COCCUG is Shutting Down

It is with sadness that I must announce that after 5 years, the Central Ohio Cloud Computing User Group (COCCUG) is shutting down.

COCCUG has had a good run. While looking back over the list of speakers that have volunteered their time and energy, I’m forever grateful. There have been great topics on Azure, AWS, Heroku, Google Cloud, JElastic, and more.

The original goal for COCCUG was to have a user group that was cloud platform agnostic – to learn about as many platforms as possible in an attempt to better the understanding of cloud computing. In some ways that worked, in many ways it didn’t. The group had too many sessions on the Azure platform. The group was slowly turning into an Azure user group, yet the group’s mission was to be agnostic.

I’m also forever grateful to the two venues that graciously hosted COCCUG – TechColumbus (now known as Rev1 Ventures), and Improving Enterprises. They provided a home for the group and often food as well. Thank you!

What’s next? COCCUG is transforming into the Central Ohio Azure user group, or just COAzure for short. While COCCUG’s mission was to learn about a wide range of cloud computing platforms, COAzure is specifically focused on the Microsoft Azure platform.

To learn more about COAzure, please visit http://coazure.org or follow on Twitter (@COAzureUG).

February 2016 Meetup – Cancelled

There will not be a meeting on Monday, February 8th.

The COCCUG leadership team is in the process of rebooting the user group. If you have any feedback on what you would like to see in the future, please let us know.  Please watch this space, Meetup.com/coccug and follow @COCCUG on Twitter for future meeting updates.

January 2016 Meetup – Cancelled

There will not be a meeting on Monday, January 11th.

Please watch this space, Meetup.com/coccug and follow @COCCUG on Twitter for future meeting updates.

December Holiday Party

The December 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, December 21st from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219).

This month we will be holding our annual combined Holiday Party with our sister user group, the Windows Developer User Group. We’ll have a few games, food and drink, and hopefully a bit more. Come spend some time relaxing with your fellow cloud computing and Windows developer geeks.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug.

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

November 2015 Meetup

The November 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, November 9th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219). This month we welcome Greg Steinmetz to share his insights and experiences on using cloud solutions such as Cortana Analytics to unlock business value with new and existing data collections.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug. 

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

 

Abstract: BI in Real-time Using Cortana Analytics

The ever increasing volume and pace of data demands we take a different approach to analytics—one that goes beyond the traditional method of creating historical reports and calling it Business Intelligence.  As a data professional, it easy to see there are a lot of opportunities to provide valuable insights with the wealth of data streaming by every second.   You might think this is a costly endeavor, one that would require a lot of infrastructure or even one that would take months to implement.  This is where Microsoft’s Cortana Analytics comes into play.  Cortana Analytics is a cloud-based suite of solutions to ingest, manage and visualize data from all sorts of sources.  In this session, we will take an in-depth look at the various Cortana Analytics offerings and demonstrate some real world examples of how you can use the cloud-based platform to pull data from field devices and Twitter, analyze it on the fly and provide a real-time visualizations.

Speaker Bio:  Greg is an Information Management professional with a broad range of experiences covering multiple industries. Greg brings more than 15 years of experience leading and implementing business intelligence/data warehousing solutions with industry leading technologies. Throughout his career, Greg has provided guidance around corporate data strategy, designed and modeled data warehouse solutions as well as worked with business partners to understand the data needs that drive decision making

October 2015 Meetup

The October 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, October 12th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219). This month we welcome Shawn Wallace to share insights into how event-driven architecture is a key component to successful cloud-hosted solutions.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug. 

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

Abstract: Distributed  Event-Driven Architecture

In doing an initial design of a new system, the question seems to be Monolith first or Microservices first. It is hard to decide. Should you start with a monolithic approach and move to microservices or start with microservices from the beginning? What if all or portions of your application are cloud deployed? There is well reasoned content on both sides, so how can you make an informed decision?  In this talk we take a deep look at modeling entire software systems in terms of producing and consuming system events and using that modeling approach to drive the initial architecture.

Event-driven architecture is a versatile approach to designing complex software systems. These systems tend to be easier to model for an organization as EDA embraces Conway’s Law and can often be modeled as a finite-state machine. Event-driven architecture is not a new concept, but as more organizations contemplate cloud and microservices, this approach to system design has become appropriate in more situations.

<optional>In this talk we’ll:

• Introduce event-driven architecture

•  Compare EDA, monolithic and other service centric designs

• Model a retail system as a finite-state machine

• Look at a sample implementation of a retail system

</optional>

Speaker Bio:  Shawn Wallace is an Architect and National Application Development Service Offering Lead with Centric Consulting. Shawn is a former U.S. Marine Infantryman, enjoys all things tech, learning new things, building things, shooting sports and his family.  He and his family lives in Grove City, Ohio. (http://centricconsulting.com/shawn-wallace/)

September 2015 Meetup

The September 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, September 14th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219).  This month we welcome John Farhat to share guidance when “the cloud” may actually NOT be the right choice.

We’re also looking for a few good lightning talks for this meetup, or future meetups. If you want to speak, please contact Michael Collier.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug.

To Cloud or Not To Cloud…

Abstract:The cloud is arguably the biggest game changer in IT in the past decade.  It is easy, however, to assume that everybody should be using the available platforms to run their businesses.  This unfortunately is not true.  There are many different circumstances why that assumption can be false.  In this discussion, we will review some of the issues with the ability to adopt these services.

Speaker Bio: Internet Pioneer, Visionary, Strategic and Clear Thinker.

My graduate work in Hypertext represented the novel (back then…) ways searching and browsing information can be. This is the basis of how we all now browse the Internet.

