What is this event?

Now in its third year, CloudSlam® covers the latest trends in the world of cloud computing. The conference has evolved from a purely virtual format to a hybrid Cloud Computing conference spread over 5 days. Day 1 of the conference will take place at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley Campus in Mountain View California on Monday 18 April followed by 4 days of virtual cloud content.

Conference tracks for 2011 will include technology & innovation, implementation experiences, social & mobile cloud, security in the cloud and cloud for business.

How can you win Free Pass?

Simply click the button below or like the new OnDemand Beat Facebook Fan Page, for a chance to win the pass. The fifth person to like the page will win a pass to CloudSlam’11.

If you don’t win the pass you can still receive 10% off either the VIP or virtual conference fee by using discount code OnDemandBeat when registering.

What you need to know

1. The Winner will receive 1 virtual conference pass (Day 1 VIP pass not included)
2. The CloudSlam® Conference Pass Winner will be contacted via email.
3. Contest deadline is Wednesday April 13th and the winner will be announced on the OnDemand Beat Fan Page on Thursday April 14th.
4. No purchase is necessary to win.

Good Luck!

SpeakerMeter records audience Social Media reactions and feedback for presenters. Originally designed for use by conference speakers the SpeakerMeter team envision usage by educators, managers and others who value real time graphical feedback for their presentations.

New York City based startup TripMedi aims to become a aggregator for individuals and businesses looking for world-class Medical Tourism treatment. As one who has struggled to help others in the past review medical tourism options, this is an application that if it truly can offer timely, useful and accurate offshore medical treatment information, will truly be a winner.

Chicago land based startup Shotput was conceptualized and cobbled together in 48 hours on the Startup Bus journey from Chicago to Austin in early March. Shotput is a SMS list application that allows organizations or user groups with mailing lists to add subscribers via SMS.

FlyByMiles is targeted at frequent flyers who have miles in numerous accounts who wish to book award travel easier and or with combinations of miles and dollars. FlyByMiles promises to offer real time award availability for frequent flyers (which for award tickets is harder to achieve than it sounds) and hopes to monetize quickly by being first to market.

Smartling allows customers to utilize real time translation services to offer static web sites in multiple languages. Smartling was a SXSW Accelerator finalist and offers free and pay for service options. Website Translations ON Smartling are completed via crowd sourcing, professional translators or machine based translation.

Although not technically a startup bySXSW standards, (SocialWare received an additional 3 million in funding just prior to SXSW) Austin based SocialWare was also present at SXSW. Socialware allows companies in regulated industries like banking or insurance to integrate social media around its business processes.

IBM launches its 3 day Social Business Jam on 8 February 2011. The Social Business Jam is a online business social media brainstorming event along the lines of IBM’s Innovation Jam and is one of a series of Jam Events that IBM sponsors throughout the year.

During the event IBM partners, Subject Matter Experts, developers and Social Media Analysts will examine the role of Social Media in business, how to lower the risks of engaging in Social Media in business and what type of systems need to be in place for Social Media to be adopted in business.

A few of the scheduled participants in the Social Business Jam include, Charlene Li, Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of “Groundswell”, Steve Wylie, GM of Enterprise 2.0 Conference and Vittorio Cretella, CIO, Mars, Inc.

Some of the topics to be covered during the jam include Building the Social Business of the Future, Using Social to understand and engage with Customers, and What Social Means for IT.

In a clear sign that Cloud Computing is moving rapidly up the technology adoption curve; there are numerous Cloud Computing conferences scheduled within the next 8 months.

Many of these conferences coincidentally overlap and there are now an equal number of conferences in Europe and Asia versus the USA.

