and the MVPs in Israel get involved hosting an MVP booth…

 

From November 3-6, Kevin Turner will visit Israel, Jordan, Russia and France.  The primary focus of the travel is to reinforce Microsoft’s commitment to the region and position Microsoft as an innovation leader in light of reaching major product milestones this fall. During his visit Turner will also meet with partners, customers and government elites. The press engagements for the week are as follows:

· Tuesday, in Tel Aviv, Turner will participate in a press roundtable with members from the country’s most elite publications as well as a press interview with Yediot Ahronot. 

· Wednesday, in Amman, Turner will announce a strategic partnership agreement with the government of Jordan.

· Thursday, in Moscow, during a press conference Turner will launch a new Microsoft Technology Center.

· Friday, in Paris, Turner will participate in a press interview with 01 Informatique.

 

More to follow soon.

Wow, many MVPs held house parties for windows 7. I was honoured to be able to attend at least one of them, what a blast, it might sound strange but GEEK parties can be a lot of fun:

Some feedback

Craig Nicolson: We had fun, doing the South African thingy – braai, and it was raining as well, but that did not put a dampener on proceedings with Windows7 dual screens, xbox360, rock band and good food and good company, we parties till the early hours.

 

Paul Somers:
Another South African party of note, an all day braai. (Man we love our meat) And it goes so well with Windows 7, come on people how about a braai theme?

 

 

Adil Ahmed Mughal:
here is his feedback, sounded like an awesome party, they even did a video!!!
Well it was fun and we had a great time!
http://www.adilmughal.com/2009/10/event-summary-windows-7-house-party.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAoCESdA_EY
That was really a good work by Microsoft and HouseParty.

And here is what Munir Usman  had to say

I had an amazing time at Windows 7 House Party hosted by Adil on Sunday, 25th Oct! It was a unique kind of experience where we did not only introduce and discussed Windows 7 with our techy friends but also had lots of fun by making some noise (virtually on twitter! :)) We also compared lots of Windows 7 features with Vista. Since majority of attendees were developers, we also discussed upcoming Visual studio 2010 and .net 4.0!

I am sure you already have seen this cool video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAoCESdA_EY (Yes I am a PC and I love Visual Studio :P)

and here are some pics we shared on twitter:

Group photo: http://twitpic.com/mw8be (2 MVPs, 1 MSP, 2 Tech Bloggers, and professional software developers)

Myself showing Signed copy of Windows 7 by Steve Balmer http://twitpic.com/mvf80

MSP Taimur is playing with Windows 7 http://twitpic.com/mvi2e

MVP Adil is showing goodies :) http://twitpic.com/mvp6x

Host is playing with Windows 7 http://twitpic.com/mvhph

Myself comparing Windows 7 with Vista http://twitpic.com/mvhau

Windows 7 Yay! http://twitpic.com/mgfat

 

Hopefully more to follow soon……

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Now this is something that I have often been looking for, not because I just love reading (actually I’m not a big reader), but because I’m one of those people that when I hear something I just want to know where the resources are and lets admit going the good Ol search engine route can be at time frustrating.

So I take my hat off to the people that compile this listing – Awesome stuff!!!!

and No I’m not going to duplicate it here, but feel free to visit their site and even subscribe to it, you will find a wealth of knowledge here.

October listing here

Main blog page here

Don’t say I didn't warn you,  just like the calculator in “The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars”, you will probably be saying “I always wanted to know what data overload felt like!!!”

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Emerging .Net Devs is a MVP run User Group operating in Pakistan, (I’m really hoping to get there in December for their PDC…:-)

Anyway I digress, I must thanks Adil for sending me the summary of their Oct meeting, some awesome stuff there and they are so fired up!!

I cannot describe the meeting as well as Adil so I’m going to shamelessly paste his post here (yes I got permission)
Feel free to go check out their website, they doing some great stuff over there…

Emerging .NET Devs

October UG Meeting Summary

We had a fantastic show today, 17th October ‘09, on LINQ  organized by Emerging .NET Devs at Microsoft Innovation Center. We would like to thank every single one of you who participated in the event and make the event successful specially to our speakers Adil Mughal (MVP) and Munir Usman (MVP).

