Now that I've had a chance to digest the Cairo experience a little, it's time to share.  I've  blogged a bit about it here, here, and here, and now here's the rest of the story.

Middle East Developers Conference
The first thing that struck me about the conference was the large proportion of women in attendance.  At a typical programming conference in the US or Europe, the crowd is typically about 90% men.  MDC seemed to be 1/4 to 1/3 ladies, many of whom seemed to be student- or recent-grad-age.  I was encouraged by this budding diversity in our industry, and -- I have to come clean about my prejudices here -- surprised to see it in a predominantly Muslim country.  Actually, one of the fun things about being American traveling abroad is to see first hand those facets of life where we aren't as progressive as we sometimes like to think we are.

The majority of the developers I spoke with at the conference were currently doing the bulk of their development in native Win32 with Visual C++.  However, as usual, there was great interest in how to mix in managed code -- especially WPF.  The questions during the sessions, especially Ayman's optimizations session, were very good.  The C++ knowledge level in the crowd was definitely above average, which always makes for a good time.

University Visits
We spent the next couple of days after MDC visiting the engineering and computer science faculties at The American University in Cairo, Cairo University, and Ain Shams University.  Cairo University and Ain Shams are public universities, offering the opportunity of higher education to all qualified students at little or no cost.  The AUC is a private school, offering a top notch education to students with well heeled parents.  :)  For me, this was an opportunity to understand how these schools teach programming and what tools they use.  However, the conversations went so much further than that.  Luckily, Damien Watkins, who recently joined the VC++ team as our Program Manager for Academic, was in his element.  Damien is a recent alumnus of Microsoft Research (MSR) as well as a former university professor, so he was able to connect well with the faculty on topics ranging from curriculum to graduation projects to the various avenues by which universities can engage with MSR.

As it turns out, all of these schools start their CS programs by teaching C/C++ programming to students with Visual C++.  However, it was also interesting to me that, beyond the first year, the schools don't really teach programming languages, per se.  Instead, they expect students to rely on fundamentals learned in the first year to guide their own self-education and choices in programming languages.

It's also worth noting that Ayman is a graduate of AUC, while Mohamed is an Ain Shams alum.  Ayman's old professors, in particular, doted on him like proud grandparents, which was quite sweet, although I was obliged to mercilessly tease Ayman about it.  :)

VC++ 2005 Developer Lab
Our last stop on the trip was a 2-day developer lab, giving local ISVs the scoop on VC++ 2005 and helping them port their code bases.  I've written about the US versions of these labs a few times in the past.  This event was similarly well received, with all of the attendees being able to make very solid progress on their port to the new compiler and one attendee even completing an x64 port as well! C++ is C++, no matter what country you're in.  Interestingly, all of the attendees had MFC-based applications, and - like MDC - most were interested in learning how to augment their existing native code with managed bits.

Overall Impressions
Traffic in Cairo is bad.  I honestly think we spent more time in the car trying to get from place to place than anything else.  I'm glad Ayman was able to do the driving because I was not ready to engage in the orchestrated anarchy that is motoring in Cairo.  Smog is pretty bad as well, which took some getting used to.

We were lucky enough to have a weekend day off in the middle of the trip.  Mohamed, Damien, and I used the time to visit the pyramids at Giza, the Citadel, and a few other sites.  Ayman used to the day to mentally prepare himself to watch Egypt defeat Ivory Coast in the Africa Cup finals that evening.  At the end of the day, Mohamed's in-laws hosted us for a dinner that put to shame any thanksgiving meal I've ever had.  The food was fabulous and the hospitality was much appreciated!  On one of our last days in town, we were also able to catch the Egyptian Museum just before closing and see some of the the fantastic exhibits, including the prodigious contents of Tutankhamen's tomb.

Finally, I have to offer a big "shoukran" to Mohamed Alaa, Hani Gohary, Ahmed Adel, Sarah Farid, and the rest of the MS Egypt folks, who were instrumental in making the trip a success.