I have a habit when it comes to reading books, I usually take a longer time to finish a book.. Sometimes 6 months! Also I’m not a avid reader who gets the next so-called bestsellers and finish it off right away, I never found any reason for most of the books to be best-sellers. To me a book is...
I’m planning to do a new session on Windows Presentation Foundation [WPF] this weekend.
If you are interested register @ http://groups.msn.com/chennainetusergroup/july21stsessionregistration.msnw
Madhu [Solutions Architect from Polaris Labs] is doing session on Windows Communication Foundation [WCF] on the same day.
CNUG Community Launch was oversubscribed yesterday, We had around 300 confirmed participants but as the event was on Sunday and Chennai was drizzling in the early dawn so I thought the count might be around 200-250, but during the break while I was speaking to JD he said “we have around 400+ registrations”, WOW! That was a great count and the interesting fact was that the participants count composed of 70% Software Professionals and 30% Students. Which I think is a healthy composition compared to the last year.After the keynote, I started with my “C# 2.0 Unleashed” Session, My objective was not just to speak about the language enhancements but to cross cut at different technologies, and as the crowd is a mixture of Students, Professionals, Enthusiasts I did not wanted to get into the in-depth technologies. So, apart from Language Enhancements, I touched upon different technologies like DirectX, AI, Devices, GPS, C# Evolution et al… There was Awe’s & wow’s when I showed the Live GPS Demo using my GPS Receiver and ZBuffer’s 3D Engine… In the end it was very fulfilling session with many interesting questions…and many congratulations…
One observation I had was that, Many people know WHAT but didn’t know WHY and HOW !!! i.e. people know what generics is, but didn’t know WHY Generics and didn’t know HOW to use generics…not many people knew the performance gain offered by the Generics… Also, not many people know that we can do Games in C#, and have never heard of System.IO.Ports et al…
But, I Should say the crowd was quite alive & Responsive, and questions came out without hesitations… That was really good to see…
My session was followed by Ravi ’s SQL Notification and after lunch was Anand M’s VB.NET Secrets session… which got a good applause when he showed all the gimmicks the VB refactoring could do! And when he tried to pull the legs of C#, there was immediate response from the crowd favouring and fighting for C#… that was an interesting conversation. Later Sankar Spoke about AJAX and Dhamayanthi finished up the event with her VSTS Sessions…
And we had Ask the Experts… and on the expert zone I had to answer some interesting questions like, “Should I Use Threadpool?”, “Why is that Microsoft has not released a software to kill Tally ?” , “Can C# do Robotics” ? et al…
A Special kudos should go to Mahalaxmi and her team for organizing the whole event.
My Camera’s battery dried up and couldn’t take much of the photos, however you can find some photos at http://photos.logukrishnan.net/CNUGCommunityLaunch/
All in all it was very ful-filling day … Thanks everyone for participating in the event… You guys made my day… Thanks…
Link: For those of you interested, here is the link to the PPT I used in the Event http://www.logukrishnan.net/CNUGCommunityLaunch/CSharp2.0Unleashed.zip
Chennai .NET User Group [ http://www.cnug.net ] is getting rejuvenated, and has announced the community launch of the Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and Biztalk Server 2006. This event is 1 Full day stuffed with Technical Sessions + Fun on 8th Jan 2006 at “Tidel Park Auditorium”, Chennai
I’m speaking on this event on the title “C# 2.0 - Unleashed”, Interesting Topic to discuss 
and also opportunity to meet lotsa people…
Interested ? Do Signup for the event at
http://groups.msn.com/chennainetusergroup/communitylaunchsignup1.msnw
Here is the Event Invitation with the detailed Agenda.
For more details check http://www.cnug.net
Let’s Rock Guyz ! See You There…
Networking…Networking…probably this is the year I’ve met so many new people. Last week I was at Delhi-Gurgoan for the South Asia MVP Summit to meet all the new MVP’s and some interesting interactions with Ravi Venkatesan, Neelam Dhawan, Dilip Mistry and other Evangelism guys.
It Was quite an interesting event, with some sessions on the presentation skills, new Starter Edition of XP, Media Center PC et al… We also had a fun event named “Heritage Hunt” where we were asked to shoot a video using all our creativity[!], I was assigned to a team titled “India Gate” on topic “SQL Server 2005”.
Finally we shooted some pics and interestingly we won the “Best Product Video Award”, but the whole credit should go to Anjana, Chandu, Roji and Veerji for doing a night out to finalize the video… Interesting event…
Last week I came back from Redmond , after the MVP Summit 2005 held at the Microsoft Campus. Happened to be a quite interesting experience, and opportunity to meet and interact with lots of Energetic People and People who define directions to the rest of the world including Anders Heijlsberg - Father of C# , Dox Box et al…
Met some very interesting people right on the flight, during the long journey. Met Arun,Rajesh and Dhamay at the airport… On the way from Frankfurt to Seattle met Allen - A Marshall in U.S. Air Force and Greg Pidman - A scientist who had worked with IBM Research for 40 Yrs [Oh! My....] involved in lotsa interesting projects. Our interaction started when Allen shared his Cinnamon Mint, and he started narrating his experiences in Iraq . This man is very very proud of his country and his own achievements. Greg was involved in research of Semi-Conductor and AI Stuff… We happened to talk a lot about his experience in a robotics project which he was involved for 25 yrs in France . And he remembered some of his old friends from india, who had worked along with him long back…at one point we did have a differing opinion… he said “Most of the indians are good with theoritical knowledge, but lacks know-how in putting things to practice…”, I strongly denied but he still insisted it might take a couple of years… I just smiled and he switched and said these days he is travelling to meet his grand kids and now a farmer
The MVP Summit was held at Microsoft Campus at Redmond . Being the first time visitor to the MSFT Campus, I should say, I was quite impressed with the Campus - Cool, Quite, Energetic, Fresh Greens, Trees…. a very peaceful environment.
