Wela's Blog

As of now we have 6 technical communities in the country. Now! don’t panic if you have registered only in few of these. Yesterday a dude called trying to figure out which one he should register. So for his sake and for many others who might have similar confused sentiments I just thought of writing this.

In a short summary we have 4 Technical communities, but 6 Technical Community Websites represent them. Total member count goes over 8,000 as of not and expected exceed 10,000 registered members by end of 2010. Student Champ Community is lead by Microsoft Student Ambassadors and currently we have 10 of them. Other technical communities are lead by the Most Valuable Professionals.

Among these .NET Forum, IT Pro forum and both MSDN and TechNet sites are developed using Community Server. SQL Universe was originally developed using the same but recently was migrated to DotNetNuke. Student Champs websites is 100% developed by students using ASP.NET 3.5.

Sri Lanka .NET Forum .NET Forum is the largest Technical Community in the country with over 6000 registered members, and dedicated to talk about .NET and other related technologies. Started in July 2004 with few enthusiasts and have grown at a phenomenal rate due to the commitment of couple of passionate individuals. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Thursday of the month URL: http://www.dotnetforum.lk

Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum This community currently have a approx. 1000 registered members. Started in 2005 as the Tech2Guys community and was later renamed to Sri Lanka IT Pro Forum. Dedicated for discussions on Microsoft Server Technologies. Monthly Meeting Date: Every last Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.itproforum.lk

SQL Server universe Started in 2007 by couple of SQL Server gurus, this community now have about 600 registered members. Dedicated to discuss about Microsoft SQL Server and related services such as Reporting Services, Analysis Services etc. Monthly Meeting Date: Every third Wednesday of the month URL: http://www.sqlserveruniverse.com

MSDN Sri Lanka This was is a new addition to the developer community in the country with the focus on adding more blogs and resources into the community. Launched about a year back and this has already grown to a base of 200 members and 20 active bloggers. URL: http://www.msdnsrilanka.net

TechNet Sri Lanka This also was a new addition to the IT Pro community in the country providing more resources. This was also launched parallel to the launch of MSDN Sri Lanka portal. URL: http://www.technetsrilanka.net

Microsoft Student Champs Currently being the largest student technology group in the country this has about 200 student champs as active members. There are 10 Ambassadors who lead the community. Monthly Meeting Date: Every first Friday of the month URL: http://www.champs.lk

So to summarize … if you are a developer go and register in .NET and MSDN Sri Lanka Forums, SQL Universe also can be recommended for developers. If you are an infrastructure professional you should register in IT Pro Forum and TechNet Sri Lanka forums. If you are a hard core database guru you should take the SQL Universe, Since SQL is not integrated with .NET it might help in registering in both developer forums as well. If you are a university students you can register in the Student champs community,in this case your registration will be activated only after considering by the Student Ambassadors.

Finally I managed to find some time to write this mail J. Firstly thanks for everybody who joined the bowling tournament on 15^th. It was a fantastic experience and I’m sure everybody who joined had loads of fun.

A quick summary …

As planned we started the event on time. We had a total of 14 teams competing for the big trophy. In total about 120 user group members joined the event. However few bailed out at the last minute … some didn’t even show up … may be they were scared J … competition was so stiff.

Round one went smoothly with some remarkable performances. Selva from team ADT Blasters became the top scorer of round one with 150 points. Team Navantis, ADT Blasters, Marmy Army, Teamwork Bumpers, Rolling Stones, Executors, Sri La and Yakumba scored the highest and made it to the second round. Round 2 was not smooth at all … it was a major battle. However teams ADT Blasters, Rolling Stones, Sri La and Yakumba made it to the top 4.

Throughout all the rounds ADT Blasters showed consistent performance. In round 1 they scored a total of 644 points, in round 2 they scored, 722), but seems like at the final round couple of guys in the team lost the grip of the ball. Oops!

Team Navantis was in the top league all alone, however last minute team Yakumba scored higher and made it to the top 4 sending team Navantis to the bench. Sorry folks!

Well! Well! Well! Did you know that there was a Cinderella story. Team Sri La was also very consistent on performance. Even though the team claimed that 5 out of 6 of their players are first timers they managed to crawl into round 2 at the eight position. Then surprisingly they managed to crawl into the top 4 teams too … again in the 4^th position … and finally they ended at the 4^th position, keeping things consistent. Next time folks! It’s the fun you had that matters.

Among the lot we had a team with a matching name for their performance. Team OOT (Out of Target) from SLIIT became the last of the first round living up to the name. Most of the shots were right out of the target. Woo! Hoo! But the team stayed with us till the event ends helping us to finish up the booze.

For team RollingStones I think all the practices they did before the event paid off. I saw them shooting some killer shots and scoring big points. In Round 1 and 2 they were balancing things and played a subtle game. But last round they were ruthless.

CONGRATULATIONS! To team RollingStones for taking the Technical Communities Challenge Trophy home. Take care of. Put your name on it. And bring it back next year J

Team: RollingStones
From: Assette Softwares Pvt Ltd
Team Members: Ajith Pushpakumara, Aneef Fashir, Jude Ellawala, Julius Fernando, Manoj De Rose, Prabhath Wijesinghe

Special thanks to everybody who supported me to run the event successfully. Especially Thulitha for making the announcements and helping to run the show on schedule. Jinath, Shaminda, Chandana and Gogula for supporting to coordinate the event and run the show on sight, Alan for bringing the fantastic beats which kept the tempo going. All in all it was a fantastic event.

Throughout the whole event Tariq from team ADT Blasters became the top scorer with a score of 177.

See ya’ll next year …

Check my Facebook and Windows Live Photo Gallery for pho

Yesterday we had the first ever .NET Code camp here and it was a new experience for everybody who participated. Without me saying 100 words to explain it ... hit the play button below to see what the participants had to say.

A big thanks to Joy Pradeep, Jinath Premarathne, Prabath Fonseka, Dinesh Asanka, Chanaka Gamage, Chandana Athauda and Uditha Bandara for running the show there.

Thank You!

Well! the special user group meeting was conducted with over 150 members attending. Also after a very long time most of our MVP gathered in one place. unfortunately Padman, Chandana, Dinesh Priyankada and Kavinda couldn't join due to work schedules. A big thanks to the three presenters, Joy, Prabath and Fiqri for the wonderful presentations.

I have uploaded the group photo to facebook, go and find your self in there. Remember this photo, this is going to be one of those historical photos about the .NET Forum. In another 10 years time when we look back at how things were … we will definitely dig this photo out.

The game plan for the next big mission … few after the meeting actually asked me whats the plan to reach the new target of doubling the number of registered members in half the time … Well! you’ll hear more about this in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned. I’m going to need everybody’s support to reach this tough target. But i have no doubt with your support we can get there.

Once again! thanks! to all out MVPs, top contributors on the online forum, speakers in the offline forum and all the members for doing a fantastic job to keep the forum up and running.

See ya @ the Code Camp on 6th Aug.