January 2nd 2014 By Karishma Haji

Hands-on Rails in the Cloud at CodeMash

Happy New Year, blog-readers! Engine Yard and Microsoft Open Technologies will be kicking off 2014 with a one-day, pre-compiler workshop Hands-on Rails in the Cloud using the Engine Yard Platform as a Service (PaaS) on Windows Azure.  The workshop will take place on January 7 at CodeMash, a unique conference educating developers on current practices, methodologies and technology trends in Sandusky, Ohio.

Join us to learn about the value and ease of hosting in the cloud and integrating with services such as storage and data. We will also discuss the differences between self-hosted, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) and share best practices for platform and application architecture.

The agenda for the day includes:

Time Session Description Speaker Format
8:30 – 9:30 am Introduction and Why Cloud Learn how the cloud can be the best solution for your application and understand the differences between self-hosted, IaaS & PaaS PJ Hagerty Interactive session with presentation slides
9:40 – 10:15 am The Engine Yard and Windows Azure Story How Engine Yard and Azure work together and provide a unique technical offering Michael Mersch Presentation
10:25 – 11:30 am Engine Yard and Windows Azure Experience Walk through the steps of creating and deploying an Engine Yard instance on Azure Bryan Mason, PJ Hagerty Hands-on
11:30 - 12:30 pm Lunch break
12:30 - 1:30 pm Ruby on Windows Azure Learn about Ruby integration with Azure Services like Blobs, Tables, Queues, Service Bus with Ruby applications running on Engine Yard instances; the session will also discuss Ruby Support in Microsoft Open Source Tools like Reactive Extensions and Apache AMQP libraries Brian Benz Presentation
1:30 - 3 pm Integration of Ruby with Windows Azure services and Engine Yard Build applications using Ruby on Azure and the Ruby SDK for Windows Azure Brian Benz Hands-on
3 - 4 pm Best practices for platform and application architecture Discussion of best practices for platform and application architecture; you will walk away with a better knowledge of how the cloud works and how it can work for you PJ Hagerty Presentation
4 - 5 pm Questions and answers Speakers will be available to answer your questions and to help you deploy your instances on the cloud and build applications on top of it Brian Benz, PJ Hagerty Hands-on

What to bring Please bring your laptop as the hands-on section of the workshop includes building a Ruby on Rails application deployed on the Engine Yard PaaS and Windows Azure.

About the speakers

Brian Benz: Brian is a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation. These days Brian spends his time helping open source software developers and customers recognize the value and benefits of working on the Cloud with Windows Azure, open source software and devices.

____Bryan Mason: Bryan has been working with Engine Yard for the past year as a Deployment Engineer, focusing on getting people up and running on the platform. Before Engine Yard he was a Help Desk Manager and general Macintosh support guru. He has been an apple enthusiasts for over a decade with extensive product knowledge and loves helping people get up and running with technology.

PJ Hagerty: A Ruby on Rails developer for the last 5 years, PJ currently works at Engine Yard as a Community Engineer. Additionally, he organizes the Western New York Ruby Brigade. Traveling to conferences and Ruby meet-ups around the US and Canada, PJ likes to spread the word on the importance of community and coding, stressing the importance of outreach and focusing on the human side of being a coder. See you there!

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