Announcing PUG DevCon 2009.

I am pleased to announce Pune User Group’s most important event of the year,

PUG DevCon 2009

This year we are hosting PUG DevCon 2009 on

8th & 9th August, 2009

2 days, 2 parallel Tracks and total 16 sessions on various Microsoft Technologies by industry experts…

I will be posting more details about agenda very soon…

keep your eyes open…

you can also follow Pune User Group on Twitter / Face book / LinkedIn  here are the URLs

http://twitter.com/puneusergroup

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pune-India/Pune-User-Group/

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2023294

and

PUG’s official website http://www.puneusergroup.org

AhmedabadUserGroup - Tech.Ed on the Road at Ahmedabad

We Learn.. We Share.. We Help..

Hi Friends,

Here are some great moments and details of Tech.Ed On Road by AhmedabadUserGroup.

It was truely a great success in Ahmedabad.

Please have a look at the details and pictures at http://ahmedabadusergroup.multiply.com/journal/item/2235/Tech.Ed_on_Road_at_Ahmedabad

Join us: http://ahmedabadusergroup.multiply.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ahmedabadusrgrp
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118248418241
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=2076491

Thanks,

Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola

President, Ahmedabad User Group

Tech.Ed India 2009, Summary of Community activities

  From Sanjay Shetty’s Live Space

Quote

TechEd India 2009, Summary of Community activities

To summarize: In my 10+ years of community engagement, I would say, TechEd India 2009 was the most successful in terms of community involvement. As beautiful as the famous Charminar of Hyderabad. (see picture on left).

Organizations like INETA APAC, Culminis, PASS and Microsoft India, jointly engaged in bringing all user group leaders together, promoting the respective user groups and enabling great networking opportunities between the leaders and attendees of TechEd India.

 

Background:

About 1 month before TechEd volunteers from INETA APAC, Culminis, PASS, Microsoft India team, and Microsoft UGSS, formed the India Community Council(ICC),  an initiative spearheaded by Microsoft User Group Support Services(UGSS). The objective was to align the efforts of the various organizations in a country and to explore areas of synergy. TechEd was the perfect ground to see the power of the ICC. And they definitely proved their mettle. Further invaluable help was provided by Ashwin Kini, the Culminis APAC chair.

 

A plan was made to engage the community along the ideas stated in the left column below:

