KolkataNet - DevCon2005

We enjoyed very much in "Developer Conference 2005" on 29th Oct 2005.

Me[Abu], Gautam, and Subratam talked on the stage. This event was primarily on Visual Studio 2005 on which I presented about ASP.NET 2.0 New feature with live demo, Neo had on .NET Framework 2.0 and VSTS with live demo!!!
Subratam presented the session about the Awareness of Security.
Almost 40 energetic developers attended session. At the same time we had Quiz also with some Kits.

This is first full-day event of KolkataNet User Group.

I would like give thanks to Abhishek and Deepak from Microsoft.

In Nov we have planned for "TechQuiz2005" Contest... and next year more will come ...

Tablet PC Session @ CSI Event

There was a Tablet PC session at an Event organized by the students of CSI VSET, on 1st October, 2005. It was a great turnout of about 100 students from Third Year and Final year. I basically gave them an overview on the tablet pc platform and also spoke about how to develop applications in VS.NET to make them INK aware. Later I spoke about the INETA and its Activities, and also about Microsoft Academic Project Program. Over all it was a very interesting session which lasted for about 2.5 hours.

Later that evening - there was one more session on Tablet PC for Mumbai User Group. Intersting to say that Tablet PC really Rocks!! And like always - a Pen (read: Stylus) is mighter than a sword

SQLWiZ 2005 and CodeWarriors 2005 Contest HYD

Microsoft User Group Hyderabad Proudly Presents SQLWiZ 2005 and CodeWarriors 2005


SQLWiZ 2005 is a Technical White paper contest conducted by MUGH to identify and reward the best SQL Brains in India . This is an opportunity for developers, DBAs and architects to brainstorm on architecting, designing and database tuning; and showcase their skills to the technical community by presenting their white papers.

Code Warriors 2005 is a .NET Coding Contest, a developer challenge, that enables software developers all over to develop and exhibit their applications using .NET. Developers are free to adopt some of the best practices in software development or develop their own way, software applications and submit to MUGH for evaluations.


Visit www.mugh.net/techfest for contest rules and other details




Best Wishes,
Managers-MUGH

KolkataNet User Group Meeting - September

Speaker: Robin Roy with Abu Ismail
Topic: SQL Server 2000 - Best Practices for Writing SQL - Query Optimization
Date: 24 Sep 2005
Venue: Digital Avenue

Arround 20 people attended in this User Group Meeting.
In this meeting also we finalized to conduct DevCon 2005.
Also we annouced in our User Group's Home page...
"Shortly we are going to conduct Live Practical Session on NEW TECHNOLOGIES, Visual Studio 2005 (.NET Framework 2.0).
LIVE DEMOS !!!
Docs!!!
Presentations!!!
Other Resources... for all...those who will join..."

Pune Student .NET UG Meet

It was 2nd of September, a late raining Friday evening when I went to Pune for a session on the next day. I catched up with Tejas Shah, the ADE (Academic Developer Evangelist), at his hotel room. We were to decide on the demo's and the PPT for the next day.

After loads of talks and plans, we finally slept at around 1 am. Next day was a huge one. MS was kind enough to book Nehru auditorium for the PUGStudent meet. The agenda for the meet were three sessions

1. OS Internals - Tejas and myself
2. Windows Mobile Programming and RFID - Shrenik Dedhia, MAQSoftware
3. XML and WebServices - Sarang Datye, MVP

We started of at around 1330 hrs, 30 min behind the schedule. The attendance was decent enough with about 150-175 students across Pune. Tejas started off with all the Techie talks about Operating Systems and made a base for the demos which I was to take. He talked about Process Management, Memory Management, Threads, Objects and Handles, etc. I basically gave demos at intervals during Tejas's sessions. My demos included, making a MultiThreaded app in C#.NET, Services for Unix[SFU] (this was real fun to do - made a C program in Windows, Compiled it using GCC in SFU and executed it on Windows using POSIX Subsystem). I also showed various tools from the MS Official Windows Internal curriculum including Process Monitors, Registry Monitors and AutoRun Monitors.

Over all, the first session was very cool one (not cause me and Tejas were doing it), cause students actually did not know that you can host a Unix Subsystem over a Windows one. Basically they were too interested to know more about SFU.

