Arun kumar
Microsoft Student partner

Tech Ed Bandwagon @ Mumbai

2009-04-29T22:50:00Z

Tech Bandwagon visited lot of IT Companies in MIDC, Mumbai. Tech Ed leaflets with special discounts were distributed to thousands of IT professionals. Feedback from most of the them is that they would have have attended if the event was in Mumbai. But we informed them about the complimentary travel (Mumbai – Hyderabad) and the other package that includes accommodation which are special offers as a part of the Tech Ed Community Bandwagon.

In the evening part of our team were at India Uk Next Gen Entrepreneurs Summit. We had a stall there and it was great to meet lot of young CEOs and telling them about Tech Ed. Most of them expressed their interest in Tech Ed and they said that they will be attending it while few them gave the contact of the person responsible for escalating this to their employees. We had some people working on other platforms. I explained them about one exclusive Interoperability track that we have @ Tech Ed and about various Microsoft technologies that are targeted towards other platforms.

Tech Ed Bandwagon @ Hyderabad

2009-04-28T22:42:00Z

Tech Ed Bandwagon was flagged of from the Microsoft India Development Center, Hyderabad yesterday. Some of the Microsoft Employees joined us in flagging of the Band Wagon.

Then we visited some of the IT companies in Hi TEC city, which includes TCS, Infosys and Capgemeni CTS. Today we were at the Cyber towers. There were lot of restrictions in the Cyber towers and we were allowed to park the Band Wagon in a place which doesn’t attract much crowd. In order to reach out to more folks we had a stall in the Cyber towers. Professionals from companies like Keane, Oracle, foursoft, 7Hills etc registered for Tech Ed. In the meanwhile, part of our team visited Infographics. We are leaving to Mumbai tonight.

Microsoft Tech Ed India 2009 Community Band Wagon

2009-04-26T02:57:08Z

I am excited to announce the Tech Ed India 2009 Community bandwagon event. Everyone might have known about Tech Ed. But what is Community Band Wagon?

Tech Ed Community band wagon is a road show about Tech Ed where we’ll be travelling to all important cities in India in a Microsoft branded bus. We’ll be reaching out to IT professionals, tell them about Tech Ed and offer them some special discount on Tech Ed registration fee. In all cities we’ll be accompanied by Microsoft user group members in that city. Some contests will be conducted and winners will be getting cool Microsoft giveaways. Here is our agenda,

April 27 – Hyderabad (IT companies in Hi tech city)

April 28 – Hyderabad (IT companies in Hi tech city)

April 29 – Mumbai (Vashi IT Park, Bandra Kurla Complex , L&T Powai, MIDC Seepz Andheri East, Mind Space Goregaon East)

April 30 – Pune (Pune Infotech park, Kharadi knowledge park)

May 4 - Trivandrum (Techno park)

May 5 - Chennai (Tidal park, Ascendas IT park)

I’ll be posting a lot about the band wagon and our experiences in different cities. Subscribe to this blog’s feed.

Microsoft stall @ Great Indian Developer Summit

2009-04-25T12:27:00Z

Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) was held at IISC, Bangalore between May 22 – 25th. Microsoft was one of the Platinum sponsors for the summit and two complete Technology tracks were completely own by Microsoft. There were lot of popular speakers from different parts of India and abroad.

All major sponsors were offered with the stall and I was there to co-ordinate the activities at the Microsoft Stall. Our stall was completely decorated with posters of Bizspark and Tech Ed India 2009. GIDS delegates were offered with a special discount on the registration fee for Tech Ed. Most of them were excited about free certifications offered for Tech Ed attendees. All Tech Ed attendees can take up any Microsoft certification(s) for free at the Tech Ed premises. There will be 30 systems dedicated for certifications and there are 150 systems for Hands on Labs. When there are no hands on labs those 150 systems will be used for Certifications. There is no upper limit on the number of certifications that can be taken. This is an Unbelievable offer from Microsoft. Reserve your seat at Tech Ed.

Today when I was at the Microsoft stall Mike Benkovich, MSDN Evangelist based out of Redmond visited the stall. Mike was handling a number of technical sessions and workshops @ GIDS. He was excited to know that I knew him already and I follow his blog. He said that his goal is to reach out to people all over the world and he was happy to see a person in the other part of the world knowing him.

Okay, We are gearing up for our next event Tech Ed Community Band Wagon! I’ll be posting a lot on that.

