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, Washington. Whether beginner or expert, you’ll learn tips and tricks, best practices, and meet 1:1 with developers and architects.

Visual Studio is an open, extensible platform that can be customized for everything from individual productivity tools to enterprise-wide development needs. The Visual Studio Shell enables developers to leverage a world class IDE to build specialized tools for any number of vertical industries, and can even be custom-branded with your own splash screen and app icon. The conference is open to all developers on October 19th and 20th to learn how to extend Visual Studio 2010. October 21st through October 23rd is a private event for VSIP program members under NDA to receive exclusive business and technical content. For more information on the VSIP program, click here.

Registration Details

General Extensibility Developers: Check out full event details on MSDN, an agenda and session details will be posted soon. Recommend a friend to attend: Enter the name of the person that recommended you to attend on the registration form; if we identify you both as attendees, you each win a prize!

VSIP Partners & Inner Circle Partners: All partner program members are invited to this event and should register on the Development Tools Ecosystem Partner Portal.

It was so bright, warm and sunny arriving Thursday morning at DevLink. This time around, Devlink Chairman John Kellar had donated the ticket I won at the local Nashville Web Developers Group a few months ago. I had read up on the DevLink.Net website all about the sessions, tracks, speakers, and every other detail required to know which sessions to attend and how to get there. Another thought too was to attend at least one Open Spaces session, and I was there when Alan Stevens of Knoxville, TN, opened the session. Lipscomb University with its high bell tower was awesomely beautiful, and very well designed technically for presentations using computers. I was impressed with the entire operation, from the short registration lines broken down by name (for once it was nice to have a name like Wygant!), to the excellent presentations on new technology, everything so professional. The ending was the topper though! The ending came too soon, with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell from .NET Rocks! doing “The 64 Bit Question” show for door prizes. I took the SharePoint Track 100% but the first day, I watched two 3-hour sessions on Team Foundation Server. Then two days of four 75-minute sessions of SharePoint. But that wasn’t enough. We started the Wednesday preceding DevLink with an Influencers’ Meeting to practice Open Spaces and learn to collaborate with each other to build knowledge. Still not enough, immediately after DevLink, Microsoft helped with Startup Nashville on Saturday night and Sunday as well, speaking and working though issues with starting a business and how Microsoft BizSpark can enable our Entrepreneurism. It was a truly great event, unparalleled by even the thousands one could spend for a week-long event. So “worth it”! I came back with all sorts of directions after speaking to the experts often 1:1 and learning the latest techniques. I’m preparing a brain dump to present to the other developers at work on Redstone Arsenal/Marshall Space Flight Center/Missile Defense Agency in Huntsville, Alabama.

Dan Wygant C# Consultant  danwygant

If you have an interesting community event report to share, contact us at noram.marketing@ineta.org.

Pluralsight On-Demand! Training – The Road to Success for Unemployed User Group Members Pluralsight is helping developers ramp up on Microsoft technologies and sharpening their skills to get back in the job market with premier .NET training.
Unemployed? Put yourself back in the driver’s seat with a free 1-month pass to Pluralsight On-Demand!. We’re hearing your victories through gained employment and new skill sets in emerging Microsoft technologies. Contact your Group Leader to learn how to access your free pass to Pluralsight On-Demand!. Group Leaders, read how you can provide this benefit and more exclusive offers to your group.
Pluralsight On-Demand! Training – 30% OFF for User Group Members ($500 value) Pluralsight On-Demand! is a subscription-based library of online Microsoft® .NET Training modules you can access from anywhere, anytime, while still learning from the best in the field. You’ll find us pointing out flaws and what to stay away from in addition to clearly distilling what matters most in learning the key concepts you need to do your job. Pluralsight On-Demand! authors and instructors are MVPs in a variety of Microsoft technologies, providing subscribers with a comprehensive training experience, a growing high-quality library and a trusted .NET training source. Subscribe using the group code INETANEWS-100-SFG5-5ZM8 and begin learning today.

