I think the IT Pro Forum and the User Group is back to it's former glory. Right at this moment the November Meeting is going on in the training room and there are 50 participants. Thanks to Padman for all the hard work put in to this. I'm going to have to get another bigger place very soon. Woo! Hoo!

Two sessions are happening in this meeting ...

Session 1: Introductory Session on Windows Sever 2008 by Afraz Mohomed (1 hour)

• Editions Comparison
• New features
• Role based Deployment
• Active Directory Improvement
• Windows Hypervisor
• Live Demo –Feature Based

Session 2: Implementing Organizational portal using MOSS by Mohomed Shamin (1 hour)

• Creating portal sites
• Adding web parts to the main site
• Creating task list, document libraries, and configuring
• Workflow creation
• Excel publishing
• Forms publishing
• My site creation and overview
• Enterprise Search configuration

First thought of writing about how you can become an MVP ... but then decided to write the opposite of that because everybody knows how to become one. In case if you don't know you can find more details @ http://www.microsoft.com/mvp or drop me an email on wellip@microsoft.com and i'll provide more info. As I see it there is no fixed equation or '21 days dummies reference' guide or something like that explaining how you can become one. Activities you do in the technical communities does matter a lot. Doing presentations @ user groups, online postings, writing articles, helping others in technical matters and being a technical expert in a particular area are the key things that can drive you to the award. But there is no such fixed equation like ... ''5 presentations + 100 online posts + 2 articles = MVP'' ... I think what matters the most is being a selfless person, passion for technology and willingness to share your knowledge among others.

Anyways this post is not about 'how to' ... it is about 'how not to'. Just thought of sharing with ya'll few experiences I came across during the past couple of months about some people who wants to become MVPs and who had no dang clue about the program. There was one guy who wants to become an MVP because he wanted to jump to a new office for a big salary. When I asked him why do you want to become an MVP he had guts to say that. When I asked what is your plan to give something back to the community, he had no answer. Then there was another fella who wanted to become and MVP because he was planning to jump to USA and he was thinking that the MVP award is kinda his ticket to US. Suddenly he called me as told 'I want to become and MVP really fast, can I do a presentation in the next user group meeting and get the award after that'. Recently there was another guy who actually made a business proposition to me ... funny world ... he told me 'wela ... somehow make me an MVP and i'll give you anything you need'. Seemed like he was a disparate wannabe. Tough luck boy ... you wont be able to buy me or any other MVP for that matter.

On the good side there are few individuals who are really interested in receiving the award, but who understands the responsibility of it ... and I think they deserve it because they are doing lot of value additions to the technical community. We are keeping our eye on few and in the future they have a high chance of getting nominated for the award :). So folks, now I think you have an idea about 'how to' and 'how not to'

Went through my photos collection to find some old photos to send to a friend. While doing that I selected the below photos which I think are ideal Vista wallpapers. Infact I used some of these as my wallpaper at the time it was taken. Click on the thumbnail to view the high-res.

I spent a considerable amount of my time on traveling to the distance places to share technical knowledge. Continuing the journey ... yesterday Primal, Wajira, Buddhika and me went to the University of Ruhuna Engineering Faculty @ Galle, Hapugala. Kudos to Charith, our coordinator for the hospitality and organizing the event.

We started the proceedings with a presentation about the Microsoft Student Champ program and Primal, Wajira and Buddhika did it. Then I continued with a long presentation on Silverlight. It's great to see some real interests on the latest technologies. Q&A session was in a satisfactory level. Finally it was the Imagine Cup 2008 intro session. This year there are many who are competing from Ruhuna.

Few photos ...

On a separate note, Ruhuna Hapugala is having the best hardware resources I have seen in any university. One lab they showed me is having over 150 computers and most with 2 GB RAM. This is great as it opens up opportunities to students to try our new technologies without hardware being a barrier to do that. Also I got to know that there is a plan to increase this number up to 1000 computers, so there will be one dedicated computer for each student. That's awesome ... and I think thats how it should be in every IT University/Faculty. I think all the other universities in the country should have a look at this place :)

Looking forward to do more similar sessions in the near future.

I have been using wela0@hotmail.com as my MSN Id for a very long time ... as I remember for about 6 or 7 years now. Very rarely only check my emails there and it was purely dedicated for the Messenger. there are many contacts which I don't even know who they are. Also there are many contacts that are inactive like forever. On the other side amount of SPAM mails are hitting the roof. Anyways after the LIVE updates SPAM is very low.

So within today i'm going to change it to my new LIVE Id wela@live.com. Will send invitations to all the active contacts.

in case if you haven't herd about this awesome news yet ...
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/03/releasing-the-source-code-for-the-net-framework-libraries.aspx

source: Scott Gu's Blog

Woo! Hoo!

Long awaited VS2008 is out :) well! at this moment only MSDN Subscribers can go and download from the website. It 3.9 GB. I have already started downloading and have to wait 6 more hours.

Download
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=24da89e9-b581-47b0-b45e-492dd6da2971&DisplayLang=en

Source: Bink.nu

Daniel A. Reed will join Microsoft Research as director of Scalable and Multicore Computing, reporting to Senior Vice President of Research Rick Rashid. Reed is an expert in high-performance computing, multicore architectures and scientific applications, as well as a leader in U.S. information technology research policy.

Reed is the director of the Renaissance Computing Institute, a major collaborative venture of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University, North Carolina State University and the state of North Carolina. He is also a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and is the current chair of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association, which represents the interests of the major academic computing departments and industrial research laboratories in North America.

