Tuesday 9/16 Test Teach Feedback

[JohnWintellect]

Here's the mega list so we don't have to file each one as an issue. When you fix/update one of the items in this list, strike through it by putting two tildes around the item:

~~Strike Through Example~~

That text will show up like the following when viewed in the browser:

Strike Through Example

Introduction Presentation & Lab

• Darren: Don’t start off by talking about Microsoft Research Outreach; save that for later (call to action)
• Darren: Regarding Microsoft account: Keep it simple; tell them they’re going to create a new Microsoft account if they don’t have one already; sell it as a benefit; don’t get into complexities of Microsoft accounts vs. work/school accounts
• Remove blank slide from intro deck
• Darren: Cloud Computing Patterns slide - Most researchers won’t care about cost; they will care about scaling their research or “pushing through a huge amount of analysis before a conference;” most researchers do not see the costs because it’s paid for through a grant; business examples are not relevant to most researchers; mention collaboration; as in “the cloud makes it easier for researchers to collaborate”
• Darren: Iaas/Paas/SaaS slide - Add one example for each
• Fix Azure Datacenter Regions slide: light gray doesn’t show on projector
• Darren: Same slide – Prepare to be asked about U.S. jurisdiction over international data centers; compare to Gmail if they “get grumpy” and don’t want to use Azure for this reason
• Harold: Last four slides are going to lose the audience’s attention; remove them or move through them quickly, starting with LOVES EVERYONE slide; get people started creating their accounts sooner
• Darren: Whole deck should take 15 minutes at most
• Dan: DO show the Virtual Machines slide
• Consensus: Do the lab first, and THEN do the slides and demos
• Lab: exercise 1, step 1: Add www to portal URL
• Do registration in in-private browser window; also allow people to use existing Azure accounts if they want to
• Make link to pass account web site bigger
• Remind folks about the promo code at the start of the lab
• Add www to the start of microsoftazurepass.com
• Fix $550 should be $500
• In exercise zero show how to do an InPrivate/Incognito window for every browser and have people do the lab from there.
• Add a new exercise 1 that walks completely through the Microsoft Account sign up process
• Need smoother intro
• "What is cloud" slide was thin and also his talking to it was 'why' cloud not 'what'. Probably good to see applied and what cloud makes possible.
• Capture research domains in the IaaS, PaaS, SaaS examples
• IaaS, PaaS, SaaS -- make sure the examples are academic--e.g., not having to manage a cluster for your research (IaaS), running Python scripts for your research (PaaS) and providing weather simulations to your collaborators where they just enter parameters (SaaS).
• Slide 7 - Data Center slides: Maybe a brief overview of security on the "world" slide. People think that the cloud is publicly visible (naïve users). Others might need to protect the IP of the companies they do research with (e.g., agricultural research funded by Monsanto). Talk about HIPAA compliance and/or government security compliance.
• Slide 10 - Only pay for what you can use is critical to researchers. Many are trying to set up clusters and do not want the issue of managing it or giving up student cycle to manage it. That's time away from research.
• Slide 13--definitely show this slide. If you don't they will ask.
• Remove the 'Does not require a credit card' comment. 
• I think lab creation should have a slide and not be hidden in the lab. Folks don’t read and if you create for the wrong account, can't step back. Hand holding needed.

  Storage Presentation

• Need to have a visual that shows blobs, containers, and how they relate
• Need to better definitions of blob and container to relate better to people coming from file system metaphor
• No one in the audience will know what a blob is so define it better
• Brand new accounts will not have resource group at all so change the lab to create one
• In the slides for blobxfer and azure cli slides point out that the brackets will be replaced by the storage key.
• Start from a simple description of what Blob storage is.
• Don't use stream analytics as example when nobody knows what it is.
• Slide 2 wasn't well used - should have given examples and checked on whether group understood.
• Researchers won't know what DNS name is. Too deep too quickly.
• Too deep on Access keys.
• Roll keys…too much deep information too quickly.

  Storage Lab

• On Windows, install node.js separately
• npm install request –g didn’t work for a lot of people
• Paste from PDF loses line breaks
• Default resource group is missing in a brand new account
• Probably a good practice to create the screenshots for the lab in a similar training account with the customers. I notice differences in options in mine vs the lab. Noticing in storage HOL.
• Exercise 1 reword step 6 to make clear that this is not an action step, but what you should see at the end of the exercise
• Storage HOL Ex2 step 8 [AccountName] doesn't give me enough info that it is storage account name
• Storage HOL - copy primary key to clipboard should be copy to txt editor to use later.
• Storage HOL Ex3 Step 9 is wrong - no need for powershell cmd
• Reshoot the screen shots so the resource group, region, etc. all look like the Azure Pass Account what students will see
• On CLI installer have people install node.js from the nodejs.org web site and run npm install
• Make clear how to get the file path to the downloaded .publishsettings file. Everyone got confused on this step.
• In exercise 2, step 8 remove mention on how to create container from CLI
• CLI step 10 exercise make perfectly clear that the file to copy is a full filename
• Show how to copy and paste from command windows/terminal windows
• Exercise 3, step 9 in the PowerShell window, the command to run inside PowerShell is just the .ps1 file not powershell .\blah.ps1
• For the step showing the command to upload a file with Azure CLI, have arrows pointing to the different parts (this is the file on the local machine), this is the blob storage name, here is the name for the file in Azure.

