**** Change Of Speaker ****

When: Thursday 25th February 2010, doors open 6:00pm, meeting starts 6:30pm

Where: UWE (University of the West of England), Frenchay, Bristol (see FAQ for directions and a map) - Room 2q49

What: Building an application for Windows Azure & SQL Azure

Who: Eric Nelson, Microsoft UK's Azure Evangelist (aka Captain Azure) and one of the UK's finest

Why: Because Azure provides a very real solution to how to scale your website to manage demand as demand fluctuates. So you can go from a tiny number of visitors to millions and back only paying for what you need. Also because Eric is Microsoft UK's foremost authority on this subject and he is on Azure full time.

How do I sign up for this meeting: Log in to the site, go to the Meetings page and on the top right hand side you will see a box "Register For A Meeting". Select the month in the drop down and then click on the Register link.

Abstract:
In this session we will build an application that takes advantage of many of the features available in Windows Azure and SQL Azure and look at the implications of how we store data when we build applications deployed in the Cloud. We will cover "code near" vs "code far", relational vs none relational, blobs, queues and more.

Bio:
http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/Default.aspx
http://twitter.com/ericnel
After many years of developing on UNIX/RDBMS (and being able to get mortgages) Eric joined Microsoft in 1996 as a Technical Evangelist (and stopped being able to get mortgages due to his new 'unusual job title' in the words of his bank manager). He has spent most of his time working with ISVs to help them architect solutions which make use of the latest Microsoft technologies - from the beta of ASP 1.0 through to ASP.NET, from MTS to WCF/WF and from the beta of SQL Server 6.5 through to SQL Server 2008. Along the way he has met lots of smart and fun developers - and been completely stumped by many of their questions! In July 2008 he switched role from an Application Architect to a Developer Evangelist in the Developer and Platform Group. Currently Eric’s interests include digging into the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and the Windows Azure Platform. At home, he battles rat infestations, comes second to the family dog and uses any spare moments he has after 10pm to team up and play online with and against friends - keep an eye out for 'erknel' and say 'hi'.