The next one was by Shrenik, one of the Developer from MAQSoftware, who has quite a bit of experience in developing Mobile App for the company. He spoke on the .NET Compact Framework, and demo'd how to go about building an app both for the SmartPhone form factor as well as for the Pocket PC. He also spoke about various applications available in the market for the PocketPC and the SmartPhone

Lastly it was Sarang's turn to speak (Thank god he was the last one - else he would have taken up our time as well). He started with a big "GOOD MORNING" to all the students. :). He spoke on creating a webservice using XML. This was demo'd by not using the IDE interface but using NOTEPAD. Once shown how a XML file looks like, he spoke about how VS.NET IDE helps to do it much faster and in a more efficient way then he would ideally do with a text editor. By the time Sarang was doing his demo, the audi's warning bell rang and Sarang had to rush off with the demos.

In all it was a nice sessions. Offline - we also spoke about the Student Project Program and about Student Champ Program. Infact we tried and identified couple of students who were interested and briefed them about it. We also distributed ARKs 3.0 along with couple of MSDN India Magazines. Tejas distributed (rather awarded) Extreme Edition CDs (VC++.NET, Platform SDK and a licensed Copy of Windows XP SP2) to some students who were enthu enough to answer some questions asked. MAQSoftware, also distributed CDs of various apps (MathEdge, EnglishEdge, TrafficEdge) which it had made for the mobile phone.

Guess there should be more of such session comming up in the next semester.

DOTNETSIG proposes a calendar

Today on Sept 3rd I attended the DOTNET SIG (delhi User Group) meeting after a long time.

•No. of Registered Members: 1342
•No. of Attendees / Session: 15

•Topic / Session:
Commerce Server 2000 - Lalit Khatter
Recent Developments in Microsoft Technology - Abhishek Kant

It had been long that i had attended one and after attending this one I felt being back in action. The one unique thing that happened was though we were scheduled for a BTS 2004 session, we ended up doing a impromptu "Recent Developments in MS Technologies" session. Though the people attending were very less, the level of enthusiasm was extremely high.

The attending memebers have proposed a calendar till Dec 2005 so as to provide UG members ample time to accomodate the same if they would like to. We look forward to getting your feedback on the same. The calendar is reproduced below:

17 September - 30 September
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: CS2K2, BTS 2004
HoL Topic: CS2K@, BTS, Sharepoint

24 September
MS, GGN
Session Topic: CS2K2, BTS 2004

1 October

Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: VS 2005, .NET 2.0
VS 2005 & SQL 2005
HoL Topic: New features of .NET 2.0, IDE and ASP.NET 2.0

8 October
NOIDA
Session Topic: VS 2005, .NET 2.0

15 October - 28 October
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: SQL 2005 New features, Reporting Services. Integration Services
HoL Topic: SQL Sever 2005 Features

22 October
MS, GGN
Session Topic: SQL 2005 New features, Reporting Services. Integration Services

29 October - 11 November
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: Microsoft Office Programming, Mobile Development in VS 2005
HoL Topic: VSTO and .NET CF

5 November
NOIDA
Session Topic: Microsoft Office Programming, Mobile Development in VS 2005

12 November - 25 November
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: Patterns and Practices & SOA
HoL Topic: VS 2005 & SQL 2005

19 November
MS GGN
Session Topic: Patterns and Practices & SOA

26 November - 2 December
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: WinFX
HoL Topic: Indigo and Avalon

3-4 December
??
DEVCON
DEVCON

5 December - 31 December
Session: Nehru Place, ND
HoL: ND, GGN
Session Topic: MS Embedded Platform
HoL Topic: WinCE 5.0

12 December
NOIDA
Session Topic: MS Embedded Platform


Timings:
Sessions: Saturday, 11 AM to 2 PM followed by 2-4 PM social interaction
HoL: Sat and Sun: Whole Day
Weekday: 6-9 PM

NEW Student chapter started in Pune's BVP campus

The new student chapter has been started in Bharati Vidyapeeth's Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Technology, Katraj – Dhankawadi Campus, Pune on 30th July 2005

Mahesh Mitkari and Saurabh (Schamp from MIT)took the introductory session there on Sat 30th July, as” overview of .net framework”

The attendance is about 50+. And total duration of session is about 2 hrs.

Thanks to Mayur and Dev who took the initiative for the session.













mahesh@teknotika.com

B.NET Rocks

I thought to give you the sessions that we did for the Bangalore .NET Usergroup for the past month. It has been really packed sessions ...

