On Saturday April 21^st we held the Nashville Edition of the 2018 Global Azure Bootcamp. The event was held at Microsoft in Nashville and we had approximately 60 attendees.

As you can see from the agenda (above) we had 17 sessions in two parallel tracks covering a wide variety of Azure subjects. We also had a raffle at the end of the day where several prizes were given away by local and global sponsors. The grand prize was a drone contributed by Cardinal Solutions.

Thanks

No event like this can go on without the efforts and contribution of the may presenters, volunteers and sponsors that helped to make it happen.

To all our presenters from Microsoft, local partners and the local industry we thank you for all the knowledge that you have imparted and for giving up a beautiful Saturday to work with us.

To our volunteers: Ukela Alred, Scott Schreier and Roger Dahlman who handled everything from registering the attendees, taking pictures of the event, proctoring and timing the presentations to setting up and monitoring lunch and breaks. Special thanks to Scott for making up the giant Agenda boards outside of the meeting rooms. We could not have done it without of you.

To our local sponsors: Microsoft for providing the meeting space. (as they have done for the last 5 years for our Azure group), Provisions group for providing refreshments for the morning break, Vaco (Our eternal refreshments sponsor) for providing ice-cream sandwiches for the afternoon break, Cardinal Solutions for the drone and Stratum Technology Management for providing coffee cups, pens and many hours of my time working on planning and executing the event.

Thanks also to our Global sponsors: Cerebrata, Opsgility, CloudMonix, Jet Brains, and Sevicebus360 for the SWAG and raffle prizes, and especially to Microsoft (again, this time on a global basis) for providing lunch for all attendees.

A major Microsoft sponsorship contribution was also an Azure Pass subscription for every attendee. These entitled every attendee to $100 per month of Azure every month for a three month period.

What we learned

This is the 4^th annual Global Azure Bootcamp that we have sponsored. I seem to remember that we had only 20 attendees at the first one, last year we had 40 and this year we had approximately 60. The group itself in turn has grown from its original four members to over 800. (We may have to find a larger venue for the next one.)

Adding an Ask the Experts Panel was a last-minute decision motivated by the cancellation of one of our speakers at the 11^th hour. I moderated the panel and it was staffed with most of the Microsoft presenters and other Microsoft folks at the event. That worked very well, and we will definitely plan to have another one at future Bootcamps.

We are looking forward to another successful year of Nashville Azure Group meetings and Bootcamps. If you are located in the Nashville area please remember that we meet every third Thursday of the month in the evening at Microsoft in Nashville. If you are not a member you can register at http://www.NashAzure.com  to receive future meeting notifications.

See you at the next meeting

Bill