Hurraahhhh! AhmedabadUserGroup is back in action! The grand event – Tech.Ed on Road was held at Ahmedabad on 27th June 2009.
What is Tech.Ed-India 2009?
Tech.Ed-India 2009 was a showcase of Microsoft’s solutions and products to technologists, decision-makers, technology influencers, media and analysts. The event brought under one roof the best technologists in the country and some of the most renowned names in the industry. Together they focused, along with the audience, on charting the technology roadmap of the future. Tech.Ed-India 2009 was all about getting yourself ready for the next wave of technology innovations and trends. This premier technical event offers you an opportunity to meet business and technology experts, talk to Microsoft product development teams, and get trainings and certifications in some of the most anticipated technologies of our time.
You can learn about today’s cutting edge trends, helping you make life easier for you (and everyone else) at work. But the most important benefit just might be the networking: you can build personal connections with Microsoft experts and peers that will last far beyond Tech.Ed.
What is Tech.Ed on Road?
Microsoft has organized Tech.Ed India 2009 at Hyderabad during 13th to 15th May 2009. This was a biggest community event for IT professionals and Developers from all over country and was a big success.
To continue spreading knowledge and educate IT community, Microsoft in association with INETA, Culminis and PASS has asked User Group Leaders of various cities to organize mini version of Tech.Ed “Tech.Ed on the Road” so rest of the Developer/IT community can get benefits out of it who have not attended Tech.Ed at Hyderabad. Tech.Ed on Road was held in 8 cities of India during the Month of June and Ahmedabad is one of those cities where Tech.Ed on the Road was organized on 27th June by AhmedabadUserGroup. It was a great opportunity for Developers, IT professionals, Students to know about trend of IT and upcoming technologies from Microsoft.
The Event: Tech.Ed on Road at Ahmedabad held by AhmedabadUserGroup:
This was largest event of its kind ever happened in Ahmedabad accredited to AhmedabadUserGroup.
The event was organized at Ahmedabad Management Association (a popular and respected NGO and management society). All attendees liked the venue very much and they appreciated sharing their feelings with us. We are grateful to AMA administration for providing us the facilities.
We got an overwhelming response and was huge rush before the event was started. There were more than 210 visitors and 175 consistent attendees till the end of the event. Lot of companies in Ahmedabad have first half working and our event was in the morning time, in spite of that we got such a great response which was awesome part of the event. We had attendees from all over the Gujarat state.
Event flow
We had to start registrations at 8:45 AM instead of 9:00 AM considering huge rush of early birds.
The grand event started at 9:35 AM with introduction of AhmedabadUserGroup core team given by Neha, followed by keynote presented by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola (President of AhmedabadUserGroup).
In keynote Mahesh talked about:
- What AhmedabadUserGroup is all about? Who we are? What are we doing? Why are we doing? Etc.
- He talked about AhmedabadUserGroup history and present, activities done by the UG, and he expressed his and UG’s divine motive – We Learn We Share We Help and expressed his passion for the community.
- He explained to the community that what they can get by participating and volunteering in UG activities.
- Then he took few minutes to talk about Microsoft MVP Program
- He talked about the India Community Guide and efforts being done by Microsoft and INETA for developers User Groups as well as talked about Culminis and PASS.
- The most important part of the keynote was few announcements and future plans of AhmedabadUserGroup
o New and private web site launch for AhmedabadUserGroup that’s coming soon
o Another big event in September
o Monthly User Group meeting on various hot and happening subjects like Windows Azure, VS 2010, .Net/C#/ASP.NET 4.0 and other Microsoft technologies.
o Many of these sessions will be taken by new speakers from community and we will provide training/guidance/platform for the same
- He announced AhmedabadUserGroup’s branch for Student – AUGStudent
o Lead by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola
o Core committee have enthusiastic MSPs (Microsoft Student Partners) who will handle most of the things
o We all together will arrange UG meet at various colleges in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and other cities regularly
o Promote students to do such activities/sessions on their own
o The ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between Software/IT Industry and Education system in our region. This is a long term goal and will take time but we are determined to achieve it.
- Before starting the event, he gave excerpts of the event explaining all about Tech.Ed and Tech.Ed on Road as explained in the initial part of this article.
Followed by the keynote, we started our first session.
Session 1: Windows 7 for Developers by Jagrut Patel and Gaurang Soni
These guys are core team members of AhmedabadUserGroup and introduced as Speakers in this event. Both were very well prepared with great content. They touched upon almost all areas of Windows 7 from developer’s perspective e.g. Desktop and Taskbar enhancements, Jump Lists, Ribbon Control, Extended linguistic service to name a few. They presented few demos and features of Windows 7 and all attendees appreciated it a lot as they took them into journey through the Windows 7 world.
Session 2: What’s new in Silverlight 3 by Kaushal Bhavsar
Kaushal is introduced as Speaker by AhmedabadUserGroup. His unique style has won all the hearts. He showed many videos, live samples of Silverlight 3 features. It was just impressive!
The important part was that session was conducted in regional language – Gujarati. We got wonderful response. All attendees liked it a lot and it was a great show.