Coming Soon from MaximumASP - MaxESP Not interested in managing your server? Manage your application not your server! MaximumASP will soon launch MaxESP our elastic shared platform. Scalability and High Availability are already built in and there is no need to rewrite code. Microsoft’s Application-Aware Load Balancing technology makes this the most innovative shared platform available today. Introductory accounts will be available in September free of charge for 30 days and just $49 a month after the trial period. To learn more about MaxESP features and updates visit http://weblog.maximumasp.com/ Virtualization Check out what’s new with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with a FREE MaxV account for 30 days at www.maxv.com. Standard plans include High Availability, Intelligent Monitoring, Recurrent Backups, and Scalability

Springboard Series Virtual Roundtable
Windows 7 Application Compatibility Part 2: Virtualization

Date: Thursday, September 24
Time: 9:00am Pacific Time

https://ms.istreamplanet.com/springboard

Hear from a panel of experts how virtualization tools can help you with application compatibility concerns whether you’re migrating from Windows Vista or Windows XP. Join us to discuss how presentation virtualization, desktop virtualization and application virtualization can reduce testing times, expedite deployment and ultimately help you streamline PC management. We’ll cover the latest desktop virtualization technologies from Microsoft, including App-V, MED-V and XP Mode for Windows 7. Plus we share tips and tricks and demonstrate free tools to analyze and fix applications while answering your questions live during the event. Join live on Thursday, September 24^th, 2009, 9:00am Pacific Time. Missed Part 1? Watch the replay.

For IT Pro tips, tricks and resources for Windows 7, visit the Springboard Series.

As part of the “virtual” experience, you may submit your questions about Windows 7 Application Compatibility to the panel live during the event—or submit questions in advance to vrtable@microsoft.com.

Springboard Series: The resource for Windows desktop IT professionals

INETA and several of the product teams at Microsoft are working together to make relevant content available for user group presentations. This month we're covering some resources from the language teams and the Azure team.

Here are a few places where the language teams keep walkthroughs.

• Walkthroughs in Visual Basic and Visual C#:
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/7a61f8ks(VS.71).aspx
• Walkthrough: Writing Queries in C# (LINQ):
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397900.aspx
• Visual C# Walkthroughs:
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/1dbsh6t3(VS.71).aspx
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 1 Walkthroughs:
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/dd819233.aspx

You’ll note that not all presentations are for current and future versions as many user group attendees may still be on V -1 or -2 at their employer.

And, as a reminder from the article above, the Windows Azure team is providing us with these Train-the-Trainer sessions. To help developers and architects better understand how to leverage the cloud, Microsoft is offering INETA two "train-the-trainer" sessions for user group leaders, speakers and influential contributors. Here's a great opportunity to learn more and present back to your user groups and other community events.

The Train-the-Trainer session is offered twice for your convenience. Session times are:

• Wednesday, September 9, 2009 5:00 PM-6:00 PM (UTC-08:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)
• Tuesday, September 15, 2009 8:00 AM-9:00 AM (UTC-8:00) Pacific Time (US & Canada)

In coming newsletter issues, we’ll share additional links and opportunities like LiveMeeting sessions and product team tours.

Upcoming Conferences

VSLive! Orlando 2009	Orlando	FL	10/04-07/09
SharePoint Conference 2009	Las Vegas	NV	10/19-22/09
DevConnections	Las Vegas	NV	11/09-12/09
PDC	Los Angeles	CA	11/17-19/09

Code Camps and Other Events

Tallahassee .NET Code Camp	Tallahassee	FL	09/05/09
SharePoint Saturday NY	New York	NY	09/12/09
Vermont Code Camp	Burlington	VT	09/12/09
Raleigh Code Camp	Raleigh	NC	09/19/09
Utah Code Camp	South Jordan	UT	09/19/09
Edmonton Code Camp	Edmonton	AB	09/19/09
Houston Tech Fest 2009	Houston	TX	09/26/09
Silicon Valley Code Camp	Los Altos Hills	CA	10/03-04/09
Richmond Code Camp 2009.2	Richmond	VA	10/03/2009
Southwest Florida Code Camp	Estero	FL	10/03/2009
SQLSaturday #26	Redmond	WA	10/03/2009
SQLSaturday #21	Sanford	FL	10/17/2009
CloudCamp Phoenix	Phoenix	AZ	10/24/2009
Twin Cities Code Camp	Minneapolis	MN	10/24/2009