MSDN India

Community TechDays - a month of exiciting tour

We have been visiting you.  We have had successfully delivered Community TechDays at Hyderabad, Jaipur and Delhi.  Community TechDays is a community driven technology roadshow delivering cutting edge technology session.  While we are present in most of the cities, we get to listen to community speakers deliveirng sessions on our technology rather than we delivering sessions.

At the moment, the registrations for Community TechDays have been pretty encouraging and we have 5-6 more cities to go.  So, if you are in any of these cities, make sure you attend the Community TechDays.  You can even get to meet and interact with our team members as well as other technology enthusiasits.   Even more, if you are interested in delivering a session yourself, please suggest using the http://www.communitytechdays.com/helpdesk.aspx page and we will let the community leads evaluate and decide.

We have Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, Siliguri, Kolkatta, Chennai and Bangalore to go so there is less chance that you are not part of one of these cities.  For more information and detailed agenda, visit http://www.communitytechdays.com/agenda.aspx

Our team is eager to listen to your feedbacks on our products as well as our events and how we can make them better.  Also, we would like to hear from you if you are an active community member or interested in setting up an User Group at your city.

One of the cool things is that, most of these events are placed on the weekends and you wont need to miss your work for attending these.  You can even watch them streamed online just in case you arent able to attend physically. 

For more information and registration, visit http://www.communitytechdays.com/default.aspx register and join us for an exiciting technology roadshow in your city.

MSDN India

Virtual TechDays – Planning in full phase

Virtual TechDays is around the corner and as always the team is busy getting the things up to deliver the best experiences for you.   We have the agenda put up on www.virtualtechdays.com and also the different tracks and sessions.  As we mentioned earlier, we heard the opinion from many of you and that reflects in the sessions you see.  In many tracks more than a single session was directly added from the votings that you provided.

This time we also have a small fun video of the team that works on Virtual TechDays.  When you visit the www.virtualtechdays.com website, you can see a small video that plays in the right top.  We though it would be nice to introduce you to the team that delivers VTD every quarter, the team that you get to hear over Live Meeting.  While this is not the exhaustive speaker, it has many of our core team members.

We look forward to seeing you all at VTD soon and if you havent registered, the best time to do is NOW, so go ahead and register at www.virtualtechdays.com

MSDN India

Watch Bill Gates Live right now !!!

Watch Bill Gates Live, right now, addressing the Microsoft Research India, 5th Anniversary at New Delhi.  Also present are the Chief Guest, Honorable HRD Minister - Shri.Kapil Sibal, the Honorable Minister for State - Science & Technology - Shri.Prithviraj Chauhan, Prof.Ashok Jhunjhunwala - IIT Madras, Mr.N.R.Narayanamurthy - Chairman & Chief Mentor, Infosys and Dr.P.Anandan, Managing Director - Microsoft Research India.

All from the convenience of your work place at http://specials.msn.co.in/sp09/billgates/

Bill Gates is here to receive the "Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament & Development" on behalf of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its pioneering and exemplary philanthropic work around the world ad in India.

MSDN India

Virtual TechDays is back and tell us what you want to hear

Our premier online event Virtual TechDays is back and we would be hosting this event in August 3rd week.  The specific dates and other details would be up on the www.virtualtechdays.com website shortly.  Meanwhile, you can visit the website and watch videos / download presentations of earlier Virtual TechDays. 

We are collecting a list of various topics that would be of interest to developers, architects as well as IT professionals and would be putting up these options on the site.  Once the registration link is available, you would be able to chose the topics that you would like to hear.  This is our way to ensure that you listen to what you want to hear rather than what we want to talk.

This quarter is going to have some of the exciting releases such as the recent Silverlight release, Expression Blend 3 + Sketchflow RC release as well as the Windows 7 RC that was released sometime back.  Hence, we have lots of stuff to talk about.  Also, this is our first interaction with all of you post our mega Tech Ed in May this year. 

