INETA APAC Newsletter April 2007

About INETA
INETA is the next evolution in user group communities—a non-profit, independent organization, chartered with supporting all user groups interested in the Microsoft .Net platform.

INETA is run by a Board of user group leaders, elected by their peers, and supported by Microsoft Corporation and other sponsors.

Happenings Around INETA Asia Pacific (APAC)

Happenings around Asia Pacific
The MVP Summit 07 held in Seattle, was where we held the worldwide meeting for INETA Regional Presidents. There were quite a few interesting discussions. One of the key things discussed was rolling out a world wide user group categorization and benefits program, rewarding those user groups who're consistently delivering value to their members and the community at large, and at the same time helping and encouraging startup groups to get better. Details about these programs are still being worked out and will be shared when finalized.

On another note, we're gearing up for version 3 of the INETA APAC website, we're evaluating SharePoint 2007 and will have a new collaborative and interactive version of our website available for the community. One request which I have of all of you is to go online to the current website and make sure that your profile data is completely filled up. This will help ease the migration to the new system.
If you have expertise in SharePoint and would like to help us out, please do drop me an email.

Sanjay Shetty,
President, INETA APAC sanjay.shetty@ineta.org

Editor's Note

In this month's newsletter, we continue to bring you exciting details on the various community launches for VISTA and Office happening around APAC. We get up close with Colt Kwong (who chairs the INETA APAC Marketing and Sponsorship committee). He shares with us the various initiatives of the committee. In addition, we also talk to one of the INETA volunteer from Korea, who shares with us how INETA motivated him, and inspired him to pick up a new language so that he can communicate with fellow community members and leaders.

If you have a story or photos to share about an event happening in your region, do send us an email so that we can feature it in the newsletter.

The newsletter committee is looking for volunteers in this team who can assist in various areas such as data collation, editing, proof reading, design and formatting etc. Please feel free to drop an email to weehyong.tok@ineta.org

WH
Editor, INETA APAC
Newsletter Team

The APAC .Net Channel

Usergroup Activities around APAC

India

Anand

ASP.Net 2.0 Event @ GCET College
by Ravi Patel

A full day ASP.Net 2.0 event was held on 11th March at GCET college. 50 participants took part in this event.

Topics covered during the event were: Configuration Settings in Web.Config file which include Custom Errors Element, Tracing, different ways of storing Session data. In addition, sessions on Web Services in ASP.Net and Web Parts are also covered.

Windows Vista Lauch @ BVM Auditorium
by Ravi Patel

Dotnetchaps Usergroup based at Anand along with GCET & BVM college organized the Windows Vista Launch event on 10th March 2007 at BVM Auditorium. The event was supported by INETA and Microsoft. It was sponsored by ITPAQ (Vadodara) & HP.

The event was attended by 345 participants comprising of students from 7 colleges which include BVM , GCET, ISTAR, AIIS, SEMCOM, ADIT & GDCST. We also had students from MS University Baroda.

Group leader and Microsoft MVP, Ravi Patel conducted session on Windows Vista features and Security in Windows Vista. Kiran Varsani, who is an active Dotnetchaps team member took session on Office 2007 Features. Students were given opportunity to have HOL on Windows Vista on machines provided by ITPAQ. Ravi also gave a brief overview of .Net 3.0 and showed a demo application of Windows Presentation Foundation.

The event was a big success and students were very much excited on having a look at the new Windows Vista.Flip-3D feature really flipped their mind. It was indeed a Wow event.
Bangalore
by Manoj Ganapathi

The B.NET user group witnessed another landmark event on February 3rd – the community launch of Windows Vista & Office 2007. On 3rd, we had the developer track and 4th the IT Pro track. The event was held in NMKRV College Jayanagar, the same venue where we had the Visual Studio 2005 Launch Community launch last year.

The developer track focused on what Vista and Office had in store for developers. The event was organized as a half-day event with as many as five sessions and about ten community speakers. The sessions covered a breadth of topics that would peck a developer’s interest, particularly .NET 3.0. Several key technologies and aspects of the new products were also addressed. For example, the new 2007 Office Server System. The tone of the presentations was not formal, thereby encouraging several interesting questions from the audience.

The event concluded in a fun way - with a Quiz based on the topics dealt with over the day, and some trivia on the B.NET community itself. The quiz saw an active and enthusiastic participation.

Many thanks to the members of the community to have made this a grand success. Special thanks to SymIndia for conducting the Quiz, and their tremendous help in the overall organization of the event.
Madurai
by Nirmalanand Jebakumar

A student partners meet for the newly recruited student partners from various colleges in Madurai was organized on Sunday, March 11 2007. Six newly recruited student partners from various colleges in Madurai attended the meet. B.Padmashree and J.Nirmalanand, the outgoing student partners at Madurai addressed the gathering. They were briefed about their responsibilities and an action plan of what is to be done in the forthcoming months was discussed. Awareness about the MSAPP program was also given. At the end of the meet, some of the newly recruited student partners offered to go to KLN college of Engineering on this Friday for a session. The meet lasted for about two hours with the attendees having a clear picture of the Student Partner program. Thanks to all who made this meet possible.