  Stream Analytics presentation

• Add sensors to list of event producers
• Make more scenarios related to researchers, analyzing twitter data, analyzing water resource streams

  Stream Analytics Lab

• Open a terminal window, not a node.js window
• Output blob might take a long time to show up
• Replace SAS site with local node.js utility
• Modify eventgen.js to stop when 400 or 500 is returned
• Write a node.js application to generate the SAS key so it's down locally
• Exercise 3, step 1, tell people explicitly to open a terminal window. Everyone was opening the node.js window.
• Remove -g from node install of request
• Remove square brackets in all labs
• Can stream analytics be done in US West data set? We say some failures people trying to create in that data center
• Make sure people understand that 201 is success. Change the event.js program to error out if it gets anything else and say what the error is.
• Be clear that in the event hub graph in the portal that it can show errors along with success. So if someone sees traffic, it might be bad traffic.
• When people get to the step to write data to the event hub have them run a bunch of the programs at once so we get data streaming faster?
• Describe what Path Prefix is - Type "withdrawals/{date}/{time}" into the PATH PREFIX PATTERN box is vague

  Big Data Presentation

• Darren: Take a minute or two to explain Hadoop; not everyone will know what it is
• Darren: Stress the fact that you’re being charged as long as the cluster is in existence

  End of Day Comments

• Get them into the portal quickly
• Possibly start with Machine Learning because the UI makes a great first impression
• Start each session with high-level information, get them into the lab, and then follow the lab with “here’s some of the deeper stuff we didn’t get into”

[JohnWintellect]

Introduction Presentation & Lab

Darren: Don’t start off by talking about Microsoft Research Outreach; save that for later (call to action)

Darren: Regarding Microsoft account: Keep it simple; tell them they’re going to create a new Microsoft account if they don’t have one already; sell it as a benefit; don’t get into complexities of Microsoft accounts vs. work/school accounts

Remove blank slide from intro deck

Darren: Cloud Computing Patterns slide - Most researchers won’t care about cost; they will care about scaling their research or “pushing through a huge amount of analysis before a conference;” most researchers do not see the costs because it’s paid for through a grant; business examples are not relevant to most researchers; mention collaboration; as in “the cloud makes it easier for researchers to collaborate”

Darren: Iaas/Paas/SaaS slide - Add one example for each

Fix Azure Datacenter Regions slide: light gray doesn’t show on projector

Darren: Same slide – Prepare to be asked about U.S. jurisdiction over international data centers; compare to Gmail if they “get grumpy” and don’t want to use Azure for this reason

Harold: Last four slides are going to lose the audience’s attention; remove them or move through them quickly, starting with LOVES EVERYONE slide; get people started creating their accounts sooner \ I have no idea what this means **

Darren: Whole deck should take 15 minutes at most Dan: DO show the Virtual Machines slide

Consensus: Do the lab first, and THEN do the slides and demos

Lab: exercise 1, step 1: Add www to portal URL Do registration in in-private browser window; also allow people to use existing Azure accounts if they want to Make link to pass account web site bigger Remind folks about the promo code at the start of the lab Add www to the start of microsoftazurepass.com Fix $550 should be $500 In exercise zero show how to do an InPrivate/Incognito window for every browser and have people do the lab from there. Add a new exercise 1 that walks completely through the Microsoft Account sign up process Need smoother intro "What is cloud" slide was thin and also his talking to it was 'why' cloud not 'what'. Probably good to see applied and what cloud makes possible.

~~Capture research domains in the IaaS, PaaS, SaaS examples IaaS, PaaS, SaaS -- make sure the examples are academic--e.g., not having to manage a cluster for your research (IaaS), running Python scripts for your research (PaaS) and providing weather simulations to your collaborators where they just enter parameters (SaaS).~~

Slide 7 - Data Center slides: Maybe a brief overview of security on the "world" slide. People think that the cloud is publicly visible (naïve users). Others might need to protect the IP of the companies they do research with (e.g., agricultural research funded by Monsanto). Talk about HIPAA compliance and/or government security compliance.

Slide 10 - Only pay for what you can use is critical to researchers. Many are trying to set up clusters and do not want the issue of managing it or giving up student cycle to manage it. That's time away from research.

Slide 13--definitely show this slide. If you don't they will ask.

Remove the 'Does not require a credit card' comment. I think lab creation should have a slide and not be hidden in the lab. Folks don’t read and if you create for the wrong account, can't step back. Hand holding needed.

[JohnWintellect]

We have covered all of this.