Pooya's place (in the Gulf) : gulf

Gulf Developers: Profile yourself to receive event invites and news from Microsoft Gulf

pooyad — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:30:00 GMT

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 Microsoft Profile Center
Sign in with your LiveID
Update "My Personal Information" to make sure that your country is one of the Gulf countries: UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen
Update "My Business Information" to make sure that the "primary role" is correct, select "Developer, Solutions Architect, ..." whatever matches

That's it. You can also manage all of your subscriptions to the TechNet Flash and local Gulf DPE Newsletter from the Subscritption center as well.

I've posted a quick video that walks you through this. Sorry about the audio, I'll try to update it with better sound if I have a chance.

Full Size Video - Developers: Profile yourself for Microsoft Middle East events and news

Kuwait Community Open Day on Feb 16th

pooyad — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:15:00 GMT

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 the full agenda. I will try my best to make it there as well. I'm very happy to see a full session on Popfly presented by Fadi, I still think this is the coolest product we make and I recently gave an interview about it to Gulf News.

So hopefully I'll see you there.

And don't forget you have a chance to win an Xbox 360 :)

MSDN Roadshow: Software + Services Presentation

pooyad — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 16:26:00 GMT

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 will be publishing all the sldies from all the sessions in the Roadshow on the main event site once the roadshow is complete (stay tuned).

MSDN and TechNet Roadshow - Will be in kuwait in 2 days

pooyad — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:40:00 GMT

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.

Official MSDN Roadshow invite .... See you there

pooyad — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:52:00 GMT

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 Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, .Net, Silverlight, Virtualization and more. You will also be among the first to see us unveil the new Unified Communications technologies from Microsoft – a solution that will revolutionize the way people communicate and collaborate in the workplace.

If you’re an IT Professional or a Developer looking to gain insight and an edge over others, then you’ve got no excuse to miss out on this event! You may even walk away as the lucky winner of the new X-box 360 Elite! Register Now.

Where and when

Kuwait City Movenpick Nov 14^th

Muscat Shangri La Nov 17^th

Manama Sheraton Nov 19^th

Doha Intercon Dec 9^th

Register to attend this year's MSDN Roadshow

pooyad — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 16:53:00 GMT

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 agenda and schedule in your inbox in a few days. If you're not already on the MSDN mailing list and receiving the local gulf MSDN newsletter, you can sign up here.

MSDN Roadshow time again

pooyad — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 15:04:00 GMT

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 of fun; I'm looking forward to visiting all the countries and seeing everyone.

It will be a packed show with Anton delviering sessions on Visual Studio Team System, Amr showing everyone the amazing power of .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 plus sessions from the rest of the team. Look for some great updates on the 3 major products we're launching soon: Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server.

I'll put up the link to the official page once it's up but for now check the schedule below to see when we're coming to a city near you:

Nov 14th - Kuwait
Nov 17th - Oman
Nov 19th - Bahrain

Dec 9th - Qatar

There will also be a big 2 day event in Dubai on Dec 4th and 5th, more details to come on this later.

Gadgets with Arabic support

pooyad — Thu, 03 May 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Have not tried this myself but it's been announced that Windows Live gallery and Vista Sidebar gadgets in arabic. Submit through the standard process.

If you haven't built gadgets before, they're a lot of fun and very quick to build; start one and let us know what you create.

Update: We now have the first Arabic localized gadget

Geeks II: SOA presentation

pooyad — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:50:00 GMT

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 posted it along with this entry. For those of you that attended the Architect Forum preceding Geeks II, you'll recognize the first part of the presentation on how to get started with SOA. The second part differed as I focused on the concrete steps a developer should take on how to actually implement the services since the audience was more developer than architect.

update: all presentations from Geeks II are now posted

Microsoft Architect Forum: Enterprise Search

pooyad — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:27:00 GMT

Beat Schwegler discusses the topic of Enterprise Search.

Please check back soon for Beat's presentation.

Microsoft Architect Forum: Web 2.0 and Semantic Web

pooyad — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:23:00 GMT

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

Microsoft Architect Forum: SaaS session

pooyad — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:21:00 GMT

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

Microsoft Architect Forum - Dubai March 27th

pooyad — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 08:56:00 GMT

Thanks to all for attending the first (of many) Microsoft Architect Forum in Dubai last week.

As promised, I'm posting the slides from the sessions for everyone who attended and for those who did not have a chance.

Each session is posted seperately, most are already online (see attachment to each blog entry covering the session), the others will be soon. Below is the opening by Arvindra Sehmi and Pooya Darugar.

Geeks: Return to the code

pooyad — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:51:00 GMT

We're hosting the 2nd annual gulf developers conference next week, and it should be an exciting 3 days. This year we've added a student day (March 27th) and 2 full days for professional developers and architects. I'll be presenting on March 28th on SOA, along with a great set of speakers; so please join us at this event.

The conference is free for attendees and registration is open now.

(Beta) Launch of Gulf Skyscrapers

pooyad — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:41:00 GMT

As I have mentioned previously on this blog, I'm looking to build an architect community in the Gulf region. After many discussions with architects in the community we are preparing for our (beta) launch of the Gulf Skyscrapers community at GITEX.

http://www.gulfskyscrapers.com/

See the site for the details, and join us live at GITEX on November 21st, 3:30pm near the Microsoft stand.