We hope to catch up with you during Virtual TechDays and request you to keep watching www.virtualtechdays.com for registration and more information.

You can also post your favorite topics in the comments over here.

 MSDN India

Watch union budget Live http://budgetlive.economictimes.com/

If you are worried that you would miss the Union Budget analysis since you are into work today, you can catch all the action right from your desktop at http://budgetlive.economictimes.com/

Our team put up a great Silverlight based player that streams the Economic Times' ET NOW, broadcast of the budget analysis.

So, more than talking, let us allow us to catch you with the action on http://budgetlive.economictimes.com/

MSDN India

Jounery of ASP.NET Developer to Cloud Webcast Series Recordings

We delivered the journey of an "ASP.NET Developer to Cloud" webcast series recently and the response has been overwhelming.  The excitement around Cloud technologies and particularly Windows Azure has been great.  We also delivered this as a multi-lingual webcast both in English and Tamil.  This helped us to reach to a large set of audience who are very good in programming skills but have challenges in understanding certain areas when explained in English.  Some of the feedbacks we received

"First of all ,Excellent Job...Please keep it up."

"A perfect way of handling a session in my own language. In general our guys used to translate everything in the Tamil language including the nouns which always makes me tired. But these 2 people never made me tiered and got my attention always in to the session.. Greatly appreciated."

The Evangelists are planning to put the technical content of the webcast in their blogs shortly.  Meanwhile, we thank you for taking the time to attend these webcasts and hope you found them beneficial.

The recordedings for all the webcasts can be viewed from http://www.microsoft.com/india/webcasts/ondemand.aspx

MSDN India

Introduction to Windows Azure - in Tamil - starting shortly

As already posted, the Web to Cloud webcast series is being piloted in English as well as Tamil.  The first 2 sessions were pretty successful with a lot of attendees joining in for the Tamil version as well.  Meanwhile, for the first time we are going to talk about a cutting edge release such as Windows Azure in Tamil, in a short while.

While, Windows Azure is relatively new, we will explore the journey from ASP.NET & WCF moving to ADO.NET Data Services and then the motivation to move towards Cloud.  This session also clarifies a lot of myth that revolves around the similarities between Web Services and Windows Azure.

Since this session is already registered full, for the unique benefit of our MSDN India Blog readers, we are posting the direct link for joining this session https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/_XML/wwe_uk/join?id=1032417844&role=attend&pw=82521327

We look forward to seeing you in this webcast.

MSDN India

Journey of an ASP.NET Developer to Cloud - English / Tamil

When we did the regional webcasts pilot in March, it had great reception.  Clearly the difference in satisfaction while doing in the regional language was far ahead of doing the same in English.  This time we are delivering it again in English & Tamil to begin with.  The topic is an interesting one as well since these days everyone talks about Cloud.  This webcast series aims at taking the journey of an ASP.NET Developer from Web to the Cloud world.  Watch out as it slowly unwinds, traditional ASP.NET + WCF to REST based programming and slowly moves to the Data Services and then on to the Windows Azure platform.

While this is an experimental initiative, it doesnt necessarily mean that one has to follow all these steps before getting your app to the cloud.  This explores the different options available when talking about cloud computing and how they all fit into the .NET and Visual Studio paradigm.

To take an example, the ADO.NET Data Services part is not required if you are architecting your next cloud app using Windows Azure.  Similarly, the WCF => REST is also something that just provides a way to REST enable your WCF service and is not essentially a part of the Cloud journey.

However, to make it connected, we will try and explore common samples.

You can register for the webcast from www.microsoft.com/india/webcasts or smply login to the webcast from the same page, when it happens.

MSDN India

TechEd India Presentations

We would like to thank you if you had attended Tech Ed India 2009 at Hyderabad in person or through Live Meeting.  It was great to meet you all and discuss about our products and technologies.

We have never had such a huge amount of topics and variety of forums to discuss and everything worked out very well thanks to the efforts that went into the planning.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for the Presentations and Videos, we have uploaded some of the PPTs at www.msteched.in  You would need to click on "TechEd Sessions" and under each session you would find the link to download the presentation resources.

