by Wela on 2 March 2008 16:39
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”.
We the Computer Society of Uva Wellassa would like to thank you for the wonderful contribution that was rendered to us on the past two days. Your team played a wonderful game in introducing the new technology and we gained a lot from the sessions. We like to thank you once again, and would be expecting to join hands with you for your future endeavors.
Thanking You,
Erandi De Silva
Secretary, Computer Society, Uva Wellassa University |
by Wela on 13 February 2008 19:51
As some of ya'll already know .NET Forum now has two new sections.
SMS Notifications
This was implemented as a response to a request came from few members to get a SMS notification about the Monthly User Group Meetings. So form members can register for this thorugh http://sms.dotnetforum.lk.
Link Partners
This is mainly focusing on driving more traffic to the website and also to the registered member's website. You can register thorugh http://linkpartners.dotnetforum.lk. If you still haven't ... hurry up, only a limited number of slots available.
What's Next?
Some more interesting tools and programs are in development and ya'll will see those in the near future.
by Wela on 25 November 2007 00:40
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.
by Wela on 20 November 2007 00:17
by Wela on 20 November 2007 00:13
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.
by Wela on 3 November 2007 23:04
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 :)
by Wela on 6 August 2006 03:08
Last Wednesday (2nd) we had the August User Group Meeting. This time it was a different location. Previous month we decided to have it at a different location just for a change. So August meeting was held @ Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Thanks to Alan for helping to set this up. Also for the next couple of months until we inform a change of the location we'll be having the meeting @ the Microsoft Sri Lanka office. Yeah! we are in the process of arranging a new venue for the user group meeting which can have a bigger crowd. More details will be provided later.
However enthusiasm was well demonstrated this month because we had a house full registration count even without sending the monthly newsletter. We planned the meeting only for 40, but within a day registrations went up to 54. Even though the confirmation mail was sent to all of them about 15 - 20 didn't show up for the meeting. Two of them were generous enough to inform me through an email about they wont be able to make it. A big thanks to you guys. Few who called me and requested for a seat also attended. So guys, next time if you register for any event we expect that you will attend or at least will inform us early so then we can allocate the slot to another .NETter.
Anyways for the next meeting there wont be any registration page. We really want more guys to attend, but if you come late you might have to stand :) demand for the user group meeting grows every single day.
At this meeting Rajah and Dinesh did two presentations. Raja's presentation was on New Features in Windows Forms 2.0 and Dinesh's presentation was focused on SQL Server.
Also we (MVP Team) finally managed to have that meeting we have been planning for quite some time now. My self, Merill, Manoj, Jinath, and Dinesh from the MVP team and Alan from Microsoft participated the meeting. We discussed about the list of activities scheduled for the next couple of months. Guys! there are some cool stuff in the list for you. So stay tuned.
Also we finally selected the list of board members for the user group. List is as follows for the next year.
- President & Membership Director - Wela
- Vice President & Program Director - Manzi
- Secretary - Merill
- Director Online Services - Jinath
- Treasurer - Dinesh
Thanks for the team for selecting me as the head. I know it is a big responsibility. I'm ready for the challenges.
by Wela on 10 July 2006 20:22
Last week our good old mentor Ed :) forwarded me a mail looking for some tech support to configure a Community Server. These days Community Server 2.0 is among my favoutites list. Checking all the different features and configuration options in that to upgrade Sri Lanka .NET Forum. So I took the challenge to do this. It took longer than expected with my busy schedule and also due to some issues in the hosting place. I spent most of my last weekend on this. Configuring the database manually was what took most of the time. Finally with some help from the technical support dudes in the hosting service I managed to hook it up. Site is on Community Server 2.0 and it looks great. Bangladesh Microsoft Technology Community is up and running now. It reminds me how our forum was a long time back.
Now! Sri Lanka .NET Forum dudes... don't be jealous. Our forum will also be upgraded to Community Server 2.0 very soon.
All the best to Hamid (the man in charge in blangladesh :) ). And if any support needed you know the number to call 
by Wela on 10 July 2006 03:08
Last Friday (7th) we had a .NET day @ Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT). Former students and lecturers at SLIIT organized the event and the list of speakers consisted of Merill, Raja, Fiqri, Dinesh and my self. Head count was close to 400 I guess.
- Merill - Introduction to .NET Framework 2.0
- Raja - ADO.NET 2.0
- Wela - Smart Client Development with VS 2005
- Fiqri - Mobile Development in VS 2005
- Dinesh - Introduction to SQL Server 2005
- Wela - ASP.NET 2.0 Tips and Tricks
Thanks for Malith (SLIIT x-student and event organizer) for taking us for a tour around the SLIIT campus during the lunch break. Dude, you got loads of facilities there.
Few snaps ...
by Wela on 5 July 2006 02:19
Well! wishes are not for you or me, it for our .NET User Gruop. Yeah! guys it's beign 2 years. We started the whole thing in July 2004 with Merill leading the team and our good old mentor Ed Guiding us. We have continued the meeting every month expect last October where we had the TechEd and this February where we had the VS Launch.
Due to the busy schedule I actually forgot about this. Otherwise I would have atleast brought a cake to the Today's User Group Meeting. A Big thanks to Jinath for reminding this.
It really feels good to be a part of something important.