Liverpool, L3 5RD Tuesday 9th April

Stacked

@stackedevent #stacked13
Sponsors
Microsoft
Mando Group

About Stacked

A FREE FULL DAY DEVELOPER CONFERENCE

Now in it's second year, Stacked is a FREE full day conference happening again on Tuesday 9th April 2013 in Liverpool, UK! This year the day is centred around Windows Azure and we have managed to line up 5 incredible speakers who are well known in the community with some awesome content for you. Some of the topics covered on the day will be;

You will have the chance to network with other attendees and the speakers on the day and some of the sponsors, including Microsoft, will be in attendance too. There will be giveaways and a raffle throughout the day as well.

Places are limited so register now to avoid missing out.


Sessions

Get a rundown of what's going on throughout the day

Speaker schedule
08:15 - 09:00 Registration
09:00 - 09:15

Welcome

Overview of the day ahead and logistics for breaks / lunch

09:15 - 10:15

Windows Azure Mobile Services

Azure Mobile Services is a new set of services hosted in preview at Windows Azure which give you an extremely productive way of building a scalable back-end for your mobile applications regardless of the client platform. In this session we’ll provide an introduction to Azure Mobile Services taking a look at how we can make data available, how we can provide authentication and authorisation, push notifications and host server-side logic in the cloud. We’ll look at some examples of using services from a Windows 8 Store application. Prepare to be dazzled by the simplicity of it all.

Mike Taulty Mike Taulty Microsoft
10:15 - 10:45 Break
10:45 - 11:45

Windows Azure Web Sites – things they don’t teach kids in school

Microsoft has a cloud platform which runs .NET, NodeJS and PHP. All 101 talks out there will show you the same: it’s easy to deploy, it scales out on demand and it runs WordPress. Great! But what about doing real things? In this session, we’ll explore the things they don’t teach kids in school. We’ll cover the different deployment options for Windows Azure Web Sites, the development flow, awesome things you can do with the command line tools, modifying the automated build process and explore some lesser known techniques of this platform.

Maarten Balliauw Maarten Balliauw Azure MVP
11:45 - 12:45 Lunch
12:45 - 13:45

King Fu Migration to Windows Azure SQL

As cloud computing becomes more popular and cloud-based solutions the norm rather than the fringe, the need to efficiently migrate your database to the cloud is crucial. This demo-filled session will discuss the tips and tricks, methods and strategies for migrating your on-premises SQL Server databases to Windows Azure SQL Database. Focusing primarily on SQL Server Data Tools, the DAC Framework and the Import/Export service, this session will focus on how these tools can make you a kung-fu migration master by showing how these tools can simplify the migration process, provide flexibility and more granular control of the migration, and ultimately ease many of the challenges of getting your on-premises database ready for migration to Windows Azure SQL Database. This session will also look at how these tools can be used to implement backup and restore functionality, and how these tools can be implemented into a software development lifecycle. If time permits, we'll also take a look at migrating other databases types to WASD such as Microsoft Access.

Scott Klein Scott Klein Microsoft US
13:45 - 14:15 Break
14:15 - 15:15

Building your own Windows Azure Management Portal

A common request from Azure developers is whether they will be able to white label the Windows Azure Management Portal in the future. In this session Richard Conway will take you through one of the most important and pervasive technologies within Windows Azure which permeates everything. The Service Management API can be used to control everything from Cloud Services to Databases to Mobile Services. It underpins technologies such as the Azure Powershell CmdLets, the CLI and the Microsoft Autoscaling Application Block WaSaBi. Most importantly it underpins the Windows Azure Management Portal and Visual Studio Deployments. Richard will take you through how this works, what you can do with it and show how you can use Azure Fluent Management, an open source wrapper he published to build and customise your own Management Portal.