The thought behind arranging an event on LINQ was the realization that LINQ is still under utilized in the Software Development Industry specially in the Pakistan.

Following was the agenda of the discussion:

• Challenges before LINQ

• Introduction to LINQ

• Pre-requisite to LINQ (C# 3.0 Features)

• LINQ to Objects

• Refreshment

• LINQ to SQL

• LINQ to XML

The discussion was started by Munir with the challenges and problems faced by programmers without LINQ. Three major examples were discussed with the audience and they were encouraged to give response on them.

First example was related to issues in accessing data from Database using ADO.NET and the transforming of relational data to objects. Second example was related to the issues in accessing XML followed by issues in sorting, filtering and ordering objects/collections in memory.

The discussion was then continued by Adil, introducing LINQ and C# 3.0 Features such as Automatic properties, Implicitly defined local variables, Object Initializers, anonymous types, lambda expressions, extension methods etc.

The speakers introduced the LINQ syntax, demonstrating LINQ to Objects,initially from simple queries and moving towards complex queries along with the comparison of performing similar task with and without LINQ in order to get through understanding of how LINQ enhances productivity and provides an ease to programmers.

The audience were very keen to ask questions related to LINQ queries and we must say that this was the most interactive audience of our User Group Meetings. Moving forward, Munir continued the discussion on LINQ to SQL and talked about Data Context class, which is automatically generated by Visual Studio. Munir demonstrated the use of LINQ to SQL using famous NorthWind Database.

Finally, we moved towards LINQ to XML and speakers demonstrated how easy it’s to generate XML from data and retrieve data from XML.
The sample code and presentation will be soon uploaded on the Speakers’ blog/website. Once again, thank you all for taking out time. In the last we would like to thank people at Microsoft Innovation Center for helping us out in organizing such event, specially Noman Sohail. We look forward to see you all in the upcoming events. Our next event is on Windows 7, so stay tuned!
Those who attended the show, please take out few minutes to provide us feedback here.

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All I can say is WOW – these people must of had fun!!!
Wish I was involved!!

 

Microsoft Interactive Installation from MODE Studios on Vimeo.

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At TechEd Africa the MVPs used the Microsoft Tagging Technology in a practical public initiative for one of the first times, it was kept pretty simple, but today I stumbled on some cool videos around the possibilities

Before I send you half way across the world to check out these cool videos let me share what we did at TechEd Africa (one of the many many thing we did, I have an abridged report that takes about 8mb in a docx file if you want to know everything we did at TechEd ;-)  )

MVP Tagging At TechEd Africa

Tagging / hunt your MVP
Last year we ran a Hunt the MVP where delegates got a page with photos of MVP and had to get them Autographed then go to the community lounge for prizes. The activity was a victim of its own success that there were stories of MVP even been approached in the restrooms. 2009 we decided to grow on this but be far more strategic:

· Main objectives this year:
· Have a fun Hunt the MVP to:
· Raise the exposure and awareness of the MVPs.
· Reduce the amount of pressure on the MVPs so they can focus for on their sessions
· Drive delegates to engage at the community lounge.
· Add a wow factor into the game.

So this year we approached Microsoft Research and designed a game using their Mobile tag technology. (this event was apparently the first Public event to actively use the Tag technology as part of its activities)

· Each MVP would get a Microsoft tag designed in electronic format
· MVPs also got a teaser button that they could put on their blogs leading up to the event
· The MVP tag’s where incorporated into the slides that rotated in the events plasma screens
· MVPs could embed their tag in their presentation slides
· The tag completion was announced in the Keynote.

How it worked from a delegates view:

· In promoting the Tag technology delegated were able to download Microsoft researches tag software to their phone (yes even I-phones)
· When A delegate found a tag, he/she would “snap” it with the camera on his phone
· Approved details of that particular MVP would be displayed on his mobile phone using the Tag technology
· The delegate then had to take the information to the community lounge, engage with community leaders and get a gift.

 

Ok so our implementation was pretty simple, yet very effective:

Now go check this stuff out!!!
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090930/speculative-ad-microsoft-tag/ 

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C# MVP Adil Ahmed Mughal from Pakistan has just had a very insightful article of his around C# 4.0 published on Codeweek, an online magazine for developer professional.