1. Encourage community participation pre-TechEd	1.With Microsoft India’s help, a discount of 25% was negotiated for all User group members wishing to attend TechEd. 1.1. A template was made available to leaders via which they could announce this benefit to members. 1.2. Members interested in the offer were given a survey url to indicate their interest. A day before TechEd volunteers provided this list to TechEd event agency to ensure at time of payment, members got 25% discount. (Despite the severe recession 65 community members took advantage of this offer). 2. ICC members were given free entry. 3. INETA APAC(facebook, Spaces), Culminis blogs, sites announced benefits for the community, and mailers + phone calls were made to all UG leaders.
2. Promote all User Groups of (INETA APAC, Culminis & PASS), create awareness of these organizations, MVP Program and Microsoft UGSS, ensure all attendees are aware of the above.	1. A Community Booklet was created, containing details of all user groups in India, via efforts of ICC + other volunteers. A professional company was engaged(Printo), their help was invaluable. Community booklet was included in the attendee kits, ensuring all are aware of the various user groups across India. In addition, UG leaders were provided Community booklets, so that they could distribute it to their group members.
3. Engage TechEd Attendees, Promote leaders and groups, create buzz and encourage at least 10% of TechEd audience.	1. Two contests were organized. 1.1 Culminis, INETA APAC, PASS, Leader Hunt Contest for TechEd India 2009. Enabled attendee interaction with all leaders(Culminis, INETA APAC, PASS) who are present at TechEd. Approximately 300 attendees participated. 1.2 INETA APAC True or False Contest. Enabled attendees to be aware of INETA APAC benefits and sign up as volunteers.  Approximately 300 attendees participated. 1.3 There was also a dart game where a lots of goodies(Stress balls, T-shirts, Caps) were given to attendees. The queue at the dart game counter was just amazing. (The Xbox guys helped by providing part of their booth to enable this.)
4. Networking opportunity for speakers, attendees, UG leaders, volunteers.	An exclusive Community Evening was organized, primary sponsor was Microsoft UGSS, Culminis and INETA APAC also partly sponsored the same.  Networking, free beer and munchies. It was an evening attended by close to 100 people (consisting of leaders, members, speakers and Microsoft personnel). The ICC members were formally introduced to the attendees. The entrance to this exclusive event was guarded by our enthusiastic leaders/volunteers Nauzad, Surendra Mishra and Pinalkumar Dave followed by turns by other volunteers.
5. Involve 3rd party speakers, Microsoft Regional Directors, other valuable speakers etc.	Pre-TechEd, behind the scenes I was involved in getting 3rd party speakers, such as Sanjay Vyas, Dr. Nitin Paranjpe, Raj Chaudhuri, Meena K and Ranganathan S. In addition, Microsoft RD’s like Praveen Srivatsa, Venkatarangan TNC, also delivered some fantastic sessions.
6. Leader Summit	One of the things local Microsoft encouraged was to engage leaders much more, and in order to help with that, they offered free entry to TechEd for all leaders of groups in India. The ICC capitalized this wonderful opportunity and informed all leaders, in addition, INETA APAC and Culminis sponsored leader accommodation at TechEd, since quite a few leaders were attending this proved to be hugely beneficial, about 14 leaders attended this special summit, along with leading MVP’s. It was held on day 2 of TechEd for about 2 hours. INTEA APAC, Culminis and PASS shared their plans for FY10 with leaders. Additionally, Culminis, INETA APAC, PASS representatives, respectively met up with their group leaders in separate meetings.
7. Upcoming mini-UG TechEd’s in 8 cities.	Microsoft announced their support to Community, UG led, mini-TechEd’s in 8 cities. These will be targeting both IT Pro’s and Developers. Topics that are being delivered are:  IT Pro: Win Server 2008 R2; Virtualization; Exchange server Developer: WIN 7; IE 8 /SL3 & Visual Studio 2010 Microsoft would enable UG leaders to get content from TechEd on the above + leaders are encouraged to have local speakers for whom virtual training could be provided. INETA APAC, Culminis, and UGSS could support funding of these Community TechEd’s.
8. Special Session for UG leaders	Concept Visuals – presentation by Sanjay Vyas was an exclusive introduction to leaders on how Concept Visuals helps in easy learning + presenting of any information. The best comment after the session which I heard from a leader was “I was doing Windows programming for 6 years and now I finally understand what’s happening”. It was an eye opener for all.
9. New User Groups support	Hyderabad – Soni Somarajan and Srinivas B.N. were two new potential leaders who stepped up to help with Hyderabad UG. Patna – Monika Jha(encouraged by UG leader Surendra Mishra) has decided to start the Patna User Group, focused on UI/Designing Agra – Similarly, INETA APAC volunteer Mahesh Mitkari, is working with a potential new leader in Agra.
10. Goodies for UG leaders and their members	On the last day, UG leaders were given giveaways to take back to their user group communities, which they could utilize at the upcoming mini-TechEd’s. ICC members and volunteers, put their hands together to coordinate these efforts.
11. UG content in localized languages	Microsoft is helping encourage submission of information in localised languages, so far I believe, there are volunteers for Gujarati, Kannada, Hindi and hopefully the upcoming mini-UG TechEd’s will bring many more languages to the fore. These video recordings would be promoted across the country.

Ahmedabad SQL Server User Group – April 2009 Meeting

We are just done with the April 2009 meeting and it was wonderful!

Tejas gave a wonderful introduction and welcome speech. He spoke about the user group in general and shared information about the upcoming TECH-ED India 2009. All UG members are eligible for a 25% discount for TECH-ED India 2009.

My session was on the XML capabilities of SQL Server 2008. We discussed almost all of the XML processing capabilities of SQL Server 2008 including the capability to Generate, load, query, validate and modify XML documents. We discussed XML indexes as well.

There were some give-away items, in addition to ice-cream and snacks, like some copies of SQL Server standard magazine, PASS 2007 Summit DVDs and some technical books and stickers, pens etc.

PUG Windows 7 Day – IT Pro : An exclusive in-depth one-day workshop

Welcome to Windows 7 Day - IT Pro Microsoft Windows 7 another major revolution in Microsoft's most cutting edge technologies is here to get your work done the easy way.Check out the latest news and views on Windows 7 from the experts this season on An exclusive in-depth one-day workshop for getting started on Win7

Attend Windows 7 day and Win exciting prizes. and What more you can get your laptops with latest Windows 7 beta installed !!! So do not forget to carry your laptops

Entry FREE !! Registration Required. For more information and Registration , Please visit : http://www.puneusergroup.org Hurry up and Register Today !! For any queries/suggestions,Please contact us at : windows7day@puneusergroup.org Venue: Capgemini India A-1, Technology Park, MIDC Talwade, Pune - 412 114 Free Bus Service available by PUG.

