INTRODUCTION
"TechEd on the Road" program conducted by Kerala Microsoft Users Group (K-MUG) on 27th June 2009 at Technopark, Trivandrum created another history in Kerala IT industry. One day program targeted the software professionals in Kerala and venue was filled by techies in and around Technopark.
BACKGROUND
Microsoft had conducted TechEd program at Hyderabad in May 2009, and K-MUG core team members (Sreejumon, Binoy & Shoban) had attended the three day program. K-MUG wanted to conduct the similar program for IT professionals in Kerala. They decided to conduct a local version of TechEd named “Mini TechEd”. Microsoft was also planning to deliver the techEd contents to user groups via “TechEd on the road” program. K-MUG decided to merge the “mini TechEd” program with TechEd on the Road, and started inviting speakers to deliver the TechEd program contents.
SPEAKERS
- Sreejumon - The Founder & President of K-MUG, currently working with Nokia R&D Centre Bangalore. Has been Microsoft MVP for seven years.
- Jacob Sebastian – An SQL Server Consultant and MVP from Ahemedabad. The author of “The Art of XSD-SQL Server XML Schema Collections”. He volunteers with the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) as Regional Chapter Coordinator for Asia.
- Pinal Kumar Dave – Microsoft SQL Server MVP and a prominent author of over 1000 SQL Server articles on his blog http://blog.SQLAuthority.com. Proficient principal Database Architect, corporate trainer and project manager specializing in SQL Sever programming.
- Smitha George - Software Consultant and Corporate Trainer based in Bangalore having 10 years of experience in the IT industry.She is the Technical Trainer for Microsoft (India) for SQL Server and Visual Studio courses and workshops
- Praseed Pai - .Net Consultant and solutions Architect associated with Envestnet, Trivandrum.
- Uday M Shankar - Senior User Experience person with Nokia, currently working on mobile/web user interface.
- Binoy Kaniyankandi - Vice President of K-MUG and he has been in the industry for over ten years. Currently CEO of Viable Technologies, he has always taken an active role in empowering the youth of Kerala.
- Renuka Alex - Technical Evangelist at Infosys, Trivandrum, she is currently engaged in delivering training in .net and concentrating on Technologies like WPF, Silver light and CCF.
- Jairam Ramesh - Security Research Consultant with Microsoft. A Microsoft Certified Professional. He loves to talk and share his opinions and ideas.
- Shoban Kumar - Microsoft MVP and Sr Software engineer at Allianz Cornhill India, Technopark.
K-MUG DINNER
K-MUG had hosted a dinner at beach hotel, Kovalam on 26th evening and most of the speakers attended the same. Dinner party was more focussing on the K-MUG mission statement "build contacts and socialize". It was a great experience to all speakers and K-MUG to know more about each one and sharing their experience.
EVENT DAY - 27th June 2009
K-MUG team opened the registration counter by 8 AM and started confirming the registration of the attendees. All attendees received a welcome kit from K-MUG, which includes K-MUG notepad, feedback form, K-MUG
questionnaire, SQL Server cheat sheet, Magazine and daily news paper from Mathrubhumi. At the end of the session, all attendees received the Visual Studio 2010 beta DVD. K-MUG questionnaire was used to select the 40 lucky winners for T-Shirts, Caps and stress balls. Most active participant of the TechEd also received a special gift. K-MUG had prepared the filler videos for breaks, which highlights the K-MUG activities and technology highlights from Microsoft.
By 9.30 AM, Sreejumon started his welcome speech. Soon after Binoy gave an overview of the K-MUG activities and invited Pinal to give an overview of PASS. Pinal introduced PASS to ~200 participants and invited Jacob Sebastian to officially launch PASS chapter.
Pinal Dave kicked of the technical sessions by "SQL Server Best Practices". Pinal explained about some of the useful tips in SQL server and gave a detailed insight into the SQL server indexing. After the SQL server energy drink, Uday Sankar talked about "User Experience" and its importance in software development.
After the User Experience session, there was a 10 minutes break for tea. Then Praseed Pai took a session on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). Before starting the internals of WPF programming, Praseed spent some time to explain the graphics history and connected the same with WPF. After WPF session, Renuka Alex handled the Visual Studio 2010 and ASP.NET 4.0. Renuka introduced the new features in Visual Studio 2010 and the demonstration of the beta version of the IDE.
During the lunch break attendees were busy in networking with other professionals and filling the K-MUG questionnaires.
Surprisingly none of the attendees left after lunch and by 2.30 PM, Jacob Sebastian started "SQL logical query execution" session. Next session was about the latest operating system from Microsoft. Shoban talked about Windows 7 and compared it with Vista and XP. Later Pinal gave some cool demo with his Windows 7 laptop.
Smitha George took session on "Hidden Gems in SQL Server" and talked about some of the cool features in SQL server management studio. Last session was by Jairam Ramesh on "Silverlight 3.0". Jairam talked about the new features in Microsoft Silverlight and gave some cool demos using silverlight.
By 5.30 PM, closing ceremony started by Vote of Thanks by Binoy. Sreejumon presented a small memento for all speakers. At the end, K-MUG distributed the gifts for all lucky draw winners. VS 2010 DVDs were also distributed after collecting the feedback forms.
SPONSORS & PARTNERS
K-MUG would like to thank all organizations and individual who supported the TechEd on the road program. Major sponsor's details were published on the DVD. Special thanks to Allianz Cornhill for providing the support inside Technopark.
PRESENTATIONS
All presentations can be downloaded here
PHOTOS
More photos can be located here