|
|
November 03 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. October 30 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…… October 20  Usually I don’t post stories like this, but having many Durban Indian friends and having eaten many different verities of “Curry” I ended up on the floor when I read this old yet amusing piece of literature, in fact my eyes even started to water….
For all my Durban Indian friends, When the heck are you going to invite me over for curry again? NATAL CURRY CONTEST They actually have a Curry Cook-off about June/July. It takes up a major portion of a parking lot at the Royal Show in PMB.
Judge #3 was an inexperienced food critic named Frank, who was visiting from America.
Frank: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a Curry Cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking for directions to the Beer Garden when the call came in. I was assured by the other two judges (Natal Indians) that the curry wouldn't be all that spicy and, besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, so I accepted".
Here are the scorecard notes from the event: CURRY # 1 - SEELAN'S MANIAC MONSTER TOMATO CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- A little too heavy on the tomato. Amusing kick.
Judge # 2 -- Nice smooth tomato flavour. Very mild.
Judge # 3 (Frank) -- Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway. It took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These people are crazy.
CHILI #2 - PHOENIX BBQ CHICKEN CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- Smoky, with a hint of chicken. Slight chilli tang.
Judge # 2 -- Exciting BBQ flavour needs more peppers to be taken seriously.
Judge # 3 -- Keep this out of the reach of children. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to taste besides pain. I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich manoeuvre! They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.
CURRY # 3 - SHAMILA'S FAMOUS "BURN DOWN THE GARAGE" CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- Excellent firehouse curry. Great kick.
Judge # 2 -- A bit salty, good use of chilli peppers.
Judge # 3 -- Call 911. I've located a uranium pill. My nose feels like I have been snorting Drain Cleaner. Everyone knows the routine by now. Get me more beer before I ignite. Barmaid pounded me on the back, now my backbone is in the front part of my chest. I'm getting pissed from all the beer. CHILI # 4 - BABOO'S BLACK MAGIC BEAN CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- Black bean curry with almost no spice. Disappointing.
Judge # 2 -- Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a curry.
Judge # 3 -- I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it. Is it possible to burn out taste buds? Shareen, the beer maid, was standing behind me with fresh refills. That 200kg woman is starting to look HOT...just like this nuclear waste I'm eating! Is chilli an aphrodisiac? CHILI # 5 - LALL'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER...
Judge # 1 -- Meaty, strong curry. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.
Judge # 2 -- Average beef curry, could use more tomato. Must admit the chilli peppers make a strong statement.
Judge # 3 -- My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chilli had given me brain damage. Shareen saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from the pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off. It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw them. CHILI # 6 - VERISHNEE'S VEGETARIAN VARIETY...
Judge # 1 -- Thin yet bold vegetarian variety curry. Good balance of spices and peppers.
Judge # 2 -- The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.
Judge # 3 -- My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulphuric flames. I am definitely going to shit myself if I fart and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except that Shareen. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone ice-cream. CHILI # 7 - SELINA'S "MOTHER-IN-LAW'S-TONGUE" CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- A mediocre curry with too much reliance on canned peppers.
Judge # 2 -- Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chilli peppers at the last moment. (I should take note at this stage that I am worried about Judge # 3. He appears to be in a bit of distress as he is cursing uncontrollably).
Judge # 3 -- You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it is made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with curry which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava to match my shirt. At least, during the autopsy, they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing- it's too painful. Screw it; I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.
CHILI # 8 - NAIDOO'S TOENAIL CURLING CURRY...
Judge # 1 -- The perfect ending. This is a nice blend curry. Not too bold but spicy enough to declare its existence.
Judge # 2 -- This final entry is a good, balanced curry. Neither mild nor hot. Sorry to see that most of it was lost when Judge #3 farted, passed out, fell over and pulled the curry pot down on top of himself. Not sure if he's going to make it. Poor man, wonder how he'd have reacted to really hot curry?
Judge # 3 - No Report.  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!!!” October 19 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  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: - Pre-requisite to LINQ (C# 3.0 Features)
 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. 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/
|
|
|
|
Tools 
Send a private message
Subscribe to RSS feed
Tell a friend
Add to My MSN
Add to your network
Sign up for alerts