The Newly Recruited Student Partners at the Meet

Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur
by Chua Wen Ching

Windows Vista Launch

MIND community held the Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 System during 3rd March 2007. The event was sponsored by: Microsoft CLT Team, Microsoft Malaysia, INETA APAC, CodeMasters, DevExpress, O’Reilly, Manning, GurockSoftware, TechNation and HatchlingGames.

The speakers for the event includes:

Samuel Koh	K2
Chan Chun Seong	AtQuest
Yeoh Sun Loo	AtQuest
Aishah Ibrahim	ipcas GmbH
Lim Fun Jin	ISA Technologies Sdn Bhd.
Yong Chee Meng	Formis Software Dynamics Sdn Bhd
Izani	Mesiniaga Berhad
Chan Wei Min	Uberfusion

The event consists of 2 tracks; one on Vista and the other on Microsoft Office System. The special thing about this community launching was that the speakers were all from the industry in Malaysia.

Left - The audiences listening to the keynote speech
Right Tyson presenting the keynote

We also had a special session which was a Round Table Forum on the business perspective of Technological Adoption Roadmap by Microsoft Business Partners. Mr. Lim Fun Jin, ISA Technologies was leading this round table forum with 2 other speakers – Mr. Izani from Mesiniaga Berhad and Ms. Aishah Ibrahim from Singapore. It was a great event with great people and large goodies resources.

Left -Attendees registering for the event
Right - Fun Jin presenting the Windows XP Versus Windows Vista demo

The Business Perspective: Technological Adoption Roadmap Round Table Forum

Left - Wen Ching presented a book sponsored by O’Reilly to the lucky draw winner
Right - Fun Jin presenting the ultimate prize to the winner – Windows Vista Ultimate

Left - Fun Jin presenting Windows Vista Ultimate to this participant who brought the most IT developers to this event
Right - Sheng Sin, one of the committee was the Emcee of the day

A group photo for this launching event

Thanks for everyone who took their time to participate in this event.
Thanks to Microsoft Malaysia to allow us to organize this very event in their auditoriums.

For more information on the event, check out

Official Advertisement
http://mind.com.my/blogs/events/archive/2007/02/24/
MIND-Community-Launch-for-Windows-Vista-_2600_-2007-Microsoft-Office.aspx

Photo Galleries
http://mind.com.my/photos/mind_march_2007_community_launching/default.aspx

Up Close with .Net Leaders

In this issue, we got in touch with Colt, who chairs the Marketing & Sponsorship
committee, INETA APAC. He shares with us the role of the committee.

We also got in touch with one of the INETA volunteer from Korea who share with us his experience in how INETA helped him overcome his fear of English, and his journey through the community.

Colt Kwong Marketing & Sponsorship committee	1. When did you join INETA APAC? I joined INETA APAC at around 2003. 2. What is the role played by the marketing & sponsorship committee within INETA APAC? The objective of marketing & sponsorship committee is to make all sponsors and user group members happy. :o) Seriously, the name of the commmittee tells: - Marketing - spread the brand of INETA APAC across all vendors and user groups. -Sponsorship - contact, cooperate and deliver materials and messages from/to vendor and INETA APAC, and then make it beneficial to all APAC user groups. 3. How can users groups specifically take advantage of the marketing & sponsorship committee? Did you try the evaluation version of the latest Visual Studio? What do you feel about the custom banner of your user group? Are you lucky enough to get an INETA t-shirt? Yeah, that're just few examples of the goodies prepared by our committee and more coming. 4. What are the new initiatives being undertaken by marketing & sponsorship committee? We understand the popularity and efficiency of using third party component in this fast moving IT industry, so we're now contacting various software vendors and establishing some long term strategy and relationship so as to make the life of our fellow .NET developer friends more easier and work productively. 5. Based on your experiences, can you share some words of advice for usergroup leaders? Enjoy your contribution and sharing. It is very difficult for user group leaders to run and operate a group, think about the complicate people, politic and event management in a group, especially all of us are just working voluntarily. However, please consider your members and the new comers, they will be benefited and grow personally and technically by your contribution and efforts now, and you'll know what you're doing now is absolutely correct and meaningful.

Jae-Seong Hwang INETA Volunteer (Korea)	Inspired to reach out! My name is Jae-Seon Hwang from South Korea. As you know almost all Korean have language problem. Especially, many developers can read English materials but they can't speak English very well. In my case I can't speak English three years ago. I attended the INETA APAC Summit in Bangkok(2 May2004 ) as Korea INETA leader. At that time I felt so ashamed because I can understand what people say but I can't say anything. I didn't have a chance speaking English in Korea. In APAC Summit, everybody have to communicate each other because we need to explain our communities’ conditions and make some ideas. Unfortunately, I couldn’t speak easily. So I thought I should learn English because I want to talk other INETA’s friends in near future After the Summit, I decide I should learn English. I want to speak with other INETA friends. I prepared for studying abroad by myself. Finally I went to San Diego (April 2005 to May 2006) to pursue a pre-MBA course at UCSD. I studied English and I got a chance to work with foreign people. After coming back to Korea, I don't have any fear about English even though my English is bad. I met Sanjay at 2nd Korea INETA Seminar and we talked about many subjects. I am so proud of my effort and I appreciate of INETA. INETA gave me inspiration and motivation about studying English. I know many Asian developers still have language problem. I want to tell them. Don't be afraid, you can do it.

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