Go check it out!

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Just in from the Microsoft Exchange team:

“

We are happy to announce that Exchange 2010 is Code Complete!  Our senior leadership team has signed off on the final code, and it has been sent to our early adopters for one final look before its public release. This Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone means we are on our way to general availability and the launch at Tech·Ed Europe 2009 (http://www.microsoft.com/europe/teched/) in early November.

For those of you attending Tech·Ed in Berlin this year, be sure to check out the Unified Communications track, which is packed with technical content on Exchange 2010. And be sure to visit us at the Exchange product booth in the Exhibition Hall and let us know what you think of the product. Crystal Flores, who interviewed some of you on video at Tech·Ed North America earlier this year, will be on-hand in Berlin in a few weeks, armed with a camera and interview questions.  A group of us are also marching to Las Vegas for Exchange Connections the same week where our fearless leader Rajesh is giving the keynote.

We hope to see you in Berlin or Vegas, but if you can't join us in person, tune in via the Web (www.thenewefficiency.com) to be part of the launch.”

Also check out their blog at http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2009/10/08/452775.aspx

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Get ready, and save the date, for the Joint Business Launch of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Phone!  These products will be launched in Johannesburg (17 Nov), Durban (19 Nov) and Cape Town (24 Nov). Besides showcasing great innovation, expect international speaker(s), customer testimonials and awesome giveaways.  See how Windows 7 can help you reduce management costs and raise productivity as part of the Windows Optimized Desktop Manage Risks through enhanced security and control See new deployment tools with enhanced data protection, better control, automation and advanced image management   Dynamically provision and manage virtual workloads with Live Migration and System Center Reduce energy costs with improved power management and policies for servers and clients Improve productivity and lower costs for branch office and remote workers together with Windows 7 Simplify administration and deployment of your messaging platform Lower IT costs with new archiving capabilities that combine advanced multi-mailbox search, granular retention polices, and more Extend access to your messaging platform with mobility, voicemail, and the Internet     Extend your existing infrastructure with no need for additional hardware/software and reduce up-front costs and platform management complexity Enhanced security includes remote wipe, encryption, and lockdown of lost/stolen Windows phones · Enhance employees’ productivity with mobile collaboration and access to familiar PC-like mobile versions of Office, Sharepoint and more - no additional training required

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I love parties, and I know when a group of techies get together the unexpected always happens:

So feel free to check this on out for size:

It’s  SQLSA 's 1st birthday this month! There will be cake and prizes. Gail has three autographed SQL books and a backpack laptop bag to give away this month.
The meeting will be in the usual location – the Johannesburg Microsoft offices, 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston. 18h30 on Tuesday the 20th October.
http://sqlinthewild.co.za/index.php/2009/10/08/south-african-sql-server-usergroup-october-meeting/

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http://multimedia.timeslive.co.za/videos/2009/10/isles-of-vaal-race/

Finally they have gone live, the interviews I did at Tech-Ed Africa with my MVPs

Enjoy!!!

Common SQL Performance-Related Mistakes [TTK75] (ok this is not me but is one of our MVPs)

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=d3325536-83bb-41e2-92d4-55850218d11f

Exchange 2010 [TTK101] (ok this is not me but is one of our MVPs)

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=fcf80cff-4412-4dfd-b234-34e4d71d44b2

The Xbox MVP [TTK76]

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=142cece3-88c1-4635-b840-8d3033112322

The Tech-Ed Community Lounge and the Communities around South Africa [TTK86]

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=1f62f382-95e1-4bad-ac25-2d3e4875ee76

Views from a Past MVP [TTK77]

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=85fb2ac8-e00d-427a-8a92-0d8c97ca50c5

Being an MVP and what it means to product impartiality ? [TTK81]

http://www.msteched.com/online/view.aspx?tid=681cabbd-43ab-4f13-8ac4-9ae322799df9

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Now this is what it all about, getting together and driving a collaborated sharing of the passion for technology.
If you in Israel and can make this event I strongly suggest you try.

