Attendee Recap - June Meeting

Unfortunately, I was detained elsewhere and arrived more then 30 minutes late for this month's session. I'm a bit bummed about this as I've seen Jeff Brand, June's first speaker, present on Windows Azure before. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Attendance this month was about 18 or so. There was some new faces in attendance this month. I'm not certain if they were new members of the UG or just first time shows. In either case it was nice to see them there.

The first presenter was Jeff Brand, part of Microsoft's Developer Evangilist and self proclaimed ".NET Sex Symbol". As I mentioned earlier, I had the pleasure of seeing Jeff present before and dispite being a bit under the weather, he brought his 'A' game. Jeff did a great job of covering the huge topic of Windows Azure (Microsoft's PaaS) in what little time he had. He discussed the basics of the web and worker roles, blogs, tables, and queues in Azure Storage, and even deployment via the Azure management portal. I really respect the efficiency with which he can cover so much so quickly.

Next up was Phil Wicklund of RBA Consultant. Phil gave the group an overview of Microsoft Online Services' SharePoint Online. He contrasted the hosted Standard and Dedicated solutions against on-premise MOSS. Even sharing with all of us his personal lists of each option's strengths and weaknesses.

As always, there was some great discussion all through the meeting. You can tell summer was here though and more folks headed for the door a bit earlier than in the past. Its good that the group is taking July off. Who knows, maybe someone will organize an informal happy-hour next month so we can all just shoot the breeze on a patio for an hour or so.

Unless the happy-hour thing happens (here's hoping) the next session will August 14th. See you all there.