Some of the more interesting conferences include:

CC Cloud Computing 2010
23-24 November 2010
Singapore

Cloud Computing AustralAsia
23-24 November 2010
Sydney, Australia

IEEE CloudCom Conference
30 November 2010 to 3 December 2010
Indianapolis, IN

Cloud Forum 2010
30 November 2010
Utrech, Nederland

DreamForce 2010
6-9 December 2010
San Francisco, CA

Cloud Expo NL
8-9 December 2010
Utrecht, Nederland

Cloud Expo Europe
2-3 February 2011
London, England

Cloud Connect
7-10 March 2011
Santa Clara, CA

Cloud Computing World Forum Middle East and Africa
9 March 2011
Dubai, UAE

Structure Big Data
23 March 2011
New York, NY

Cloud Computing China Congress
24 March 2011
Beijing, China

CIO Cloud Summit
10-13 April 2011
Scottsdale, AZ

Closer 2011
7-9 May 2011
Noordwijkerhout, Nederland

Cloud Expo New York
6-9 June 2011
New York, NY

Cloud Computing World Forum
21-22 June 2011
London, England

Structure 2011
22-23 June 2011
San Francisco, CA

IEEE Cloud 2011 Conference
5-10 July 2011
Washington DC

Microsoft announced a number of new capabilities and services for Windows Azure at its PDC10 conference.

New capabilities and services include:

• Support for Virtual Machine (VM) roles. VM roles will allow users to move their legacy applications to Windows Azure eliminating the need to change code to work within Windows Azure

• Remote Desktop Functionality will finally be offered on Windows Azure. The capability to log into a running Cloud Instance has been standard on most competing PAAS offerings for some time.

• Windows Azure Connect allows users to configure IP based virtual networks between Windows Azure and on premise systems.

• “Extra Small” and “Small” Windows Azure Instances priced from .05 cents per hour per server. With the recent roll-out of competing free usage tiers from Amazon and free ITiS solutions from start-ups like Cloud Share, Microsoft might want to think about offering free usage tiers as well for this market segment.

• Windows Azure Marketplace is billed as an online market for developers and partners to buy and sell, services, training, applications and code components.

Amazon rolls out new functionality for it various Cloud services at a fever pace and the slew of new features for Windows Azure should help Microsoft keep pace in the PAAS space; especially amongst its core Enterprise and Developer users.

GigaOm’s Structure 2010 conference kicks off this week in San Francisco. Structure 2010 is spread over 2 full days and includes an impressive list of speakers and sessions in addition to a launchpad.

OnDemandBeat Readers can receive a $300 discount off the conference fee with discount code

http://structure2010.eventbrite.com/?discount=PRESS300

The Cloud Slam’10 conference runs from March 23 – March 25 2010.

In its second year, Cloud Slam is a virtual conference that focuses on Cloud Computing. A few of the conference tracks for this year include the Legal  Aspects of Cloud Computing, Cloud Implementation Experiences, Security in the Cloud and Cloud Business Models.

New in 2010, the conference also includes a virtual exhibition hall and a networking lounge for attendees.

IBM Cloud Computing CTO; Dr Kristof Kloeckner, will keynote the conference and will be joined by speakers from Oracle, SAP, Intel, Redhat , Adobe and Novell among others.

OnDemand Beat readers can receive 20% off either the VIP or regular conference registration fee by using discount code ONDEMANDBEAT.

Marc Benioff unveiled Salesforce.com’s Chatter application on the opening day of the firm’s annual DreamForce conference in Moscone Center In San Francisco.

Salesforce Chatter is a secure, private social network intended for enterprise use. Chatter has social computing features along the lines of Facebook and Twitter and is composed of a Chatter App and a Chatter Social Development Platform.

The Chatter App includes standard social computing features like Profiles, Status Updates, Feeds and Content Sharing.  Users of Twitter and Facebook will see familiar functionality and social media tools built into Chatter App.

The Chatter Social Platform; billed as the Collaboration Cloud, will include standard social media and collaboration components as well as Twitter, Google and Facebook developer toolkits. The Chatter Social Platform will also include API’s that will enable developers to integrate data from both cloud and on premise apps into Chatter.

Salesforce Chatter is scheduled to go live in 2010. Chatter will be included in all paid editions of SalesforceCRM and Force.com and a Chatter edition that includes Salesforce Chatter, Salesforce Content ad Force.com will be available for $50 per user per month.