”3 days ago when i wrote that we left with 42 seats for the Israeli Developers Community Conference at the time of the former post we still had one track and 5 sessions… in less then 24 hr we managed to fill the seats and we were facing a decision point if to move to move the conference to a bigger hall e.g. renting a 2nd hall and opening a 2nd track or ti close the registration… this was the point where Sela University entered as sponsors for the conference which helped us a lot in finance the 2nd hall… now we are again at the same point but with a different angle … 39 seats left for the conference and we will not open a 3rd track this time…

Hurry up and register if you haven't done so and i know some of you were still waiting, we will have to close the registration as soon as we will fill the capacity of both of the halls and we do expect to fill it up quickly.

Click here to register

Following is the list of sessions that will be presented over the conference, for the full agenda take a look at www.idcc.co.il/sessions …….. “

……… Full story here (http://weblogs.asp.net/israelio/archive/2009/09/11/idcc-3-days-to-go-39-seats-left.aspx) thank you for the feedback Ohad!!!

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So how good are your emergency services, is an accident the end of you, maybe you should rethink about being more careful on the roads and rather don’t meet by accident.

Picture it:

A double fuel tanker has an head on altercation with a biker:

 

In front of a school:

which instantly creates some 2000 excited unruly students:

as the tanker starts to leak fuel into the street: (and some enterprising people start stealing the fuel)

And you have a situation on your hands!

Thank goodness the school has a well trained 1st aid team (but just imagine if they did not!)

Emergency services where called with one hic up (sorry can’t say here – but trust me it WILL be sorted)

and then they arrive promptly…

and jumped into action, WOW it’s rather amazing how many different organisations are involved to ensure that people are safe (lets just say, one simple laps in attention on the roads and it’s costing tax payers millions)

 

helicopter evacuation is needed, (costs keep going up and you worried about your insurance excess?)

 

And this was a staged event, many thanks go out to Fuel logic, the emergency services (who apparently did not know about it until they arrived on the scene – but they treated it as real) and ThinkBike who was also invited to talk to the students. Oh and of course the school, thanks!

Until the next one, be careful, be safe and THINK!

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So last week I spent in Durban at a work conference, but instead of dashing home I stayed on a bit to have some fun with the local bikers.
This saw me ending up at the Road Wizards Day Jol, and as usual there was plenty to see, and some nice bikes to.

We started off at the Pres of Ghost riders Durban’s possie (he has become fondly know as road dad, awesome chap with an awesome bike!

 
That pis was taken just after we had all washed our bikes at his place ready for the burn to the Day Jol…
(oh and the organisers gave out Think Bike stuff for us as well as TB/RW branded key rings – Yeeeeha, but I digress.

When in Durbs at a Durbs jol you get to meet many Durban people, Er and a chickie from Benoni – a bit far from home…

Now first step is Bike inspection and there were some stunning bikes there

I enjoy older bikes and these two really caught my attention, wow they are in beautiful condition.

 

Then Amongst the sea of bikes…

I spotted some real lookers:

BMW LT Bus on 2 wheels

A real noise maker, heck with that pipe nothing is safe
 

Now this is an awesome looking FJR just for my bud Lycan
 

Honda, something to take on the Buells

Then some outstanding paint work.
 

so that was fancy, but Durbs is also known for rats, BIG rates hehe

Man I felt sorry for this Blackbird – not my style, but still a nice job.

And this is for Smotter, check out the screen mod on this FJ dude

And Iceman, how do you like what was done to this XJR 750.

What would a jol be without out ……. The Hubbly!!!

Smoking ……….

Warning, don’t park you bike in wrong place or upset the organisers.

We partied into the night, and what would a Durbs Jol be without the Pup that has over 120 000 km riding experience under it’s belt – heck that is more than some of your bikes peeps.

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Thank you Gail Shaw for sending me this link to you Tech-Ed Pics,

If you send me links to your pics I’ll add them to this list for all to enjoy :-)

Gail’s Tech-Ed Pics

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Geeks…..

BlankMan preparing the beat at #tea09 today. on 12seconds.tv

MVPs Nicholas Blank on 12seconds.tv

Hey if you got community folk involved something will get posted to youtube…

 

 

 

And I believe there is an interesting one on it’s way up of Nicolas and Zlatan….

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