The Summit kicked-off with a very energetic Keynote by Steve Ballmer - CEO of Microsoft, Boy… This man is stuffed with tons of energy and filled with optimism, and his slide on competitors in industry was quite a bold statement [Boy, I’m covered in NDA… so cannot reveal them ;-)] Really Impressive. It was surprising to see STEVE BALLMER taking out notes in a paper on feedback of himself, his company and his people… and as u guessed there was an instant question, why isn’t he using a mobile device…he frankly admitted that the practical difficulties and said he has asked his device folks to come up with stuff very close to the habit of human writing… this was Followed by other keynote sessions, Jim Allchin was playing around with latest bits of Vista, and when he upgraded his RAM with just a USB Drive, there was a silence in the hall for a moment… This is called as “Superfetch” Technology in Vista . Superfetch adds the memory on the USB key to the system’s virtual memory, which in turn is used to preload applications and data which the user accesses frequently. The USB option offers the ability to upgrade the system’s memory even if there are no physical memory slots, allowing laptop users to increase system speed, according to Alchin… Ah!Plug-n-Play RAM… also, he demoed other impressive stuff
Later we were separated based on our technology areas and me being C# MVP, we had sessions from the Language gurus themselves… Anders Heijlsberg spoke about the new “LINQ” feature in C# - Orcas Version, I Felt this adds lots of common sense to the language. The way he spoke was quite impressive, i.e. he never searched for words, or never thought… the whole stuff was within him, and just flowed out without thinking twice. And during the QA Session, before the questioner finishes and even before we understood the question he came out with the response… This man was just amazing… and later when I happened to speak to him in person, found he is quite humble and gentle than i ever thought, and when i expressed that LINQ adds lots common sense to the language and the language is evolving a lot,he replied - “We have just started this, we need to add more common sense to the language” I would say, Meeting Anders wrapped my objective of attending the summit
Later, We had whopping Don Box, who was in his full spirits and talked about “Indigo” in his own style, The Hall was filled with Laughter and he was quite great on explaining each of the topic in a very simplistic manner… [I Still remember his session on SOAP long back...] He didn’t have any fixed agenda, but created a Dynamic Agenda on what people wanted to hear from him… and spoke everything on those topics… quite dynamic isn’t he ?!
There were other sessions, and another notable session was on DLINQ, by Dinesh Kulkarni - Remember this name when ObjectSpaces was announced 2 years back… yep… these guys are back in action with DLINQ which dinesh called it as Object Spaces 2.0. Good Responsive Speaker, heard lots of inputs…
Rest of the other time was fully allocated for interaction with the Microsoft Product team, where they spoke about how MSFT builds software, and most of them were chalk-talk sessions, where every single feature of the language and IDE was analyzed and noted down inputs on feature by feature including keyboard shortcuts to Compiler improvements. It was surprising to see so much of attenention and importance was given to the MVP’s. I Think Mattias Sojourn is the person who have lotsa feedback, and his discussion on Good Vs Evil was interesting.
Also met Christian Nagel, Julie Ray and other people from around the world…
And the campus was very beautiful and as the Fall season has begun trees have started changing its colors and there was lots of Maple Trees…Spent around 3 Hrs walking all alone around the campus, still couldn’t cover up the whole area. But loved that 3 Hr Walk…
Another interesting person was a chauffer, actually Me and Anand returned on a early morning flight, and Anand booked the flight, when i came out early morning from the hotel, there was a Limousine for us and while going towards the airport, the chauffer started…
Chauffer : Which Country are you from, Sir ?
Me : {Enjoying Limo Ride, and Half - dozed off in morning sleep}
Anand : We are from India …
Chauffer: Oh! Do you know Infosys ?!
{Me & Anand looked at each other… A Chauffer in America asking about Infy !!}
Anand : Yes
Chauffer: Do you know Narayana Murthy ?
{Me… Whaat?! }
Anand: Of course, Yes
Chauffer: I know him very well [Me...{Whaaat.... ?}]
Chauffer: I was driving Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murthy for 5 days in this same car… When he came to Bill Gates at Microsoft…
{Me & Anand gave a look to each other… }
Chauffer: Nice Couple, He infact invited me to India …
Me: Ah… So, what do you think about this man…
Chauffer: Wonderful Person, Very Amazing…. and they are a very nice couple…perfect pair…perfect pair…
{Me… and Anand smiled and got off at the airport, Somehow I remembered Gred Pidman whom I met earlier on the flight…}
All in all it was quite good experience.
Only in Very few moments of life, I encounter with people who has the power to define the world and can set a direction for the rest of the world…SteveB, Anders, DonB are definitely one among them… and only very few things has the power to change your perceptions, attitudes and only in very few places the whole galactic energy gets within me and pushes me hard above the limits… this is definitely one such place…
A quite refreshing change and definitely a good memory…
Here are some photos from the event… http://photos.logukrishnan.net/redmond/
Logu Krishnan, a Technologist living at Bangalore, India.