BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees, usually centered around design & technology topics. Read more and register here.

The Kalamazoo X Conference 2010 will be held April 10, 2010.

The X Conference is a one-day software development conference hosted in beautiful Southwest Michigan. While there are many great technical conferences in the region, their focus tends toward new technologies and programming languages. The Kalamazoo X Conference intends to uniquely complement those conferences by enabling attendees to boost their process, design, and communication skills in the following areas:

• Human interaction, including social, personal, and career development.
• Interface and graphic design.
• Development processes and best practices.
• Requirements analysis, architecture, design, and modeling.

I went to this last year and it was one of the best conferences that I have ever attended. If you are even remotely interested in a career in technology I would recommend that you try and make it to this one.

Details here.

Location: Blue Granite Corporate Offices (directions)  Also to be broadcast via Microsoft Live Meeting.  Call Information listed below if attending via Livemeeting. Date: Tuesday 1/26/2010 Time: 6:00pm – 8:00pm

• 6:00pm – 6:30pm Welcome Mixer / Pizza / Beverages
• 6:30pm – 6:45pm General Announcements / WMSSUG Business
• 6:45pm – 7:45pm Presentation and Q&A
• 7:45pm – 8:00pm Closing remarks / Giveaways

View Map here.

Real World Azure presented by Dave Bost

What is the Windows Azure Platform? How can I take advantage of the Windows Azure Platform to scale my applications? We will answer these questions and more as we dive into the parts of the Windows Azure Platform and why it is the best cloud computing platform for .NET developers. We will discuss how to take advantage of Web and Worker roles to expose your application to your customers and to scale your computing power with a flip of a switch. We will also dive into the storage options found in the Windows Azure Platform including Table, Blob, Queues and the recently announced SQL Azure.

October 6th at the Michiana Area .net User Group. More information here.