Youth Manifesto – Discussion on Education

2009-04-18T05:12:00Z

I am posting this live from the Group Discussion on Education at the Youth Manifesto, IIM-B. Now the issues to be discussed are being sorted out. Some of the issues raised by members in the are,

· Education in villages in India

· Vision for Education and the way to implement that

· Policy to implement cost effective, scalable and quality education

· Involvement of community and NGOs

· Role of Private sector

· Including free Breakfast/ Meals

Some of the solutions that are being proposed are,

· “Schooling card” system which keeps track of enrollment and attendees rate. The funding or support to the school based that.

· Incentive for teachers volunteering to teach in rural areas.

· Govt school managed my NGO with proven track record.

· Include English in the school level.

· Meaningful use of technology to address issues like reach, access and quality.

· Emphasis on skill development considering economic independence.

Still discussion is going on. But I am moving to different GD to blog about that. I’ll post the complete list of issues and Solutions at the end the session.

Live from Youth Manifesto , IIM Bangalore

2009-04-18T05:08:00Z

RESURGENT INDIA partnering with Microsoft is organizing Youth Manifesto. The event just started with the keynote address by Prof.Rajeev Gowda, IIM and founder of RESURGENT INDIA. The objective is that lot of passionate young youths will brainstorm and suggest a solution to the government for common issues faced by developing nations like India. The topics discussed are,

· Education

· Environment

· Women’s issues

· Sports

· General category

I’ll be blogging about the issues discussed and the proposed solutions live. Stay Tuned!

Microsoft Tech Ed India 2009

2009-04-13T12:07:00Z

It’s true! Finally Tech Ed comes to India. It is at Hyderabad International Convention Center during May 13-15. Tech Ed India 2009 website is live and it is getting updated every day.

The most exciting part of Tech Ed will be the enlightening and energetic keynote by Steve Ballmer! Other highlights include,

Free Microsoft Certifications
28 Technical Tracks
Hands on Labs
Technology Tents (Hosted by Product Development Teams from Redmond)
Ask-the-Expert Rooms
Community Pavilion

There are lot of contests and exciting prizes to be WON. Did I tell that we will get a chance to play with Microsoft Surface! Yes. Surface will be showcased in Tech Ed and I am really looking forward for May 13th. Go ahead and block your calendars!

I am working with Microsoft for the Community Pavilion part of Tech Ed and other community driven activities. I’ll post more on this once it is finalized. Stay Tuned!

Happy Birthday Channel9

2009-04-07T02:08:00Z

Channel9 turns five! It has been five fantastic years for niners with tons of exciting and Mind blowing technical videos. I am great fan of Channel9 and I have a huge database of Channel9 videos. My hearty thanks and wishes to Channel 9 team. I am sure that the success of Channel9 is the inspiration for creation of Channel8 and On10. Some of shows like ping, History of Microsoft, TCS, This week on Channel9, etc that are recently added to Channel9’s list are amazing. Check out the videos of some senior and popular Microsoft Employees like Somasegar, Scott Guthrie, Anders Hejlsberg, Don Box sharing their Channel9 experiences.

Channel9 Rocks!

MIX 09 Keynote – Day 1 (Silverlight 3.0, Expression, MVC)

2009-03-19T11:38:00Z

MIX 09 just start with a excellent keynote by Bill Buxton and Scott Guthrie. Scott had a lot of exciting announcements and I have seen a lot of presentations by Scott but never seen a funny introductory video like this. Don’t miss it. The entire keynote is available on-demand at Visitmix or you see Scott’s introductory video at channel9. Some of the announcement by Scott include,

Super preview – A new feature added to the next version of Expression Web (Expression Web 3) which allows us to test how the webpage is rendered in different browsers. This includes all third party browsers as well as different versions of IE. Now we need not do to different machines or VMs to test in different versions IE. Currently there is support for IE 6, 7 & 8. Besides being bundled with expression web, Super Preview is available as a standalone download.

Web Platform Installer – Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta is released which adds support for installation of today’s releases. This adds support for installing Web Applications from Microsoft Web App Gallery.

ASP.NET MVC – ASP.Net MVC 1.0 is finally released after being in beta for quite long time. VS 2010 adds a lot of support to ASP.Net MVC development.

ASP.NET 4 – ASP.NET 4.0 which will be released with Visual Studio 2010 has a lot of features and some of them include Code focused improvements, Distributed Caching (Code name - Velocity) , better Javascript/ AJAX / Jquery support. CTP of Visual Studio 2010 is was released in PDC during October 2008 as a Virtual PC and to here are some of the tips to download (http://tinyurl.com/GETCTP) .

Azure - Azure, the new cloud computing platform from Microsoft which was released in the PDC during October 2008 will be updated with lot of changes. These updates are driven by the Community feedback.