Session 3: Welcome ASP.NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola
Mahesh started his session providing background of ASP.NET and internals. First he introduced .Net Framework 4.0 including its architecture. Followed by it, he explained ASP.NET internals like ASP.NET application life cycle in IIS 6.0 and IIS 7.0. Then he talked about new changes in ASP.NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 in areas like Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Dynamic Data.
The session was live and very interactive with high participation of audience in questions and answers. It went through in a polished manner.
Overall, we tried delivering maximum content possible with high quality in the short duration of each session. All the session presentation and demo scripts will be uploaded soon. Keep watching us!
The end note and thank you note was given by Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola. All attendees felicitated with huge round of applause.
The last and tasteful part of the event was lunch and networking. All the attendees participated actively in networking and started building their community interest. All speakers were heavily occupied by attendees and they were passionate giving answers to all questions. All the speakers and attendees talked about various topics and discussed the areas that they could not cover in the actual sessions due to time constraint.
Feedback and response of the event:
Attendees appreciated this event very much and found it very interesting, interactive, helpful and full of knowledge about latest Microsoft technologies. They were very happy about the subjects of the sessions, content and especially with speakers. It was a serious event of knowledge sharing and Ahmedabad Developer community got insight of many new technologies with fun.
An important point about our event, what people really liked, was that we emphasized on our UG AhmedabadUserGroup rather than giving importance to individuals involved in this event. That’s the true community spirit guys!
AhmedabadUserGroup introduced 3 new speakers providing such a great platform and tried generating next-gen leaders involving MSPs in the event.
We got a groovy feedback for the food as well. Big thanks to AMA for such a great arrangement and quality of food.
Feedback from the attendees:
The following are some part of original feedback we have received from attendees
- Best User Group in Ahmedabad
- Wishing bigger event for longer duration – at least a full day event
- Feel less time as it was only half day event
- Great premise and Food
- Latest technology sessions with very good presentations
- Awesome speakers with good qualities
- Great interactive sessions with lots of technical content
- Want more such events
- Lots of cool goodies
- Appreciated regional language session - Gujarati
- A Well managed, well designed event
- Good platform bringing all Software and IT professionals together
Goodies
Lot of goodies were distributed during the event,
- Grand Gift: 1 License copy Windows Vista Business edition
- 5 Set of DVDs – Windows 7 RC and Visual Studio 2010 Beta1
- 20+ T-shirts (AhmedabadUserGroup, INETA, Culminis)
- 225+ Ahmedabad User Group stickers
- Pens, Caps, Stress balls
- And lastly, intangible but most important: Enthusiasm and passion for the community we have spread, the knowledge they gained and networking opportunity with all of us as well as other attendees during and after lunch time.
Sponsors
We expres our deep gratitude to Microsoft and INETA for providing us the necessary platform.
A special thanks to Sai Technologies for their support and providing valuable information about your products to attendees. We look forward to your participation in our future events.
Speakers:
Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola – President of AhmedabadUserGroup
Jagrut Patel – New speaker introduced – Member of Core team
Gaurang Soni – New speaker introduced – Member of Core team
Kaushal Bhavsar – New speaker introduced – MSP Regional Lead
Team @Work
Many of us have spent few sleepless nights to make this event a success, and indeed it was proven worth.
Mahesh Devjibhai Dhola (President of AhmedabadUserGroup) who managed overall all management and technical aspects of the event. Also he worked and managed such a good venue and food for the event. He managed to arrange speakers for other sessions as well.
Gaurang Soni (Member of Core team) – He helped in venue searching.
Jagrut Patel (Member of Core team)
Kaushal Bhavsar (MSP LEAD, Gujarat Region) – He helped a lot in many aspects related to event including co-ordination with all other MSPs and finding sponsors. He is very well known speaker in students’ community already.
Neha Gautam (MSP) – Having great leadership qualities, she anchored the event very well.
Kinnar Shah (MSP) – He designed fantastic stickers and got it done.
The following MSPs have helped managing event from registration to the event execution making it successful. They all deserve a big thank.
Krinal Mehta, Vivek Munagala, Shivam Shukla and Shehzap Chhipa.
Thank you
This was a testament of your hard work team! Thank you buddies.
Team, I thank you very much for such a great event and for all what you have done for AhmedabadUserGroup. We did it!
Very special thanks to Kaushal, Neha and Kinnar for all their help and support for the event.
I must thank to two special guests, Jesal Mehta (Sr. Director) and Hetal Joshi (Development Manager) from I-many Software Pvt. Ltd for their great support.
We definitely learned a lot from this event. This will help us to come back in a more improved and mature way. Extraordinary response of our Amdavadi buddies has catalyzed our enthusiasm. Hope to see you all in future events!
More photos of the event at flickr
Who we are?
AhmedabadUserGroup (also known as Ahmedabad .Net User Group) is an official Microsoft User Group supported and promoted by Microsoft and INETA (International .Net Association).
We are a group of enthusiastic software professionals having a special interest in Microsoft .Net and related technologies. Our aim is to integrate the efforts of people who are interested in these technologies. This User Group helps to facilitate knowledge exchange among developers and architects with an interest in Microsoft's .NET and related technologies.
Ahmedabad .Net User Group is a FREE group and you can join us at http://ahmedabadusergroup.multiply.com/.
Upcoming event
Please keep checking our web site frequently. Hot and happening technology sessions are coming very soon!
Please visit here for all photographs of the event to feel it!
