It is no surprise that Azure as a cloud computing infrastructure plays very nicely with mobile solutions, especially Windows Phone 7. So, when Michael Collier (@MichaelCollier) came up with the idea of doing a full-day event showcasing how the two technologies/platforms may work together, I was all for it!

So was put together this event @ the Columbus Microsoft Office: http://wazwp7firestarter.eventbrite.com/. We were fortunate to have two appropriate & really awesome MSFT evangelists as speakers — Brian H Prince for Azure & Jeff Blankenburg for Windows Phone.

My session was mostly centered around data and how it may be exposed/consumed from connected systems. We took a close look at Push Notifications to a Windows Phone app from an Azure-hosted web service, including the deep-linked Secondary Live Tiles in Mango. Then, we deep-dived into OData and its uses in handling data from/to SQL Azure from multiple platforms, including consumption & CRUD operations from Windows Phone apps.

Although my session was very code/demo heavy, the slide deck may be found here. More importantly, here are very some helpful links to the labs we did during the event .. useful for anybody trying to understand how Windows Phone & Azure play together:

• Azure supported WP7 To-Do List application from the Azure training kit: here
• Setting up Push Notifications for a Windows Phone Weather app .. the backend service can be easily hosted in Azure: here
• Producing OData & Consumption from Windows Phone: here
• And most importantly, the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7: here

In all, it was a fun day with free food & nice giveaways! Hope everyone who attended enjoyed the event.

Adios!