6th Annual Global Azure Bootcamp Brings Azure to Brisbane

Last weekend I had the honour of both organising and speaking at the 6th annual Global Azure Bootcamp in Brisbane. This is always a large event to manage, typically sold out with a long waiting list – and this year was no exception! We had over 70 people attend this all-day Saturday deep-dive into Microsoft Azure technologies – and the response was extremely favourable by all signs.

As the name suggests, this is a global initiative which is organised by six individuals from around the world who donate a massive amount of time and effort to facilitate the launching of local community events on a specific common day. Through their website they manage to collect registrations from local organisers, disseminate information, create hands-on lab materials (e.g. racing game), obtain global sponsors (who donate free licenses and trial subscriptions of their products), set up support for sub-domains, and even help obtain local sponsorship (e.g. Microsoft providing free Subway lunches at most locations).  It is a massive undertaking. This year we had 262 locations from around the world participate.

Local organisers were free to decide their own agenda in terms of content and activity. In Brisbane, we nominated to have a full day of presentations while allowing attendees to go off and work on hands-on labs whenever they wanted to. This has worked out well in the past, and this year was not exception. In this way we were able to accommodate seven presentations, from some of which you can download the content (I’ll keep updating this as they are posted, so please check back if a link isn’t available just yet):

One challenge this year was finding a venue after a building-wide power outage at Microsoft was scheduled at the last minute. Fortunately, The Precinct was available and was generous in lending us their Staircase Stadium. What an interesting space! It came with an excellent A/V package, free wi-fi, and a kitchen that was well suited to the catering. Although it did not offer the luxuriant comfortable seating one might prefer for an all day event, the attendees nevertheless seemed to agree that it was a good venue.

Lunch was provided by Subway through the generous sponsorship of Microsoft. We also were served an excellent morning and afternoon tea by Art of Catering.

At the end of the day, we were able to raffle off some excellent prizes to six lucky winners thanks to the generous donations of both the global and local sponsors.

There are several people and organisations I’d like to thank for their contributions to this event:

• All of the global sponsors for their generous prize donations
• Our local sponsors including Mexia, Microsoft, TechSmith, Aspose, and WardyIT
• SSW TV for recording the entire event (keep an eye on their site for postings!)
• The Precinct for providing a venue at the last minute
• Damien Berry for assistance (who is also my co-organiser of the Brisbane Azure User Group)
• All of the speakers
• All of the dedicated Microsoft Azure enthusiasts who gave up half their weekend to attend this event
• All of the global organisers who created and implemented the Global Azure Bootcamp concept!

Looking forward to next year!