INETA APAC Newsletter January 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
In less than a month now (29th of Jan), most of you should be receiving the Community Launch Kits, I’m sure we have some exciting times for the community in APAC. Those of you who provided updated contact details will also be receiving the quarterly INETA UG Kit, with T-shirts and custom banners for your user group.

The CDNUG event in SriLanka where our Speaker Praveen Srivatsa spoke at was an enthusiastic event, read more in this issue. We’re expanding our Speaker Bureau in Korea and other countries. So a lot more groups across APAC will now have the ability to request speakers.

The folks in Korea are planning a huge INETA event in early February and as usual the it will be actively participated by UG leaders across Korea. If you’re planning an event and need assistance feel free to ping us, you’ll be surprised at ways which we can help you.

On another front globally INETA is working towards better integration of activities across our regional teams in NORAM, EUROPE, MEA and LATAM.

Lastly from the entire INETA team I’d like to wish you’ll a happy holidays and a great new year ahead for the community.

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

Editor's Note

It's a brand new year! Are you all geared up for L.O.V.E already? If you have exciting activities brewing at your usergroup, we would like to feature it! Drop us an email today, and share with us the latest happenings in APAC!

In this issue, we extend a warm welcome to 2 newly formed usergroups: Intel Information Technology Technical Community Malaysia Chapter (TCMyC) and the Queensland VSTS Usergroup (QVSTSUG). To start a brand new year in 2007 with an energized note, we packed the Jan07 issue with lots of article, including 2 interviews with active community leaders - Anthony (QVSTSUG) and SinMin (TCMyC).

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

Wee Hyong
Editor, INETA APAC
Newsletter Team

The APAC .Net Channel

Usergroup Activities around APAC

India

Madurai
By Nirmalanand Jebakumar

Campus Reach Programme of MaduraiDotNet UG at Lady Doak College, Madurai

The MaduraiDotnet UG organized a session on .NET on 7/12/2006 at
"Lady Doak College,Madurai". Padmashree, gave an "Introduction to
.NET" which comprised the .NET compilation process and other basic concepts such as Namespaces and Assemblies. This was followed by a session on "Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 & Web 2.0" by Nirmalanand comprising the ASP.NET execution model, characteristics of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. About 50 Post Graduate students from MSIT actively participated in the session. The students were also briefed about the "Imagine Cup Competition" in which we had also enrolled and the "Microsoft Student Partner Program". Training for juniors is given in every possible manner to enable them to take charge of these activities once we leave and as a small step four juniors handled the handled the Quiz Sessions that invoked good response and had a chance
to review our PPTs the previous day and suggest comments.

Nominations for student partners are expected soon. The day was
a good success with the audience benefiting a lot out of this program.

Padmashree’s session on “Introduction to .NET”

Nirmalanand’s session on “Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 & Web 2.0”

Malaysia

By Lee Sin Min
Date: 8th Dec 2006, Friday (WW49.5)
Time: 10:00am – 12:00noon
Venue: PG2-Innovation Lab

Agenda:
10:00 AM – 10:10 AM .NET SIG Overview by Sin Min

10:10 AM – 10:55 AM Keynote by Tyson Dowd – Developer Platform Evangelist Lead, Microsoft Malaysia

11:00 AM – 11:45 AM Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals by Sin Min

Intel Information Technology Technical Community Malaysia Chapter (TCMyC) has officially launched the .NET Special Interest Group last Friday.

Targeted to all Intel employees whose job are related to .NET and all IT employees who are interested in Microsoft technologies, the user group will serve as a new platform for learning and sharing of Microsoft technologies, a place for networking and peers support, as well as an environment to excel.

With over 40 attendees joined the event either face to face or via Live Meeting, the launch event was even cherished with the presence of Tyson Dowd, Developer Platform Evangelist Lead from Microsoft Malaysia as the keynote speaker.

Singapore

16 December 2006 - Developer Conference for Students (DevCon 2006) was jointly organized by SGDOTNET, INETA and Singapore Computer Society (SCS). The event was sponsored by Microsoft Singapore and INETA.

DevCon 2006 consists of 2 tracks, with a total of 10 speakers, comprising of staff from Microsoft Singapore (Stanley Tan, and William Tay), MVPs (Alan Andrew Dias, Darren Sim, Dennis Chung, Edwin Sarmiento, Maung-Maung, Tian-An) and the president of the Malaysian .Net usergroup - Wenching. The keynote address was given by Marcos Pinedo, Developer Platform Evangelism (DPE) Director Enterprise Lead, who shared with the students his life story.

Developer Conference in Action!

A total of 200+ students turned up for the event, and was enthralled by the captivating topics which includes: Vista, Office12, Expression, Robotics Studio, XNA, Federated Identities, Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio Tools for Office, Windows Mobile 5.0, and tackling web vulnerabilities/threats.

In addition, the Singapore Window Usergroup also organized a VISTA/Office InstallFest, which was staffed by a large passionate team to help students who are excited about VISTA/Office12 to install the RC versions onto their laptops.

The event also featured a "Spot-the-DevCon-T-shirt" contest, where students who are spotted wearing the DevCon t-shirt (sponsored by INETA APAC) are given a prize. Xbox 360 and Media Center booths were also available for students to try out.

Students having fun at the XBox360 and Media Center booths

Click http://community.sgdotnet.org/photos/devcon_2006/ for more photos.