UG meeting: 29th July 2005
Session 1
SQL Server 2005 - Service Broker
By - Srinivas Sampath (Microsoft MVP), SCT Software Solutions
Session 2
SQL Server 2005 Tools - Part 1
By - Vinod Kumar (Microsoft MVP), Intel Technology

UG meeting: 22th July 2005

MVC Patters - By Pooran Prasad (Microsoft MVP)

UG Meeting: 15th July 2005
Session 1 : ASP.NET 2.0 New Features - Part II

Speaker: Saravana Kumar (Microsoft MVP), HP India.
Session 2 : SQL SERVER 2005 Partitioning
Speaker: Vinod Kumar (Microsoft MVP), Intel India.

Date: 8th July 2005 Friday
Session 1 : ASP.NET 2.0 New Features
Speaker: Saravana Kumar (Microsoft MVP), HP India.

Session 2 : SQL SERVER 2005 SSIS - Performance, Manageability and Deployment
Speaker: Vinod Kumar (Microsoft MVP), Intel India.

As you can see this it has been fun filled sessions with around 40 people attending each session. I think the TechEd fever is still on and many thanks to all the MVP's who have been part of this till date. As we always say in BDotNet, its your group and it rocks !!!

BDOTNET Rocks!

Now here is something that makes the Bangalore User Group the largest User Group in India from Vinod M Kumar:

Its worth a mention that after TechEd in Bangalore in the month of July (8th, 15th, 22nd, 29th) we have had UG meeting every weeks with 7 sessions. To add to this we even have speakers and topics ready for next week.

Now a UG meet every week is something that is not only outstanding but clearly demonstrates the interest community has in meeting with their peers.

BDOTNET really rocks!

TechEd India 2005 Rocked!

To everyone attending TechEd India 2005 who made it to the Community Stall or read the "Community Times" here is a A VERY BIG THANK YOU..

The success of our community is only possible due to your passion and interest in Technology.

Take a look here behind the scenes on people and faces who make the community dynamic and interesting. Check out what happened when lights dimmed in the speaker halls and everyone left overflowing with technology gyan..

A neat glance at MVPs and people behind the community at TechEd India 2005:
http://www.abhishekkant.net/techedindia2005

Ashwani demonstrating the SFU concepts during the Delhi IT Pros Meet on Interoperability between heterogenous systems in an organisation namely Linux and/or Microsoft. It was very interesting the way Ashwani covered the topic. He started with taking a problem from one of the attendees and went on to solve the problem of multiple sign in using SFU.. the passion really showed when he launched into Programming capabilities supported by Interix (In SFU) that enables UNIX applications to be run on Windows systems :).. Ashwani has promised that there are many more such sessions coming up! We are all game!

Abhishek talking about Wi-Fi networking at Home and Enterprise. Here he is seen actually configuring the IAS server to work with the Linksys WRT54g router to enable 802.1x authentication. All this and more happened at: Pune IT Pro User Group (http://groups.msn.com/puneitpro) on May 21 2005 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM.

Anand showcasing enterprise WiFi routers available in the market these days. For the people who deploy WiFi networks this was a must attend session of Pune IT Pro User Group.

Full House at Pune .NET Developers User Group where Dhaval talked on GD+

The "cache" of devices showcased at the Pune IT Pro User Group Session. Devices include - Server and Client Computers, WiFi Routers (Home and Enterprise), WiFi network cards. At the back are the people who bought all this to life (left to right) - Dhaval, Hardik, Abhishek (me), Sarang, Anand and Mahesh

From MVP Sarang Datye:Finally here I am, with an update on the community initiative taken in Kanbay software - Pune.
30th march was "D" day! The Microsoft group in Kanbay comprises of 30 odd developers, out of which 15 were present from the Pune center, during the session.
Following are the details of the session:
Topic: OO features in .NET 2.0 (C#)
Speaker: Sarang Datye (Me - ofcourse)
Duration: 1 1/2 hours
Total Attendance: 15
The session and this kind of an initiative was most appreciated and welcome by the "janta", and we are looking forward to have many more such session in the coming weeks.
Love Live the Community!!! Cheers!!!

Date with .NET v3.0

Hello!

BDotNETStudent - The Bangalore .NET Student User Group - succesfully coducted Date with .NET v3.0 at RNS Institute of Technology, Bangalore.

About 250 students attended the tech-talks and about 100 students participated in the various technical contests.

The event was inaugurated by Prof.M.R. HOLLA, who also gave an enlightening speech about the youth being used-less and cared-less.

The tech-talk was on XML Web Services by Sharath MS, which was followed by the technical contests, which saw gzood participation from the students.

Ten teams were shortlisted for Technical Paper Presentation and the topics ranged from Bluetooth to Whidbey to WinCE.NET to Speech Recognition, etc.

The Debate saw some great arguments on the topic Open Source vs. Proprietary Software.