We would also complete uploading the videos shortly and the same would be available as well from the above page. 

Hope you find these beneficial.

MSDN India

TechEd India 2009 - a huge success !!!

TechEd India 2009 was a huge success with pouring in delegates, sponsors, partners, customers, media and celebrities across the 3 days.  It was one grand event that no one would want to miss. 

While there are lot of highlights, Steve Ballmer's keynote, Resool Pookutt's talk (Academy Award Winner) and the gaming zone were much fun to miss out mentioning.  Of course, the Community Lounge, Partner Stalls, Demo Extravaganza and the loads of technical sessions cannot be dismissed and the work that went into getting all of them is humungous.

If you are looking at statistics, we had around 112 sessions, 24 hands on labs, free microsoft certifications, community lounge where there were continous sessions by speakers across 3 days etc.,

Overall, we were happy to meet you all and hope that this event was well worth the time you invested. 

The action meanwhile continues and we should soon be out with information on more follow up events in a short while.  Meanwhile, the action is still alive at http://twitter.com/techedindia2009

We are in the process of collecting all the presentations and other resources used during the event and would get them uploaded and provide you the links.

Cheers !!!

TechEd India 2009 - Steve Ballmer Live - just 4 hours to go!!

We are on the D-day!  TechEd India Day 1 is starting in a few hours and we are all but excited and waiting to see you get entrenched in technology for the next few days.  To begin with, Steve Ballmer would be keynoting, starting 10am Indian Time.  Post that, we will kick off the main sessions around 11:15am. 

As we mentioned earlier, today we have around seven tracks and all of them have loads of useful information that you might not want ot miss.

The event is happening live at HICC, Novotel Hotel, Hyderabad which is a great venue for hosting these big events.  We are waiting to see more than 2500 attendees who have confirmed their presence in addition to the on-premise registrations that keep coming in.

If you are in a different city and unfortunately could not come down to Hyderabad, you can catch Steve Ballmer Live at http://www.microsoft.com/india/teched2009/

Currently it is playing Soma, our VPs message to the Devs, IT Pros around the value of Tech Ed.  Once the event kicks off, you would be able to see the actual Steve Ballmer keynote, streamed in this place.

We encourage you to come down and join us with spot registration, if you still missed all this information and want to join us for this grand event.  Otherwise, there are a certain tracks that gets streamed live as well and you can find more information on this at www.msteched.in

Lets kick off Tech Ed India 2009 and make it a grand success!!!

MSDN India

Hyderabad - Here we come - TechEd India Core Team

The TechEd India Core Team is here in Hyderabad for delivering one of the industry's largest technology event.  With less than 24 hours to kick start the event, the Team is pretty busy at work with fixing a few things and majority of administrative works that keeps popping up.

The Evangelists and other expert speakers are already here while some of them would be in during the course of the day.  The all big SteveB keynote starts tomorrow at 10am followed by 6 Technical Track and 1 management track.  The Technical Tracks are further divided into 3 for Developers and 3 for IT Professionals.

Tomorrow's sessions also see a few big speakers such as Stephen Walther, Amit Chatterjee, Ranganathan S, Sanjay Vyas - the former two being Microsoft employees and the latter industry stalwarts.

Also, tomorrow will also have the first ever public preview of some of our products such as Visual Studio 2010, Visual Studio Team System 2010, Windows 7 from a development perspective.  We havent talked much public yet on these products although they have been around for sometime in the form of VPC, Beta versions.

We are more than excited and all geared up to bring the best of experience to you folks and if there is an event of lifetime that you won't want to miss it would be this Tech Ed.

There is still time for registering and if you would like to do that, visit www.msteched.in

MSDN India

Teched India 2009 Dev Track - Which sessions to attend?

