Couple of guys have asked me what are the sites that I check every day. Well! there is like couple of hundred in my blog reader. Among them there are few which I visit everyday and check out.

• http://www.bink.nu
• http://www.gizmodo.com
• http://www.winsupersite.com
• http://www.codeproject.com
• http://www.engadget.com
• http://www.codeplex.com
• http://www.asp.net
• http://www.simple-talk.com
• http://channel9.msdn.com

As most of ya'll already know at the last MVP open day we decided to bring all the user groups under one umbrella as Microsoft Sri Lanka Technical Communities. Currently we have 4 arms under it. Those are the .NET Forum, IT Pro Forum, SQL Server Forum and the Student Champ Community. With over a total of 5000 registered members these technical communities stand stronger than ever. Hats off to EdQuek for showing us the ways and hats off to all the members for contributing and adding value.

Wanted to write about this not to talk about the existing four. This is about the FIFTH arm which is going to come out in the very near future ... and it's going to be bigger than the current four. Yup! very soon registration counts will be bigger than even the .NET Forum user base. Right now i'm sure you are totally clueless about what this is and where can I find a bigger user base. Wait and see :)

It's a very popular saying that 'no business is like show business'. You spent many millions of dollars over couple of months making a movie and the moment it hit the theaters if it is a good movie you end up making many millions of dollars within the first weekend itself and the total stack up over hundreds of millions within couple of days. I don't think there is any other industry in the world which has a similar nature in terms of $$$. Well! In some other cases you spend millions making the movie and end up in a nasty loss. Hey! that's show business.

If somebody asks what is my favorite movie, without hesitation the answer is Star Wars ... all 6 films. Not because it's a great movie, but there is a whole lot more than just the movie. There is a virtual world around it. If you are a Star Wars fan you know that the website describes every single element you can find in the film. Every planet, every species, every alien character, every space ship .... including it's origin, type, size, relationship etc etc. In a way this is nuts. You have thousands of pages of reading material. Some times it's way more interesting than reading a Si-Fi book. Also it's truly amazing that George Lucas actually dedicated over 30 years of his life on this 6 films. Hats off to him. Recently I re-watched the entire Star Wars series ... for the 10th time I think. Still I can watch is once again in couple of months time just like watching for the first time. If you are not a Star Wars fan ... just forget it ... you won't be able to understand this :)

Another very interesting Si-Fi, which is another one of my favorites is the StarGate TV series. Originally this was started with a movie and then extended to a TV series and as of this moment there has been a whooping 214 episodes. This also has a similar virtual world around it. Check out Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean. I'm still in the process of watching the episodes one by one ... Yup I have all the episodes. Amazing thing is almost all of the episodes are very interesting. Ohh! Yeah! battles with aliens and big ass alien ships ...

During the past several years there has been many great scientific fiction movies and TV series's. At the time it goes on those dominates the arena, but with time it fades off. I think the reason is there is no 'virtual world' around it. This is where Star Wars and StarGate stands out. I think these two has gone several extra miles on this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1

CONGRATULATIONS! to the 6 team who made it to the second round. Altogether 43 teams competed in the first round. This year the competition theme is 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment'. Local finals event is scheduled on 22nd of April and the winner who will represent Sri Lanka in the World championship will be selected at this event. Imagine Cup 2008 World Festival is taking place in July in Paris, France. Woo! Hoo!

	Team Name	Application Name	University/Faculty
	Sasrutha	Haritha Prayathna	University of Moratuwa - Faculty of Information Technology
	Will Power	Cleaning License Management System	University of Moratuwa - Computer Science and Engineering
	Gagana	EDUMS	Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology
	e-C	e – cultivators	University of Colombo School of Computing
	pehasara	GreenPlease	University of Moratuwa - Faculty of Information Technology
	E – Co.	CarbonX	University of Colombo School of Computing

Round 1 judges

Session: SharePoint for Developers
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a powerful tool which combines Web Content Management (WCM), Business Intelligence (BI), Records Management, and whole lots of other features. SharePoint products & technologies are based on Microsoft's most innovation technology called Microsoft Application Platform (MAP).

What is MAP? What is the role of a .NET developer in the area of SharePoint products & technologies? What specially an ASP.NET developer can do to provide a better SharePoint solution using Microsoft Application Platform-MAP?

This session introduce SharePoint products & technologies and MAP and scope of a .NET Developer in SharePoint & MAP.

Speaker: Joy Pradeep (MVP, MCT)

Date: 5th March 2008
Time: 6.00 PM - 8.00 PM
Venue: Microsoft Sri Lanka, No. 42, 11th Floor, DHPL Building, Nawam Mawatha, Colombo 02
Entrance: FREE

Last Thursday (21st) 6 of our student champs headed to Uva Wellassa University for a 2 day Dev Camp. Despite the long exhausting journey all of them spent the evening setting up the labs till very late. When the event started on Friday morning everybody was surprised to see several lecturers and the vice chancellor Mr. Chandra Embuldeniya himself being present at the event. Event consisted of several technical presentations on Microsoft technologies, 4 hands-on lab sessions and a career guidance presentation by the vice chancellor.

This is one of the many events we are doing in universities throughout the year. Special thanks to Student Ambassadors Buddhika and Wajira for coordinating + organizing the whole event and the student champs Prasad, Suranga, Tishan and Kelum for the outstanding contribution.

Feedback from students proves that this has been a very successful event and the message is loud and clear, which is “please come more often to our university and share what you know”.

Not only students, lecturers were also present at the sessions	Message from the Vice Chancellor Mr. Chandra Embuldeniya	Portion of the crowd on the first day.
One of the hands-on lab sessions on ASP.NET	Heroes!	I guess they all are saying “THANK YOU” … it’s all over the feedback forms