On the spot programming had over 25 teams tackling the written prelims round, which had questions on C, C++ and .NET. 7 Teams were shortlisted for the final programming round where finalists had to solve a series of C, C++ and .NET programs.

The IT Quiz prelims had many students thinking and 6 teams were selected for the final round.

The .NETCracker open quiz had a lot of interesting puzzles and brain-teasers for the visitors and at the end of the day the entry with highest number of correct answers won a cash prize.

This was followed by an informal prize distribution on the lawns of RNSIT, where the prize winners got their certificates and cool cash prizes and books.

The day ended with snacks and refreshments, which was arranged at the RNSIT Canteen.

We thank our sponsors - Microsoft, Perot Systems, PSI Data Systems, INETA and RNSIT - for their support to this event.

All in all it was a great Date ... with .NET!

Warm regards,

Sabarish R
Microsoft Student Ambassador,
Manager - BDotNETStudent

I blog at: http://sabarishr.blogspot.com

WinEmbedded Hands-on-Lab - Windows CE 4.2

WinEmbedded UG had its first Hands-on-Lab session on Windows CE 4.2 and Platform Builder, which saw a great reponse from both the professional and student community.

The lab was conducted on May 1st 2005 in the training facility of Microsoft office, Bangalore. Online registration had to be closed 1 week before the lab due to the over-flowing response. The lab accomodated 40 people.

Mr. Anantha Kashyap (eMVP) started off with the fundamentals of embedded computing. After covering the development life-cycle of an embedded OS, Mr. Anantha guided the attendees in building their OS using the Platform Builder IDE. A lab manual was made available to the attendees.

Corporate Campaign of CNUG-IT in Southern Railways on 8th April 2005

On the 8th of April 2005, it was a red day in the history of user groups in India. CNUG-IT hosted its first Corporate Campaign in Southern Railways. Southern Railways is one of the largest railway group in Asia.

CNUG-IT along with the Developer and Evangelism Team of Microsoft hosted the Corporate Campaign in Southern Railway’s Head Office located in Poonamallee High Road. The presentation was done to create awareness of the features of Windows XP and how it was created with important specifications so as to meet the needs of the professional user and the home user.

The presentation was attended by the staff of the IT department including some of the top people of Southern Railway’s IT Team. About 50 people attended the program. The presentation was given by Mr. Ravisankar (IT Pro Evangelist of Microsoft). He spoke about the core features of Windows XP. Some of the points covered at the presentation included

Versions of WindowsConsumer editionBusiness EditionServer EditionsPost Installation RecommendationsTransferring SettingsPersonalizing Windows XPApplication CompatibilityWireless CommunicationsInternet Connection FirewallFeatures of Windows XP SP2?

The attendees showed a lot of interest in the presentation and showed their enthusiasm by raising interesting questions and discussions points. Even a small quiz program was organized as part of the program and the lucky winners walked away with gifts sponsored by Microsoft.

After the presentation by Ravisankar, CNUG-IT gave a presentation on the importance of user groups and how user groups have helped to bring together the administrators and IT Pros of the leading IT Companies in Chennai. The speech and presentation was given by Mr. Ravickumar – President of CNUG-IT.

This was the first part of the campaign program and there are plans to host more events in future covering the features of IT Products of Microsoft in a detailed and phased manner. This will help the staff of Southern Railways to improve their knowledge as well as help them to get the most out of Windows XP.

The program showed that the “Corporate Campaign” is indeed a success and is vital to spreading knowledge and creating awareness of Microsoft’s IT products among the top Corporates in India. Since most of the Corporates have end users, enlightening them will go a long way in creating a successful awareness of Microsoft’s IT Products in India.

We would like to thank Mr. Ramakrishnan and Mr. Loganathan of Southern Railways for their help in organizing this Corporate Campaign as well as thank Mr. Ravisankar for taking his efforts to fly down to Chennai and take the presentation in Southern Railway head quarters.

you can be a part of this excitment by joining the IT Pro User Group of Chennai at: http://groups.msn.com/CNUGITGroup

First UG Meet of the Bangalore IT Pro Community

Audience at the First Bangalore IT Pro UG meet on April 23 2005.
We had more than 30 people attending and the speakers were Sheila Gulati, Abhishek Kant and Anupam Viz. The topics covered were:

- DPE Team and Communities
- Setting up Wireless Network for home and corporate network
- PKI Infrastructure
A lot of freebies (read T-Shirts) were distributed at the event. Food (chips, biscuits and cold drinks) was served during the break.