While you guys prepare your agenda and figure out the sessions to attend, we wanted to share kind of editor's choice for some of high profile sessions.  These are some of the sessions where we have got great speakres, content that is rarely available on internet as well as one that would help you have the edge over others in terms of technical knowledge.

Having said that, this is purely an illustration and the actual sessions that you may want to attend should be decided by you based on your area of work, expertise and interests.  Also, these are developer focussed sessions and if you are an Architect, Project Manager, the Architecture Track and Project Management tracks would be the best suited.  To put it simple, these are the sessions to watch out.

Day 1 - May 13, 2009

• A lap around VSTS 2010
• Developing MVC based web apps using ASP.NET MVC
• How LINQ Works - a Deep Dive
• Running ASP.NET on Server Core in Windows Server 2008 R2 and IIS 7.5

Day 2 - May 14, 2009

• SharePoint Services - Worst Practices
• Windows 7 for Developers
• Easing ASP.NET Deployment with VS 2010
• Building scalable and available web apps with "Velocity"

Day 3 - May 15, 2009

• Architecting and Developing on the Cloud Operating System - Windows Azure
• jQuery - the write less, do more JavaScript library
• IIS Media Pack & SL 3 - Redefining online multimedia applications
• Windows Azure Code Camp

While every session is unique and important to some part of the dev crowd, the above are outstanding topics that we thought would be of great interest to you.

For registration and more details, visit www.msteched.in

MSDN India

Register for Tech Ed India

With just 3 days to go, the excitement is catching up in our camp.  Our speakers, organizers, support staff are all geared up for providing the most exciting technical event.  As we mentioned earlier, this year's Tech Ed comes at a point where development job opportunities are getting more and more tougher as well as competitive.

Maintaining that edge over your peer always helps you win over this tough job market.  In addition to it, the free chance for acquiring certification definitley improves your technical authority and thereby better prospects for growth in your current role as well as new opportunities.

The whole set of tracks have been desinged under work loads (i.e. areas of work) rather than any other theme such as performance, security.  Just to simply the work load allows one to choose ones area of focus and attend sessions, get questions answered as well as try oneself at the hands-on-labs provided.

With 28 tracks, 112 sessions covering 3 days, there is less chance that your focus area is missing.  In addition to it, the Microsoft India Development Center also is hosting Technology Tents where they would be showcasing the cool and innovative products that they are working on.  This gives a very early preview of whats coming up from this team.

In addition if you are community enthusiast, there is a community track that allows members to discuss their specific topics, present sessions, chalk talks etc., and this could be an excellent starting point if you want to get into presenting in technical forums.  This would showcase our communith leads, most valuable professions (mvps) and regional directors who have vast experience in Microsoft technologies as well as presenting in technical forums.  This definitely inspires the technical speaker in you.

We look forward to seeing you at Tech Ed and lets make it a grand success. 

For more details and registration visit www.msteched.in

MSDN India

Teched India Tracks and Sessions

As we near the big dates (May 13-15) a lot of care is being taken to review the tracks, sessions, speakers and content that gets to you.  We have a new track on Interoperability on Day 3 - May 15th where we are talking about Eclipse, jQuery, MySQL & PHP and integration with our technologies such as Silverlight, ASP.NET, BI and IIS respectively.

Moreover, we have refined some of the content and added useful sessions.  ASP.NET on Server Core in Windows Server 2008 R2 with IIS 7.5 is one such content that is very rare to find out in the internet.  We have added sessions around similar topics which are useful to you and at the same time very rare to find over the internet.  If you do a rough math, we have close to 28 Tracks over 3 days and 112 sessions totally. 

Also, for the first time we are talking about many things such as ASP.NET 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, Windows Azure, Microsoft Web Platform etc., in such an open conference. 

For detailed agenda, visit http://www.microsoft.com/india/teched2009/agenda.aspx

If you would like to follow us on twitter, we are there at http://twitter.com/techedindia2009

We look forward to seeing you at TechEd and hope that it would be a great knowledge sharing forum.  For more information and registration, visit www.msteched.in

MSDN India