Richard Conway Richard Conway Azure MVP
15:15 - 15:45 Break
15:45 - 16:45

Windows Azure and Embedded Devices

This talk will demonstrate the Internet of Things with Windows Azure. Using embedded devices that interact with Windows Azure cloud technologies, the Internet of Things ideology is enabled with scalable and resilient cloud systems that imbue the resource constrained devices with elastic, on-demand additional computing power that allows any network connected device to achieve amazing computational feats. The talk features three main device/cloud interactions: persisting unbounded data from sensors, communicating through resilient channels and interacting directly with the Windows Azure cloud to provision and control cloud based infrastructure.

Andy Cross Andy Cross Azure MVP
16:45 - 17:00 Wrap Up

Speakers

Get the run of our speakers of the day and what they are about

Maarten Balliauw

Maarten Balliauw

Azure MVP

Maarten Balliauw is a Technical Evangelist at JetBrains. His interests are all web: ASP.NET MVC, PHP and Windows Azure. He's a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Windows Azure and an ASPInsider. He has published many articles in both PHP and .NET literature such as MSDN magazine and PHP architect. Maarten is a frequent speaker at various national and international events such as MIX (Las Vegas), TechDays, DPC, ... His blog can be found at http://blog.maartenballiauw.be.

Scott Klein

Scott Klein

Microsoft US

Scott Klein is a Microsoft Technical Evangelist focusing on Windows Azure SQL Database (AKA SQL Azure) and related cloud-ready data services. His entire career has been built around SQL Server. Prior to Microsoft he was a SQL Server MVP for several years, then followed that up by being one of the first 4 SQL Azure MVPs. Scott is the author of over ½ dozen books by both WROX and APress, including Pro SQL Azure. He can be found talking about WASD at events large and small across the US, and the rest of the world, wherever he can get people to listen.
 

Mike Taulty

Mike Taulty

Microsoft

Mike Taulty works in the Developer and Platform Group at Microsoft in the UK where he has spent the past few years helping developers understand and get the best from the Microsoft platform. Prior to this, Mike spent 3 years with Microsoft Consulting Services as a consultant on developer technologies. Before joining Microsoft, Mike spent the previous 9 years working as a software developer for a number of enterprises, consultancies and software vendors working with a variety of operating system, client, communication and server technologies. Mike holds a BSc Hons (1st Class) in Computer Science from the University of Leeds.

Richard Conway

Richard Conway

Azure MVP

Richard Conway has been programming commercially for 16 years, having tried a succession of startups and worked for big companies previously such as ABN AMRO, Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank. He is the author of 8 books on .NET and security and a Windows Azure MVP and Insider. He has been using Windows Azure and can remember when it was called reddog! He is the founder of the UK Windows Azure Users Group which meet monthly in London and Manchester and put on quarterly conferences and hackathons. When he’s not evangelising Windows Azure he works at Elastacloud, a cloud consultancy which specialises in HPC, Big Data and Service Management on Windows Azure!

Andy Cross

Andy Cross

Azure MVP

Andy Cross, is the author of the popular Windows Azure blog at blog.elastacloud.com. He is a software consultant, cloud architect and co-owner of Elastacloud. His passion for embedded software and high performance compute clusters gives him a unique sphere of computation from the very small and resource constrained to the massively scalable limitless potential of the cloud. Andy’s specialism in the Azure realm is runtime diagnostics and service elasticity. He is a Windows Azure MVP, Insider, co-founder of the UK London Windows Azure User Group and a Microsoft DevPro Community Leader.


When and Where

This year we are in a brand new venue with state of the art facilities, free wifi and, following feedback from last year, more comfortable seats featuring desk space if you want to bring your laptop or device along to the event. There is a Starbucks on site and even a space for you to network and check emails etc. during the breaks and lunch. The venue is only a couple of minutes from Liverpool Lime Street and Liverpool Central stations.

Tuesday 9th April
8:30am – 5pm

LJMU The Redmonds Building
Brownlow Hill
Liverpool,
Merseyside,
L3 5UG

Sponsors


Registration

Registration for Stacked is totally free! We are managing our tickets via Eventbrite and you can register using the widget below. It would also be fantastic if you help us spread the word by tweeting about the event using the hashtag #stacked13 and posting about us on Facebook. We look forward to seeing you at Stacked!