“Multicore processors represent one of the largest technology transitions in the computing industry today, with deep implications for how we develop software. At the same time, the emergence of software as a service creates new R&D needs for very large-scale datacenters for service delivery,” Rashid said. “Dan brings to Microsoft Research the kind of vision and expertise that will help us unleash the potential of software for these new computing paradigms.”

Reed is one of the world’s leading experts on parallel computing, large-scale system design and related domains. As a member of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee he chaired the subcommittee on computational science, which produced the report “Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness.” He also co-chaired the 2007 review of IT research by PCAST, which produced the report “Leadership Under Challenge: Information Technology R&D in a Competitive World.” While director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2000 to 2004, Reed was chief architect of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid, a nationwide open-computing infrastructure for science and engineering research.

“Two great forces are reshaping computing: multicore processors with unprecedented power and the explosive growth of software services hosted on megascale data centers,” said Reed. “There’s no better place than Microsoft Research for me to explore next-generation hardware and software designs that address these fundamental technology challenges.”

Source: www.bink.nu

7th Wednesday we had the November User Group Meeting and Prasanna did a session on 'Working with Rules in .NET 3.0'. Rest of the time we spent to have a brainstorming session. I wanted to get some good idea from the crowd. So we can implement / execute in the time to come and see some good results. Almost all the idea came up were related to coding, coding and more coding. Nobody suggested any fun activities. So i'm going to have to think about some fun activities. I think these folks are too deeply engaged into coding :)

Will publish the ideas gathered in the .NET Forum. Thanks or everybody who contributed on this.

WOW!

Right at this moment if you check the .NET Forum (www.dotnetforum.lk) there are about 15 vacancies looking for .NET Developers. Also I have several requests in my inbox to find C#, VB.NET developers. I know for sure that most of those are with very high salary and benefit offers. But unfortunately most of the time it has become really difficult to find good .NET developers. Ultimately what companies are doing is hiring from other companies. This is nod good indeed. Unfortunately today we don't have enough developers in the market today. So the precious few who are out there are in a 'fun ride' jumping from company to another making salary hikes ... well! not everybody ... but I know a few.

If we look at of this problem in a big picture, our education system is NOT producing enough professionals ... instead it is creating more parrots. On the other hand building a career in software development is not a popular topic among our parents. We are in a world where humans do wonders like ... go to the moon, building space stations, but still our parents wants us to become doctors, lawyers, engineers ... the usual dream jargon. I think we need a nation wide awareness building campaign to create this momentum. So far I have met only very few kids who want to become something other than the usual. One kid ... when I asked said ... 'I want to drive racing cars' ... another one said 'I want create toys'. I wonder how they got those ideas, because the first one is only 8 years and the second is only 12 years old. But I think this is great. At least few are thinking in new directions. Because not only .NET developers are in demand. There are many other industries looking for skilled professionals.

It'll be great if Microsoft Training Partners can come up with a program to create the .NET developers the market required. By saying that I'm not mentioning to start another certificate or a diploma course which will run for about an year. I'm talking about a solid program which can create some real world software developer which this country needs.

Anyways very soon I'll be coming up with a program to cater at least some portion of this demand. I gotta do what I can do :)

Just installed the latest Skype version and noticed that they have added some cool new features. I think the one most noticeable is the phone number detection on web pages. Every time it when there is a phone number appearing on a web page it'll be automatically identified as a phone number and Skype will display it in the following format with the country flag. I think it is nicely making the change to where the phone number is displayed without ruining the overall look of the site. Well! it'll depend on the look of the website.

It's good to see that the IT Pro Forum (www.itproforum.lk) is up and running again. There is a quite a lot of work to be done and now there is a commited team behind it. We have fixed the monthly user group meeting date as the last Friday of the month, from 6.00 PM onwards. Current Venue is Microsoft Sri Lanka Training Room, but it seems like pretty soon we are going to need a bigger place for this as the attendance is growing super fast.

Special thanks to Paddy for the efforts made on this.

Ohhh! Yeah!

If you still haven't get your hands on to HALO 3 ... what ya waiting for ... make it the top priority. Well! you need to have a XBox 360. Anyways even thought I got the DVD I still could play only one mission. What a damn shame! Busy schedule is on the way. Trying to clear up a week end in the near future to 110% allocate to finish off the gave.

It time ... things are getting ready for the Imagine Cup 2008 activities. Many students have already registered and I know some have already started working on their projects. I have many Imagine Cup related presentations in my schedule in the next couple of weeks from all over the country. This year we are expecting a total of over 100000 students from around the world to compete. This year the event is focused on a theme which every living being must be considered about. It is 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment'.

I have no doubt that its going to be a bigger better event this year. As always it is this year also Imagine Cup World Festival will be an unforgettable experience for all the competitors and the world festival is taking place in Paris, France. Woo! Hoo!

It time ... things are getting ready for the Imagine Cup 2008 activities. Many students have already registered and I know some have already started working on their projects. I have many Imagine Cup related presentations in my schedule in the next couple of weeks from all over the country. This year we are expecting a total of over 100000 students from around the world to compete. This year the event is focused on a theme which every living being must be considered about. It is 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment'.

I have no doubt that its going to be a bigger better event this year. As always it is this year also Imagine Cup World Festival will be an unforgettable experience for all the competitors and the world festival is taking place in Paris, France. Woo! Hoo!