Node.js is a server side software system designed for writing scalable Internet applications, notably web servers. Programs are written on the server side in JavaScript, using event-driven, asynchronous I/O to minimize overhead and maximize scalability.

Four of these events are happening on the West Coast in February. 

Mountain View is happening February 2.

Los Angeles is scheduled for February 23.

Seattle is happening on March 30.

What is a Node.js Boot Camp?

Node Boot Camp is a free event for developers and designers who want to learn Node.js from the ground up with hands-on instruction from Node experts in the community. No prior Node experience is necessary to attend. At Node Boot Camp you’ll learn how to build your first Node application from scratch, how to work with popular Node.js development tools and editors, how to work with popular 3rd party Node frameworks, and how to deploy your applications to production hosting environments.

What’s the agenda?

8:30 am – Network and Breakfast.

9:00 am – Start. Fundamentals.

10:00 am – Deployment.

10:30 am – App Development. The Basics.

12:00 pm – Lunch.

12:30 pm – App Development. Basic + Advanced.

1:30 pm – Hackathon.

4:30 pm – Presentations.

5:00 pm – Prizes and Finish.

How Do I Register?

To secure your seat in this event, please register by clicking on your city.

Notes

This event is free of charge. 
Attendees are responsible for booking and paying for their own travel and accommodation.

Questions

Email your questions to nishab@microsoft.com

Investors are pointing to a rising M&A trend for the enterprise and startups ecosystem. Windows Challenges are ending, and new contests are beginning. We are still taking applications for the second class of the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure powered by Tech Stars. 

and we have put together a list of all the links we have tweeted out today that we thought are worth a second look.

Interview with Marc Andreessen where he makes statements that could prove prescient about IPOs and M&A in tech this year.

Open House for the Windows Azure accelerator today.

Register and get those video applications in for the 2^nd Windows Azure Accelerator powered by TechStars. Feb 3 absolute last day. 

Plenty of healthy debate about what startup destiny in 2013. Here’s some insight. 

COO travels for business most of the year, uses Surface RT. Here’s his real and honest opinion.  

How are you navigating the art and the business technicalities of starting up your own company? A movie star founder tells all.

Looking to score a big date for Valentine’s Day? May we recommend Big Data Date Night in Mountain View with SiSense, Facebook and Netflix. 

Node.js boot camp coming to Silicon Valley on February 2. 

Being Temporary in a World Looking for Profitability – Steve Blank explains why startups have different values than public cos, but how they’re same, too.

Opening up the Windows App Lab in Canada.  

Zero Code Cloud Migrations: Hmmm.

Ten startups show of their work to investors in Seattle. They will do the same this Thursday in Silicon Valley.  

This will make your geeky little heart skip a beat.

So sick and tired of Valentine's Day. Right? If only there was something much more interesting, someone much more captivating, someone who really understood me for me. Someone who knew what it means to de-dup and use cloud storage like it was really meant to be used. 

Someone who went to something like...  Big Data Date Night in Mountain View. Live, on the Silicon Valley Microsoft Campus, in our brand new BizSpark Labs. 

On February 13, we are hosting a big talk on big data for all the lonely hearts out there who want to know what to do with the heart-throb Hadoops in their lives. Need a warm MySQL to wrap your arms around at night? Well, we have you covered. 

We will be doing this talk with folks like Bruno Aziza, VP of Marketing at SiSense, and some of the big names in data analytics at Facebook, Netflix, and Microsoft.

If you register before January 31, you will get discount pricing. 

Read below for the night's full lineup. 

Register before January 31 to get Early Bird pricing.  Space is limited, so don't wait to claim your seat!

Many people tell me that they have a great idea and that as soon as they get enough customers they will be profitable. That may be true for any startup. But something else makes a startup successful. And that is all about the search.

Steve Blank, the famed entrepreneur and author of the The Startup Handbook, has a great line in this video of his talk on the democratization of entrepreneurship.  He says, "‎A startup is a temporary organization used to search for a scalable and repeatable business model." This now-famous Steve Blank aphorism should be taken down on paper, blown up into a poster print, and put on every wall of your garage, if you are building a startup. 

Watch his talk below, and then: 

1. Think about the difference between an established business model and the "search" for one.

2. Think about the low cost of finding that business model. 

3. Weigh in here with your thoughts on what is challenging about this, what works here, and what does not work. We are listening. 

What makes this so important right now is an idea brought forward by Carlota Perez in her book, Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital. It seems that globally we are in a moment of massive disruption. Financial markets, entrepreneurs, and established companies are in the search for business models. 

We are trying to make some of this easier for entrepreneurs with Microsoft BizSpark's program to give free cloud hosting (in some cases) and free software licenses (in all cases). 

We subscribe to this great board on Quora for infographics. It turns out that most of those infographics are about startups and the life of entrepreneurs. Because that syncs so well with the life of the community in Microsoft BizSpark, we would like to display those for you from time to time.

Here's one from Funders and Founders