Maarten Balliauw {blog}

Just got back from London where I did a fun talk on PHP and Windows Azure yesterday evening. It was the first time I did a presentation after three beers, but I think it went allright. As promised, here's the slide deck and sample code (ImageCloud.rar (5.00 mb)).

Abstract: "This session covers the basics of Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud platform. Learn how you can develop and deploy a PHP application in Windows Azure, using the tools and libraries Microsoft provides. Creating a photo upload application, the different aspects of the Windows Azure platform are leveraged for creating a performant and scalable PHP application."

Thanks for joining the conference and my session! Also, Robert Castelo, your talk on Drupal and its community was interesting. Did not know the active developer base and security teams were that big.

Slides of my talk at the PHPBenelux conference last weekend are online. Bit of a pity my live demo went wrong due to my www.azure.com trial account going into read-only mode while doing the demo.

Abstract: "While working together with Microsoft on the Windows Azure SDK for PHP, we found that we needed an popular example application hosted on Microsoft’s Windows Azure. Wordpress was an obvious choice, but not an obvious task. Learn more about Windows Azure, the PHP SDK that we developed, SQL Azure and about the problems we faced porting an existing PHP application to Windows Azure."

Thanks for joining the conference and my session! And thanks to the PHPBenelux crew for organizing their first conference ever, it rocked!

Everybody knows the Microsoft MIX event, right? The one in Las Vegas? The one with all the fancy web-related stuff? Rings a bell? Ok, great. In the beginning of December 2009, Microsoft did an open call for speakers, which I answered with some session proposals. Who doesn’t want to go to Vegas, right?

The open call proposals have been processed (150+ sessions submitted, wow!) and a voting has started. Yes, you hear me coming: please go ahead and vote for a session I submitted. Voting ends January 15th, 2010.

Since I could not decide which color of the voting banner matched best with my blog’s theme, I decided to put them all three online:

Thanks in advance!

Maarten

PS: There's also Elijah Manor, Justin Etheredge, K. Scott Allen, and many others who submitted good looking sessions.

It was a fun session yesterday at KU Leuven university! I did a session on cloud computing and Windows Azure there for the IEEE Student Branch Leuven.

Abstract: "This session covers the basics of the Windows Azure Services Platform and drills into some architectural challenges. Learn what components the Windows Azure Services Platform is built of and how they can be leveraged in building a scalable and reliable application."

If you want more info about Windows Azure and how to develop, architect or benefit from the platform as a whole, register freely at the Azure User Group Belgium.

Thank you for attending!

Being in the US for 2 times in a month (PDC09 and Web Development Summit) is fun, tiring and rewarding. The WDS09 was an invite-only event organized by Microsoft, focusing on interaction between Microsoft and the PHP community. I must say: the event has been helpful and interesting for both parties!

• The Heathman Hotel in Kirkland is a nice hotel!
• Traveling towards the US is far more productive than flying back: I did PHPMEF traveling westbound, I crashed (half sleep/half awake) on the eastbound flight…
• If you just traveled over 26 hours: do NOT go shopping immediately when you arrive home! It’s really frustrating and tiring.
• Did a session on Windows Azure SDK for PHP, PHPExcel and PHPLinq.
• Did an interview for the Connected Show
• Met a lot of people I knew from Twitter and e-mail, and met a lot of new people, both Microsoft and PHP community. Nice to meet you all!
• Event focus was on feedback between Microsoft and PHP community, overall I think the dialogue was respectful and open and helpful to both parties.

This was actually my first time at the WDS which has been around for 5 years already. The Interop team invited me there, and I want to thank them for doing that: it was a great trip, a great event and I got the chance to meet lots of new people.

Attendees were mostly people from the PHP community, like Cal Evans, Rafael Doms, Chris Cornutt, Romain Bourdon (WAMP server anyone?), Alison “snipe” Gianotto, … Next to that, lots of Microsoft people came by during various sessions. Some of them even reserved the whole week and were attending all sessions to make sure they were in the feedback loop all the time.

We’ve seen Microsoft sessions on IIS, Web Platform Installer, Silverlight, SQL Server, Bing, Powershell (sorry, Scott Hanselman, for disturbing your presentation with a tweet :-)). Interesting sessions with some info I did not know. PHP community sessions were also available: Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, the PHP community perspective, feedback sessions, PHPLinq, PHPExcel, interoperability bridges, … A good mix of content with knowledgeable speakers and good communication between speakers, product groups and audience. Well done!

Back from PDC 2009 with a lot of information on Windows Azure, I did an MSDN Live Meeting on ASP.NET and Windows Azure today. Here's the slide deck and demo code.

Abstract: "Put your stuff in the cloud! Windows Azure allows you to take advantage of cloud computing infranstructure for hosting, computing, and storage of your applications. In this demo filled session we take an existing ASP.Net Application and move it to be hosted in Windows Azure, while taking advantage of Windows Azure storage."

Example code can be downloaded here: MSDN - Converting an existing ASP.NET application to Windows Azure.zip (2.01 mb)

If you want more info about Windows Azure and how to develop, architect or benefit from the platform as a whole, register freely at the Azure User Group Belgium.

Before you get started, you need to have a Windows Azure token. Request a token by completing the application here. Tokens are generally issued within a few hours. Once you have received your token, redeem it at http://windows.azure.com. Afterwards, you can deploy your application using the interface at http://windows.azure.com or by issuing a right-click -> Publish... in your Visual Studio solution.

Thank you for attending!

It’s going to be a filled end of 2009… There’s Microsoft PDC which I will be attending and will probably cause me some sleepless nights (both due to jetlag and due to all the new stuff that will be released). Next to that, I’ll also be doing some sessions in the next few weeks. Here’s a list…

Looking forward to see you at one of these events!

On September 29, I did a session on ASP.NET MVC at Remix 2009 Belgium. All session recordings are now online, check the Remix09 site. Slides and code for my talk can be found in a previous blog post. The video material can be found below. Enjoy! And feel free to leave some comments!

ASP.NET MVC Wisdom

Abstract: "Building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes, featuring what's new in ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1 and focusing on some of the core ASP.NET MVC features like security and routing."

As promised during the session at Remix 2009, here’s my example code and slide deck.

Abstract: "Building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes, featuring what's new in ASP.NET MVC 2 preview 1 and focusing on some of the core ASP.NET MVC features like security and routing."

Example code can be downloaded here: ASP.NET MVC Wisdom - ReMix.zip (8.91 mb)

Thank you for attending!

Just learned I’ll be doing a session on ASP.NET MVC at ReMIX Belgium. ReMix brings the best of MIX09 in Las Vegas to Belgium: it bring us international speakers presenting on the best of MIX09, as well as local cases, with a story focus on User Experience (UX).

The session will be around building a Twitter clone in 60 minutes. Bear with me at ReMIX 2009!

Abstract: “What are you doing right now?, that's Twitter's question to its users. How about you creating own microblogging platform? "What are you working on?", "What are you reading?", ..., are all specific questions for your own community. This session takes you along in building a Twitter clone using the ASP.NET MVC framework.”