Tech Days 2007 is on your way - run for your seat or else you loose!

Register yourself here http://www.techdaysgulf.com/

The TechNet and MSDN Roadshow proudly presents the “Gaining Insight Tour 2007”.

This tour, coming to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, is packed with live demonstrations and technical content on upcoming and much anticipated solutions from Microsoft.
 
Get a sneak peek into technologies that include Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, .Net, Silverlight, Virtualization and more. You will also be among the
first to see us unveil the new Unified Communications technologies from Microsoft – a solution that will revolutionize the way people communicate and collaborate in the workplace.
 
If you’re an IT Professional or a Developer looking to gain insight and an edge over others, then you’ve got no excuse to miss out on this event! You may even walk away as the
lucky winner of the new X-box 360 Elite!
 
Register Now.

Where and when

Kuwait City         Movenpick        Nov 14th
Muscat              Shangri La        Nov 17th
Manama             Sheraton          Nov 19th
Doha                 Intercon           Dec 9th

"I can't stand longer to see your hunger" - these words slipped when I saw people were rushing towards the technical sessions, TechEd is an excellent event to learn exciting new things.

I'm really happy about the Speaker Idol Competition winners and congratulating them on their excellent performance.

This event brought me such a professional peers - I would like to thanks Robo Meyers to give me excellent company during the Ask the Expert round.

Hope to see you guys next year in some event place.

Thanks to Microsoft for organizing such an excellent event to gather all the industry leads and experts - and not to be forgotten MYSELF

Bandagi!

So its the second day at the event, lots of technical sessions and huge amount of information - i am unable to bear everything

Today I met the rest of ATE Team at the SQL Server booth.

It was an honor for me to meet the Patterns & Paractices Technology Architect A. P. Ward Pond - it was a nice talking about this new group they founded one and a half year back, the solution is still in its infancy and they it will take time to make it part of the products, resource kits.

I would love to meet Goksin Bakir, and surprisingly i met him at the first and second day of event - he was the point of contact in INETA, now he joined Microsoft Turkey. I would love work with him from INETA perspective, and he is willing to help;

The day at ATE booth was good but it was a little quiet today as people are really buzy in taking sessions and making most of out it.

It's 6:00 pm and time to take off! will write more tomorrow and stay tuned as i am going to Speaker Idol Competition tomorrow.

Bandagi!

Those were the exciting moments when I saw Somasegar VP Developer Division announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 for the month of November. It was my dream to "meet the man" behind all the successfull deliverables but due to the size of hall and the number of audience (4000+) i was unable to cover the distance to reach the stage and meet. Some views of Soma on his blog http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2007/11/05/teched-developer-in-europe.aspx

Next there were couple of demos ran by the other Microsoft Lead Product Managers including the Visual Studio 2008 and PoplFly a new tool for game developers. I am uploading the videos which shows you the announcement of new upcoming version of Visual Studio tools and PopFly.

This whole day was full of surprises - next I was able to see Bob Bucheman a great name for SQL Server, i saw him in action, he discussed the CLR integration and performance improvement from SQL Server 2005 perspective - some highlights are available in this video.

There were around many technical sessions but it was not practical to attend all in same time but the most important ones i attend were

SQL Server CLR Integration
Implementing SQL Server Express Edition
Understanding the Service Oriented Architecture

Then comes the "Ask the Expert" round - There were other couple of product booths including - .Net Framework, Dynamics, Windows Mobile, MSDN, Visual Studio 2008 but SQL Server has the biggest booth with six machines two for SQL Server 2005, two for Business Intelligence and two for SQL Server 2008. Fortunately it was an honor for me that only I was the one who have knowledge about the SQL Server 2008 so I was also taking care of this version.

ATE or Ask the Expert is an area where people come and ask your help to solve their product related problems. I was assigned on SQL Server ATE booth as per my expertise. Here I was planning to deal the Performance related problems but i was assigned to work with BI "Business Intelligence" team so i was answering all the questions on Dataware housing, Business Intelligence, Data minning. I receive quite a good feedback on BI feature of SQL Server. I am more then happy that Microsoft trusted on my knowledge and expertise and understand that i can add value to this great event. It was very excited that people with different background, knowledge and expertise came and asked about the resolutions of their problems and solutions. There was a time when I had a chance to solve the SQL related problems onsite, "man developers dont let you go" - if they have problem they dont let you escape unless you solve it.