Sponsored By:

SSWUG.ORG Spring Ultimate Virtual Conference - Discount Code for INUG Members

Dear Indore .NET User Group Members,

SSWUG.ORG Spring Ultimate Virtual Conference

April 22, 23 and 24, 2009

SQL Server vConference

.NET Development vConference

Business Intelligence vConference

Sharepoint vConference

As Affiliates with SSWUG.ORG, all of our group members get a discount when registering for any of the disciplines for their Spring Ultimate Virtual Conference. In addition to the discount code INDNETUG, SSWUG.ORG has started a contest for all of their Affiliate Groups to enter.

The rules of the contest are as follows:

If we can get 100% of our members to sign up for one or more of the disciplines at the Spring Virtual Conference, everyone in our group will receive a one year membership to SSWUG.org (a $79.95 value). If you already have a paid SSWUG membership, your account will be extended for an additional year.

In addition, the user group that signs up the highest percentage of members (under 100%) also receives SSWUG one year paid memberships for everyone in their group.

Sign up for the Virtual Conference and let’s win the SSWUG memberships!

SSWUG Free Community Event

There is going to be a 100% free Community Event brought to you by SSWUG.ORG that is taking place on April 17^th. All you have to do is register and you get to see these speakers:

• Donald Farmer (Principal Program Manager for SQL Server Data Mining)
• Callahan (Author)
• Tim Heuer (Silverlight Program Manager)
• Ted Malone (Microsoft MVP)
• Paul Nielsen (Author and SQL Server MVP)
• Stephen Wynkoop (Microsoft MVP & Founder of SSWUG)
• Chris Shaw (Microsoft MVP)

Register here for the free event https://www.vconferenceonline.com/shows/spring09/sql/s09event.asp

Here is the quick rundown on the sessions:

· Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services - Designing and Managing High Performance Cubes: Donald Farmer. With Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Analysis Services offers advanced features for design and manageability. This session will explore in data two of these features: the best practices design alerts and dynamic management views. Design alerts guide you with important advice throughout the development stage of a cube. We’ll show how to work with the alerts, and how to manage their various subtleties. Having deployed a more efficient cube, the dynamic management views enable the administrator to query for information regarding connections, sessions, and server performance. We will introduce these views and drill down into many examples of their usage.

· Useful, effective, pre-made SharePoint templates– from Microsoft, for free: Callahan. Need a help desk, timecard, or vacation request site? Considering just creating them yourself? Don’t. Not until you explore the pre-existing application templates available from Microsoft. Free for download, Microsoft has 40 fantastic application templates, not to mention the Community Kit for SharePoint with offerings such asenhanced blog templates, or sites for user groups. So before you invest time and technology in rolling your own, check out this session and get an idea of what’s been rolled for you.

· Silverlight for Beginners: Tim Heuer. XAML, WPF, VS, Blend…what are all these acronyms? Let’s take a deep breath and step back to look at the spectrum of what Silverlight is (and isn’t) and what you need to know starting from ground zero. No knowledge of WPF or Silverlight is required and well get you started building your first Silverlight application in no time!

· Introduction to Data Dude: Ted Malone. In this session attendees will learn about Microsoft Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Developers aka Data Dude. This product provides database developers with tools for database development, change management and testing. This session will walk through the available features of data dude and detail where they can be best utilized.

· SQL Server Round Table: Paul Nielsen, Chris Shaw, Stephen Wynkoop. Stephen, Chris and Paul sit down in an open forum and discuss questions about SQL Server 2008 and questions that have come up from the past conferences. This session will show some of the different opinions that developers and administrators have when working with SQL Server.

bdotnet.in is searching new hosting provider.

year back B.NET (Bangalore .NET user group) moved to its new online home http://www.bdotnet.in/ and hosted using community server. but due to some hosting/server problem now it is looking for new service provider. So if anyone knows good service provider please send a mail to activeFolks [AT] bdotnet.in

Thanks in advance..

Oracle Application User Groups - Collaborate 09

COLLABORATE 09 — OAUG Forum provides the best practices and user-driven training the OAUG has to offer for Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Hyperion and more. Hear directly from your peers in-the-knowas they explain why COLLABORATE is the essential training and networking event on their calendars — from practical education to face time with Oracle executives to the generous exchange of ideas between users.

Spread the world - INUG at Multiply

Hello Everyone -

Would request you to please spread the news to all your old and new friends - who are passionate about technology - to join your own Indore .NET User Group at http://indoreug.multiply.com.

Thanks,
Sandeep Joshi

Ahmedabad SQL Server UG - February 2009 Meeting

This is the first time I am posting about the User Group activities in this blog. So, probably I should start with an introduction. I run a SQL Server User Group in Ahmedabad and we meet on every 3rd Saturday of the month.

