Global Azure Bootcamp 2018 - Ogden Utah

On Saturday April 21st 2018 the Global Azure Bootcamp was held. On that day at 286 locations around the world communities gathered to learn more about Microsoft Azure. Each location was free to choose whatever content they wished to present.

It has been 3 years since we last hosted a local a session of the Global Azure Bootcamp in Utah. This year I decided that it was time we bring it back, so I volunteered to host the event. Along with the global sponsors we had a couple of local organizations step up to help us out. The first was the Computer Science Department at Weber State University. Weber State hosted the event at their main campus in Ogden Utah. The second local sponsor was ZAACT, a company headquartered in Draper Utah that is a Microsoft Gold Partner specializing in SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure. Zaact provided some give-aways to share with the attendees.

After reaching out to a few people for help presenting I ended up being the only presenter. That made for a long day - but I really enjoy these events and love to share information with others. I believe I love it so much because I believe that I actually get much more out of it that what I put into to. I honestly believe that everyone has something to teach me, and I hope that in return I can share some knowledge with them. Also, I believe the best way to learn anything is to teach it to others. So for me, presenting at an event like this is a win-win!

Since I was the only presenter, and since the project I am currently working on has been in crunch mode for the past couple of months I knew it would be difficult to create new content for the event. Luckily Frank Boucher from Montreal, Canada had organized a similar event in November of 2017 and had graciously offered to share the content they used with anyone who wanted it. I forked his Github repository, reviewed and updated the content and used it as the base of my presentation.

You can find my updates here: https://github.com/mgerickson/Bootcamp-Azure-Asp.Net-Core-DevOps

There was a pretty diverse group of attendees at the event. While I had initially intended to have each attendee go through the labs on their own we decided it would work out best to do the exercises as a team, allowing anyone who wanted to follow alone with the group.

We were unable to get through all of the labs, but we did get a great introduction to Azure with some good hands on experience. I was able to present all of the content, just not do all of the labs.

While our numbers were smaller than I wished it was a very interactive group. I love having those in attendance participate, and this group did not let me down! Thank you to everyone who attended!

The feedback that I have received has been very positive. And, at least for now, I am highly motivated to ensure that we don't miss future years of participating in this event. I am also interested in organizing some other local events. I'm thinking that we need a similar event for AWS. Knowledge of "the cloud" is becoming more important all of the time and ensuring we have well informed technologists in the area is important.

Please let me know what you think about these events. And let me know if you would be interested in attending future events - especially if you would like to help present and share your knowledge with the community!

Keep your head in the clouds!

Utah Technology Community Groups

Last Saturday I was fortunate to be able to host, and present at, the Global Azure Bootcamp. Look for a post in the near future where I review the event. But todays post is to answer a question that several of the attendees had. The question was, what technical groups, or events, occur in the local area.

After I shared some of the groups that I know about with the attendees I decided that it would be worthwhile to share the list with others.

Quick disclaimer - while I have attended meetings of several of these groups I have not been able to attend nearly as often for the past few years. I am providing information that is available online, trying to pull it together into one place. But I cannot confirm how active the groups are or how valuable their content or meetings are at this time - that leaves a wide open opportunity for each of you to join them and help make these groups great!

Here is what I've come up with - PLEASE let me know what other groups or events you know about so we can build up or local technology communities! Also, please let me know if you have any experience with any of the groups, I'd like to be better informed to share the information with others in the future.

The SLC .NET User Group
https://www.meetup.com/The-SLC-NET-User-Group/

The Northern Utah .NET User Group
This is the group that I have been able to attend the most over the past couple of years. They meet very consistently and have an especially fun meeting every October when they use microcontrollers to make some fun Halloween gadgets.
https://www.meetup.com/nunug-org/
http://nunug.org/

The Utah Valley .NET User Group
https://www.meetup.com/Utah-County-NET-User-Group/

Utah Geek Events
This organization puts on the annual Utah Code Camp and other events. They also share information about other independent events that happen in the state. This is a good site to keep an eye on. They also have a Slack Channel that you can join.
https://www.utahgeekevents.com/

Utah Azure Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/Utah-Microsoft-Azure-Meetup/

Utah AWS Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/Utah-AWS/

Utah Java Users Group
http://ujug.org/

JavaScript Engineers of Utah
https://utahjs.com/
https://www.meetup.com/UtahJS/

Utah Node.js Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/utahnodejs/

ReactJS Utah Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/ReactJS-Utah/

Salt Lake Valley Angular Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/AngularJS-Utah/

Salt Lake City Data Science Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/Salt-Lake-City-Data-Science/

Girl Develop It SLC/Provo
https://www.meetup.com/Girl-Develop-It-Salt-Lake-City/