I started my professional career working on projects for clients ranging from Marriott, Nationwide Insurance, Nestle, Borden Foods, Navistar International, Akzo Nobel, and MAC Tools among other. I was lucky to work on strategic initiatives for many of them.

A few years after starting The Technology Group, as early as 2004, we were one of the first providers of Private Cloud services in the market – including applications, data, and voice.

Lead the creation, from the ground up, of datacenter for cloud services. Over the years oversaw enhancements and upgrades including ground work for the deployment of redundant location.

Delivered classic and Cloud based solutions in different areas including: Sales and Supply Chain Management, Financial Systems, Factory Automation, Construction Line of Business Systems, Electronic Medical Records, as well as commodity Voice Services, Enterprise Email, and World Class Storage.

I have knowledge and expertise to help move my clients to a more competitive position.

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

August 2015 Meetup

The August 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, August 10th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219). This month we welcome Microsoft’s Michael Collier to share guidance using Auzre resource groups and Azure Resource Manager.

We’re also looking for a few good lightning talks for this meetup, or future meetups. If you want to speak, please contact Michael Collier.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug.

Field Guide to Azure Resource Groups

Abstract:Keeping track of all the various resources used by a solution is a daunting task. Not to mention how to control access or enable a consistent, easily repeatable deployment process. This session will help you understand the benefits using Azure Resource Groups. You will learn how to use Azure Resource Manager to perform desired-state deployment of your applications into Azure. In this session you will learn how to use role-based access control (RBAC) to provide limited access to Azure Active Directory users and groups for administering applications deployed into Azure. You will learn best practices in the use of resource groups based on real-world experience. We will dive deep into creating resources and manipulating the Azure Resource Manager templates. In the end, you will be able to unlock new, powerful ways to manage your Azure resources. The session covers the use of resource groups in both the Azure Preview Portal and Azure PowerShell.

Bio:Michael is currently a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, where he engages deeply with select accounts to help them best utilize Azure’s features. Michael is a former five-time Azure MVP and most recently served as a Principal Cloud Architect with Aditi Technologies. Michael has over 13 years of experience with various consulting and technology firms where he was instrumental in leading and developing solutions for a wide range of clients. He has a vast amount of experience in helping companies determine the best strategy for adopting cloud computing, and providing the insight and hands-on experience to ensure they are successful. Michael is also a respected technology community leader, and is often found sharing his Microsoft Azure insights and experiences at regional and national conferences. Michael is also the co-author of a recently published book on Microsoft Azure entitled Microsoft Azure Essentials: Fundamentals of Azure. Follow Michael’s experiences with Azure on his blog at http://www.michaelscollier.com and on Twitter at @MichaelCollier.

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

June 2015 Meeting

The June 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, June 8th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219). This month we welcome Microsoft’s Brian Sherwin to share guidance on building mobile business applications with Azure.

We’re also looking for a few good lightning talks for this meetup, or future meetups. If you want to speak, please contact Michael Collier.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug.

Building Business Apps with Azure Mobile Services

Abstract: In this code-heavy session we will take a dive into building business apps for multiple platforms with the help of Azure App Services…specifically Azure Mobile Apps. Along the way, we will look at what has changed with Azure Mobile Services as we look at building applications that cross devices and platforms. In our final business application, we will build authentication with Active Directory, work with data from our on-premises database. Finally, as a mobile application we will need to ensure we can continue to work even when we don’t have a signal

Bio: Brian Sherwin is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft from Columbus, Ohio. He has been a consultant and trainer for over 15 years. One of his core passions is helping companies make decisions based on value and not a particular technology. When he’s not trying to figure out some new technology, he spends time reading, Scouting, and drinking enough coffee to keep up with his five kids

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.

May 2015 Meeting

The May 2015 COCCUG meeting will be on Monday, May 11th from 6pm – 8pm at Improving Enterprises (One Easton Oval, Suite 175, Columbus, OH 43219). This month we welcome Michael Collier to provide an recap of the Microsoft Azure announcements from BUILD and Ignite 2015.

We’re also looking for a few good lightning talks for this meetup, or future meetups. If you want to speak, please contact Michael Collier.

As part of COCCUG’s continued partnership with Visual Studio Live, we will be giving away one FREE pass to either Visual Studio Live San Francisco or Visual Studio Live Austin. Must be present to win.

Please RSVP for meetings via www.meetup.com/coccug.

What’s New in Microsoft Azure – BUILD and Ignite 2015

Abstract: It has been an exciting two weeks for Microsoft Azure. The excitement kicked off with BUILD 2015 where Microsoft announced several innovative new features to the Azure platform, including Service Fabric, multiple Azure SQL Database enhancements, and updates to Azure Resource Manager. The flurry of Azure updates continued last week with Ignite as Microsoft unveiled several much requested updates to the virtual network and management components of Azure. In this meetup session, we’ll review and discuss several of the prominent announcements from BUILD and Ignite.

Bio: Michael currently a Cloud Solution Architect at Microsoft, where he engages deeply with select accounts to help them best utilize Azure’s features. Michael is a former five-time Azure MVP and most recently served as a Principal Cloud Architect with Aditi Technologies. Michael has over 13 years of experience with various consulting and technology firms where he was instrumental in leading and developing solutions for a wide range of clients. He has a vast amount of experience in helping companies determine the best strategy for adopting cloud computing, and providing the insight and hands-on experience to ensure they are successful. Michael is also a respected technology community leader, and is often found sharing his Microsoft Azure insights and experiences at regional and national conferences. Follow Michael’s experiences with Azure on his blog at http://www.michaelscollier.com and on Twitter at @MichaelCollier(http://www.twitter.com/MichaelCollier).

Please continue to tell your friends about COCCUG! They can find us on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/coccug and also at www.meetup.com/coccug.