Glad that our MaduraiDotNet User Group won the "Best emerging user group award" at South India Microsoft Student Partners (MSP) meet held at Microsoft Global Technical Support Centre (GTSC), Bangalore. It's really a great recognition for our efforts given that we compete with User Groups in other high tech cities like Bangalore, Chennnai, Hyderabad etc where Microsoft's office are located.
The meet was held during April 5-6. I had a great time there. We had opportunities to interact with senior Microsoft Employees who have achieved great things. On the first day we didn't have much technical sessions expect a Session on SQL Server by Vinod Kumar, SQL Server Evangelist. Before diving into technical contents, Vinod gave a very inspiring and enlightening speech. Then in the evening awards were distributed followed by goodies for MSPs. We got a lap top bag, T-shirts, and some of the celebrated Microsoft Press books like CLR via C# by Jeffrey Richter and Windows Programming by Petzold.
Next day morning started with my session on Visual Studio 2008. :) April 4th noon I got a call from Deepak Jagdish, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft asking me to take a session on Visual Studio 2008. Initially I felt slightly nervous to deliver a session at Microsoft. Also, my hard disk was corrupted and I didn't even have my ppt. The good thing was that I had a ppt that I prepared for Community Launch in my live folder. Finally the feedback was good. Deepak and Ajay are managing the Student Partner program. Deepak is a two time Imagine Cup (2006 & 2007) SDI national winner. Followed by my session we had a four very special guests from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). All were great achievers with 15+ years experience at Microsoft. We had a very useful interaction with them. Then in the noon Sunil Malya, MSP from Bangalore gave a session on Silverlight.
All together I had a great time there. It was nice to meet MSPs from other parts of the country. Thanks to Ajay and Deepak for organizing the meet.