Bizspark – Bizspark, a initiative by Microsoft that encourages new entrepreneurs by providing all licensed Microsoft Software for free for first 3 years.

Silverlight 3.0 - Silverlight 3.0 beta was released today with lot of promising improvements in the media streaming, GPU acceleration, Deepzoom and a the list goes on. Netflix, one of the early adopters of Silverlight shared their Silverlight experiences and the mile stones achieved.

Scott just gave a introduction about these new releases and there plenty of sessions which focus deeply on these technologies. It was mentioned that the videos of the sessions will be published for On demand viewing in 24 hours. Stay Tuned!

Bloggers meet @ Bangalore

2009-02-22T11:24:00Z

Bloggers meet was organized Indiblogger.in team and Microsoft at the Microsoft Signature building Bangalore on 21st February (Saturday) . I didn’t have too many expectations while going for the meet. But the meet was very interesting and it was really an opportunity to meet and network with lot of interesting folks. I loved the part where each and every blogger went to the stage for introducing themselves and their blog. It was surprising and interesting to hear stories on how they started blogging. Thanks to Indibloger team for such an initiative. There were two sessions by Microsoft, Windows 7 and Microsoft Bizspark program.

Meeting with Simon Brown

2008-11-25T13:23:46Z

It was great day, meeting Simon Brown, Corporate Vice President - Field Evangelism, Developer and Platform Group, Microsoft. It was a 12 member meeting at Microsoft Signature Building, Bangalore focusing on Developer Communities in India. We had MVPs, members from indiblogger.in, a Microsoft Regional Director and members from Microsoft Developer and Platform Evangelism(DPE) team. I was invited for the meeting so that I could give feedback on the community in India. Simon Brown had a lot of passion for developing the community and we discussed on efforts Microsoft is taking to support various communities. One more cool thing is that each of us were asked to tell ' a wish ' that Simon could do for us. Altogether had a nice time meeting such great personalities.

.Net Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010

2008-09-30T15:38:00Z

It's true! Finally we got the official information from Microsoft on the next version of Visual Studio and .Net Framework, it is named as Visual Studio 2010 and .Net framework 4.0. Check out the Microsoft Presspass announcement. There's a lot of compelling improvements and main focus will be on Application Lifecycle Management. Five main focus areas of Visual Studio 2010 are,

Riding the next generation platform wave
Inspiring Developer delight
Powering breakthrough departmental applications
Cloud computing
Application lifecycle management

Check out this post of Somasegar, where he shares Microsoft's vision on this next major release of Visual Studio. He has mentioned that he'll reveal more of Visual Studio 2010 secrets in his future posts. Stay tuned!

This week is going to be more and more exciting! Yes. Channel9 has planned for about 20 videos this week where tonnes of valuable information on Visual studio 2010 will be revealed.

Another useful link : MSDN page on Visual Studio 2010

ramp up at channel8

2008-06-12T00:45:00Z

I felt that my previous post about ramp up is a quite useful one and it should have a wider reach. So I posted the same in channel8. Channl8 is Microsoft's international community site for students. I am glad that I'm one of the admins of channel8.Check it here

Ramp up - Summit your career!

2008-06-12T00:41:27Z

It is a well known fact that for all Microsoft's products there are too many good resources available via MSDN, Technet, Channel9 , Microsoft Learning,etc. Whenever we look out for some learning resources we end up in getting many resources and we'll be really confused where to start with and in which order we should learn. Here comes the solution. Microsoft introduces ramp up!

ramp up provides the step-by-step guidance and in-depth learning content. There are several tracks available like Visual studio 2008 Tech ed track, Aspiring Developer, Java Developer, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 Developer etc. One can choose the right track or ramp up wizard will help in choosing the track by asking some questions. Ramp up was built by expert developers. Check out the ramp up authors page and you can find a lot of celebrities in the IT world there. Ramp Up comprises multiple learning plans, each designed with the unique learning needs of different developers in mind. Most of the tracks start with level 100 session and end with level 300 sessions.

One more cool offer is the Graduation award!!!. Graduation award will be given when a particular track is completed. It includes 50% exam discount voucher for 70-536 exam, 50% off on selected E-Learning collections and 30% off on some MCTS Self paced training kits. Several new tracks for other latest Microsoft technologies will be added in the future. ramp up sounds really great! Enjoy learning.

WPF week on Channel9

2008-05-12T12:29:24Z

Check out the "Week of WPF" on Channel 9. This entire week a lot of members in core WPF team will be interviewed and we can get a lot of in depth information about the latest WPF enhancements in .Net Framework 3.5 beta and Visual Studio 2008 beta. Have fun!

Arun kumar Microsoft Student partner