DevCon 2010 added another golden feather to K-MUG, and it brought the K-MUG mission - Learn, Build Contacts & Socialize – into action. Software developers across Kerala got an opportunity to learn about the latest technologies from Microsoft and got opportunity to interact with speakers and peers.  Even though the event was conducted at Trivandrum (southern most state), we got many attendees from other parts of the state especially techies who travelled more than 350 KM. 

By 9.30 AM, Sreejumon started the event by welcoming the speakers, attendees, sponsor and other supporters. We got mixed audience ranging from budding young students to seasoned veterans.

The technical sessions were kick started by Janakiram MSV, Technical Architect from Microsoft.  He started his session, "Cloud – The Meta Platform" by explaining what actually is cloud and how it got the name and then on to its underlying architecture and then to the Windows Azure architecture. 

Anoop Madhusoodhanan, MVP in Client App Development, talked about latest features in .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. He went on to show the new features in VS 2010 such as intellitrace, parallel programming capabilities, pinning the quick watch window etc. Then he explained the new features in .NET 4.0 such as Managed Extensibility Framework, dynamic programming capabilities etc.

After the tea break Ramaprasanna Chellamuthu, who works with Microsoft as a Developer Evangelist, gave an insight into Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. He quickly created a small sample in RDS, a joystick to drive a car and demonstrated. Then he wrapped the session with his buddy home project video.

After Rama's session, it was time for Manu Zacharia, an Information Security evangelist and MVP in Enterprise Security to give his session on "Web Security and Security Auditing". He showed us, what happens behind the scenes between a request and response and also gave some statistics for vulnerabilities occurring worldwide.
At 1.30 pm, we paused the sessions for lunch and everyone headed to the restaurant with the DevCon 2010 lunch coupons.

Session resumed by 2.00 pm and Vijay Raj, who works for Texas Instruments and a MVP, started his session on "Managing Application Compatibility in Windows 7". His talk was centered on the various application compatibility options available in Windows 7 and about the latest version of Application Compatibility Toolkit which is available for download from Microsoft.
Janakiram came once again with Azure and explained how Windows Azure works and it's pay per usage business structure.  Jani demonstrated the hosting in the cloud by creating a Twitter like application, which had a windows and web interface and using SQL Azure as the data store. When Jani finished with his presentation, it was almost time for tea break and everyone headed outside to take a break.

After the break, Jeen Shene Stanislaus, a Technical Evangelist with Education & Research, Infosys, Trivandrum was ready for her talk on "Tuning Tools in SQL Server 2008".

She gave sneak preview about the various tool available for optimization in SQL such as SQL Profiles, Query Execution Plans, Database Tuning Advisor etc and also gave some idea about the best practices to be followed while writing queries.

Praseed Pai, software architect from Kochi, took the next session on "Mixed Mode Windows development using C# and C++", in which he demonstrated how to create a library in C++ and then to import it in our C# code. Even though he got limited time slot, he made it really interesting with comments such as "Exceptions can never be examples!".
By 6.30 PM, Once again Sreejumon addressed the attendees with the Thank you note and closing ceremony. All the volunteers got T-Shirts, and there were some lucky draw prizes for the attendees. We had distributed the DVD which includes trail version of VS 2010,Express Edition, Office 2010 etc.We had a dinner as well in the city with all volunteers, Community Council members and speakers.

K-MUG would like to thank our sponsors – Microsoft, INETA, Nokia, eSoft,Kelnet, IIITMK, Pluralisight, Nevron and Oreilly- and all other supporters in making DevCon 2010 a grant success. Notepad and DVD cover design is given below.

Other snaps can be located here

Office 2010 Launch event report can be located here