Not to forget the people here with me at the booth are Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft BI Evangelist and other fellow MVP's from Croatia - next to Italy.

Anyways It was a good start, hoping that tomorrow i will be having same great time with the product team and especially with the audiance.

Bandagi!

On entering the Briefing Room all ATE's received their Green color Polo Shirts with "Ask the Expert" on front and ATE logo on the back.  It a great excitement because you've been given an honor present yourself as an Expert in the product domain.

The Briefing started at 18:00 (6:00 pm) with the Microsoft Marketing Team for TechEd, the Marketing Manager TechEd EMEA announced that TechEd 2007 Barcelona is sold out with 4000 seats and still we are receiving requests for registration, since there is no more space in the convention center we are not entertaining any further registration.

We've been briefed how to deal with the audiance, and how important our feedback back to Microsoft staff in order to improve the products. It was a great chance to meet a lot of people from different part of Europe, most of the people i met were Microsoft Regional staff's especially from Croatia, Russia.

It was fun and i learned a lot that how these people are managing this great number of audiences every year and every year the number of audiences are more then the previous so it means its worth attending this event, anyways let see tomorrow what's gonna happen.

Ok, I am off for today and will be leaving to hotel in a while.

Bandagi!

Its weekend here in Spain, you will find people enjoying at the beach, bars, clubs and especially in the cinemas. But

But surprisingly I spent the entire day in the hotel thinking about what to do when i first meet the Microsoft product teams, how i will answer all the developer questions - but I am very much confident that I will tackle all the questions asked as an "Subject Matter Expert" in ATE "Ask the Expert" section.

On the other hand I am preparing to compete in the "Speaker Idol 2007" competition and if I won then next year i would be able to speak in TechEd 2008 Barcelona, Spain. Well I am trying my level best and with the hope that with full concentration and dedication I will place myself atleast in the runners up;

May Allah helps me to get a better mark in any one of the positions.

Bandagi!

Buenos Dias
"Good Morning"

its 6:00 AM. The first thing i did was jumped out of my bed and opened the window - breeze of cold wind entered, thanks GOD this time cold no more hot weather.

I heard some noise started coming nearby gurrr! errr! ohhh its coming from my stomach not from outside the second thing i did was ordered some light breakfast

It's 11:00 I am ready to go out; my plan was to go to downtown and start walking towards the public spots and streets. Like other European cities Barcelona is also crowded but if you come to residential areas you'll be surprise - everything is calm and quite. My first plan failed - to reach downtown its necessary to take the public bus. Same time I am happy as by reaching the downtown using the public bus was an oppertunity to see so not all but few streets and residential areas.

Its Plaze Espana - you can see the this is a main junction where many roads are joining - nice view, especially during morning hours and on top if its cold. From I decided to take tourist bus, "Turistic Bus" as its easy to see the city once with the help of guided tour and rest details on your own. "Turistic Bus" was an excellent choice as I roamed nearly every place in Barcelona. Now i am a lot confident about the roads in Barcelona, the next step is to visit common places including markets, public meeting points but this i am keeping for tomorrow.

It's too late and I think its better to sleep - tomorrow I will wake up early and will continue my mission Barcelona

Bandagi!

I woke up found the plane fighting with the outside wind, I prayed to GOD and slept again "sleeping was the best option to not to feel the swinging effect". A voice came to me we are ready to move to the airport - oeeeee!!! I am in Barcelona - with the spirit of reaching and sleeping for longer hours I forced myself to move towards the arrivals. The airport is quite and constructed like an old place but in reality it was an art to built and to give similar look - as if we are standing in a old spain. After claiming my baggage i move towards the exit - surprising no Immigration process. For everyone's information "If you are already STAMPed in a SHANGAN country then IMMIGRATION process is not required again" - means once you are cleared then you can move on in any other SHANGAN state.

Reaching the exit was very difficult, its a cold night with freezing temperature of 10 degrees, coooool! I decided to take a cab - as it was cold, i am sleepy and hungry. My hotel is very near to the airport "Renaissance Airport Hotel - Barcelona, Spain" so it took 5 minutes to reach.

Check-inn was verrrrrrry easy as I already had a booking. Now I am in my room and trying to sleep.

Please keep privacy - as i am going to sleep

Bandagi!