We had a great time discussing some of the basic SQL Server topics this week. Pinal Dave did a wonderful session where he presented some very interesting points related to the way SQL Server Query Optimizer uses indexes.

My session was more of an interactive discussion. While writing my series of posts on SQL Server IDENTITY columns, I came across several interesting questions and I then compiled a long list of 65 questions. We discussed those 65 questions and their answers and the 'why-how' part of each of them.

Pinal has written a detailed post about the event. You can find his post here. You can find my post about the same here.

Finally, here is a group photo.

Networking - what does it mean?

The word "networking" is undoubtedly overused. Every interaction — face-to-face or virtual — is considered networking; every online community is a network; every meeting is a networking event.

But think of networking as more than a cliché or all-purpose panacea. The very heart of networking is relationship building, and the investment you make in developing a profound connection with someone will pay dividends, regardless of whether you are on the giving or receiving end. Networking is more than a transaction; it is a lasting bond with a natural ebb and flow. Some of these relationships move to the forefront during certain periods while others retreat to the background, but there is always a sense of reliance, dependability and trust at the foundation.

It is my belief that the best relationships cannot be sustained in a simply one-dimensional communication medium, and I have found my association to others deepens when there is dialogue beyond our initial connection point. A LinkedIn invite augmented by a personal email; a Twitter posting followed by a direct message; an in-person meeting fortified by email; or reacquainting with someone from the past with a phone call all seem to solidify my attachment to my "network.

Microsoft Virtual TechDays: Have you registered yet?

Keynote by Steve Riley 'First they came for bandwidth, now they want to make a difference' Steve Riley is a senior strategist and worldwide security evangelist in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group. Steve specializes in the process of information security, including policies, networks, and hosts. Steve is a frequent and popular speaker at conferences worldwide, working to spread a better understanding of security science. Avail the opportunity to learn and explore how Microsoft products and tools can help you quickly address your most time-consuming development challenges. Join fellow developers, architects and project managers at this online event to: Learn about the latest Microsoft tools and platforms from technology experts; Learn about how to extend your expertise on technologies that you work on every day; and Interact with the best-in-class technologists attending the event. Please Note: This is an online event and you are not required to pay any fee to attend it. Sign up for other newsletters | Unsubscribe| Update your profile © 2009 Microsoft Corporation Terms of Use | Trademarks | Privacy Statement

Fly in Future

When asked about his outstanding performance on the ice, Wayne Gretzky replied, "A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."

Where is your business focusing? I've found that one of the most powerful practices as an entrepreneur is to spend a day away from the office, dream a little, and envision my company 1, 3, 5 years into the future.

When I occasionally "fly into the future" it makes it easier to come back to the present, push through obstacles, and chart my course to the future I have envisioned.

Spend some time in the future and you'll be able to "skate to where the puck is going to be!"

Five Attitude adjustments to live better

On a mission to spark a "strengths revolution," I would advocate cultivating the best of your skill set, rather than working to improve weaknesses. My five "attitude adjustments" serve as a framework for becoming a strengths-based human:

1. Measure what matters.
2. Stop trying to change people. Change Yourself. Start trying to help others.
3. Don't be Title-obsessed. Your performance will thrive largely based on what you do – not what you are.
4. Stop looking outside. The solutions to your problems exist inside you. Be relentless, learning from the lessons of the top performers in your team.
5. Make yourself non-replaceable. Invest time in your skills, your work and all that matters to your life.

Embracing yourself

You will never be the perfect entrepreneur. No matter how hard you work to avoid catastrophes... at some point, disasters will happen. At times, you will look bad, and your reputation will be injured. But, that doesn't mean you or your company have to suffer long-term repercussions because of it.

Here are some steps for embracing your own humanity, and turning "bad" situations into incredible, marketing situations.

Step 1- Laugh at yourself and your mistakes. (Getting upset about the situation won't fix things. Look at this as an opportunity instead.)

Step 2- Fix the disaster, tenaciously.

Step 3- Offer the injured customers or prospects even more than they expect. (If done properly, these individuals may become your biggest fans.)

Step 4- Use the situation to fix your current systems. (Making a mistake is alright. Repeating that mistake can be devastating.)

Step 5- Freely share these experiences in marketing messages, blogs, webinars, or as a "reason" to have another sale or promotion.

People are generally more forgiving than they seem. If you are willing to "expose" your weaknesses, your contacts will feel your honesty and sincerity. The harder you try to be the "perfect" small business owner (and hide your errors), the more detached from your contacts you become. And, the more likely they are to mistrust you.

Enjoy your imperfections and learn to use them to your advantage!

Happy Republic Day!!! India way to go.

Happy republic day. Lets make commitments towards saving environment, saving earth and saving mankind.