Last week I had the pleasure of presenting at the SP Jain Center of Management in Dubai Technology Week to a group of MBA students with technology backgrounds. I was very impressed with the level of students at this school; we’re actually working with groups of students from there this year on...

Had a great time at Startup Weekend Oman today, met some very enthusiastic entrepreneurs who were looking to launch their own companies. The teams will be presenting the top ideas to the judging panel on Friday, and no matter the outcome I think everyone learned a lot and made some great connections...

After the successful local launch of Visual Studio 2010 in UAE and Qatar, we’re coming to Kuwait. Join us: Date: May 18th Time: 1:45pm – 7:20pm (includes “Robin Hood” movie) Location: Cinescape 360 at 360 Mall , South Surra, Kuwait REGISTER FOR THE PREMIERE

Next week is a big week for us: Visual Studio 2010 launch in Dubai on May 2nd and our Imagine Cup Gulf Regional Finals on May 3rd. It’s been a fun year working with all the students and it’s great to see all of their work in the projects that were selected for the regional finals.  It’s been difficult...

I’m happy to announce that we will be hosting our local launch of Visual Studio 2010 in Dubai on May 2nd, 2pm at the Cinestar Cinemas in Mall of the Emirates . “ Visual Studio 2010 premiering at a theatre near you!  Join Microsoft and the local developer community at the Cinestar Cinemas Mall of...

Thanks to all the faculty and representatives from higher education in Oman who attended the event today. I’ve posted my presentation below that includes links to all of the relevant programs embedded into the slide deck. Every student that wants to learn about the Microsoft programs for them: Microsoft...

We held the first "TechTalk" today at Al Murooj Rotana for Partners who work with Microsoft with sessions on: · Introducing Windows Azure - Anton Delsink · Windows 7 - Wilson Xavier · Web 2.0 - Pooya Darugar · Network Access Protection - Zahid Tikrity Unfortunately I had to do my session...

A lot of people have been asking me what the best way is to recieve invitations to our Microsoft Gulf events for developers and to recieve news from us on new technology. We have lots of sources for this, but the best way is to profile yourself and let us know what you're interested in. Go to the...

I hosted severl of our customers for an "SOA Day" at Microsoft Dubai today. It was an interesting discussion focused around SOA that also touched on specific areas where Microsoft has great technology enablers of SOA, Biztalk, WCF, ... . I'm posting the session slides here for the attendees and anyone...

I had the pleasure of speaking at the 2nd annual Java Developers Conference being held in Cairo ( where Microsoft was a gold sponsor ) by the Egyptian Java User group . The session was about interoperability , specifically interoperability at the application layer between Java and .NET and the many ways...

I somehow got a front row seat for the Steve Ballmer keynote ; blogging from here right now :) A funny and interesting keynote session, you have to see it to fully get the title. The audience questions are, as expected, mainly around the proposed Yahoo acquisition but also covered almost every aspect...

After a long long journey from Dubai, I finally arrived in Las Vegas for the first day of MIX08. A very exciting day for me to see Microsoft make some big announcements around the future of our technologies on the web. Check out the official MIX blog recap of the keynote announcements , for me the Beta...

For those in Kuwait, mark your calendars for Saturday Februrary 16th. DotNetBoom and Pro Rangers will be hosting a Community Open Day covering the latest Microsoft technologies. Amr El Garhy and Anton will be there for sure with the communities, with Anton presenting a session on web testing; check out...

I'll be presenting at the Gulf eCommerce Forum tomorrow in Bahrain. My session is on Connected Commerce, going beyond the traditional eCommerce and looking at multi-channel distribution, data analysis for real time marketing decisions and all of the new user experiences available for eCommerce interactions...

Some people have requested my presentation from the MSDN Roadshow on Software plus Services. Please find it below. Resources: http://www.codeplex.com/LitwareHR (Litware on Codeplex) http://www.codeplex.com/LitwareHR/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=6113 (Litware Smart Client) We...

If you haven't signed up already, there's still time . My session is right after lunch on Software + Services . There's a lot of travel coming up this week, Kuwait on the 14th, Oman on the 17th and Bahrain on the 19th. Hope to see you at one of the venues.

Please join me and Anton along with the other attendees from TechEd Barcelona at the World Party on Wednesday November 7th .  If you are going to TechEd, please drop me a note and we can connect.  I'll be working at the "Ask the Experts" area most of the time when not sneaking out...

The TechNet and MSDN Roadshow proudly presents the “Gaining Insight Tour 2007”. This tour, coming to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, is packed with live demonstrations and technical content on upcoming and much anticipated solutions from Microsoft. Get a sneak peek into technologies that include...

You can already sign up to attend this year's MSDN Roadshow . See my last post for the dates and cities. make sure you choose your city and track (Developer vs. Technical) in the registration process, I almost missed it during my registration. Look for the official invitation with the finalized...

It's time for another MSDN Roadshow. I had a great time last year presenting in all the countries and now have the opportunity to do it even better this year. Last year I presented on Service Oriented Architecture , this year I will be presenting on the concept of Software + Services . Should be a lot...

Geeks II was a great success and thanks to everyone who attended, the best part for us is to get to interact with the developer community in our region. You can see some of the coverage of the event already. I've had some requests for the SOA presentation that I did at Geeks II last week, so I've...

Beat Schwegler discusses the topic of Enterprise Search. Please check back soon for Beat's presentation.

Daniel Akenine gives some thought provoking insight into Web 2.0 and semantic web.

A great overview of Software as a Service (SaaS) from Kevin Sangwell.

Here is my presentation on Service Oriented Architecture. I tried to make this a practical guide and discuss what I consider a very important (but often neglected) aspect to a successful SOA implementation, business modeling. It is in powerpoint 2007 format, the 2003 version is too large to post,...