Sri Lanka

By Jinath

This was our second deep dive session, jointly organized by INETA, Sri Lankan MVPs and sponsored by Sri Lanka Microsoft

The theme was .NET 3.0 , Vista and Office 2007, and the event was held at the Distance Learning Center, Colombo 07 Sri Lanka from 4pm to 8.30pm. During the event, INETA Speaker Praveen Srivatsa did a great presentation on Windows Vista and Office 2007; whereas Sri Lankan MVP Amirithalingum Prasanna did a session on Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

Up Close with .Net Leaders

In this issue, we got in touch with usergroup leaders of two recently formed usergroups: Lee Sin Min (Intel Information Technology Technical Community Malaysia Chapter (TCMyC) ) and Anthony Borton (Queensland VSTS Usergroup).

Anthony Borton
QVSTSUG Leader

The Queensland VSTS Users Group is based in Brisbane, QLD, Australia and focuses on Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. The group meets on the first Friday of each month except January at the Microsoft office in Waterfront Place. We meet for breakfast from 7:30am to 8:00am and then have a one hour presentation on a range of VSTS related topics. Our first meeting focused on driving up quality using Check-in Policies and our next meeting is scheduled for Friday, 2nd February 2007. The topic for this meeting is “Introduction to Work Item Customisation”.

The QVSTSUG is the second user group in Australia focusing specifically on Microsoft Visual Studio Team System. The first user group was started in Melbourne in September 2005 and Australia’s third VSTS User Group is scheduled to start on 24th January in Canberra.

For more information about the Queensland VSTS Users Group, visit our website at www.qvstsug.org or email the user group leader at AnthonyB@qvstsug.org

Anthony Borton has been a Microsoft Certified Trainer for over ten years and has been focused on .NET since it’s early beta release. He is a popular presenter and works closely with the Microsoft Readiness team to help deliver cutting edge training to organisations around the APAC region. Anthony maintains a popular blog focused on Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server at www.myvstsblog.com

1. What are the factors that led to the formation of the QLD VSTS Usergroup?

In early 2006, I had the pleasure of presenting a session at the Melbourne VSTS User’s Group on editing the Process Template in VSTS. I was eager to redeliver this session and arranged with two other .NET user groups to deliver the session. On both occasions, I ended up changing the topic I presented to something that would offer a more broad appeal to the respective user group’s membership. I decided that in order to be able to present and attend such sessions, we needed a VSTS focused user group in the local community. This led to the creation of a series I named the “VSTSTechBrekkie” series (www.vststechbrekkie.com), which were breakfast sessions held over each Friday in October 2006. As word of these sessions spread, we eventually had over 75 people register to attend the final session. With such a response from the local developer community, I had all the evidence I needed to confirm there was sufficient interest to form and maintain a VSTS focused user group in the local community.

Here are a couple of photos from the VSTSTechBrekkie series.

2. What is your vision for the usergroup?

Now that Visual Studio Team System has been ‘out in the wild’ for over a year now, many organisations have purchased the software and are really only now getting down to business using the product. Many organisations have made a considerable investment in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System and they are now looking at ensuring they realise the full return on their investment in this product.

My vision for the QVSTSUG is to help individuals and organisations achieve the full benefit of VSTS by providing a community of like-minded individuals focused on sharing our experiences and knowledge of VSTS.

3. What are the activities that have been organized so far?

The QVSTSUG was formed in December 2006 following a series of very popular VSTSTechBrekkies that ran on every Friday morning during October 2006. There are already a number of local user groups that typically meet after work so based on feedback from the VSTSTechBrekkie attendees, we have decided to hold our user group meetings as breakfast meetings. We are lucky in Brisbane to have a number of talented speakers so we have a pretty full agenda for the first half of 2007 already. These will be added to our website over the next few weeks.

4. Together with a group of passionate .Net developers, you are invited to an all-expenses paid holiday on an remote island (with no network access) what would you like to bring? Who would you like to be on the same island?

Well in the interest of staying on-topic, let me answer as follows;

- A whiteboard (I’m a trainer – what can I say). We will need to record and organise our ideas. This is always a challenge with a group of passionate developers.

- A bunch of lounge chairs and plenty of cans of Red Bull. To be creative, you need to be comfortable as well.

- Who would I like on the island as well? Ouch – tough question! I have had the pleasure of meeting with quite a few of the guys from the VSTS product team and a few of the VSTS MVPs. The one thing I notice in such company is just how infectious their enthusiasm and passion for the product is. I won’t go into names but a bunch of these guys would make for an exciting time.

5. What words of wisdom would you give to fellow user group leaders?

Know your audience. Always be on the lookout for feedback from your audience. If you don’t listen to what your audience is interested in, your user group will struggle to maintain its focus and relevance.
Don’t always go with the popular topics. Don’t be tempted to always go with the main stream and more popular topics. From time to time give a few of the more obscure topics an airing. You might be surprised by what comes out of these smaller sessions.
Make sure every session offers value. Talk to your presenters before each session and try to ensure your sessions don’t end up being another boring lecture. Encourage presenters to try to engage with the audience as much as possible.
Approach relevant commercial bodies for support/giveaways/etc. Don’t be afraid to approach relevant organizations and ask for a few giveaways for your next user group meeting. While your audience will not be there just for the giveaways, it makes for a nice surprise for a couple of lucky members each meeting.

Lee Sin Min

1. What are the factors that led to the formation of the Intel IT TCMyC .NET SIG?

Passion for .NET, passion to network with people by knowledge sharing, passion for building a community to excel as a group.

2. What is your vision for the SIG?

· A new platform for learning and sharing of Microsoft technologies, a place for networking and peers support, as well as an environment to excel.

3. What are the activities have been organized so far?

· The new community was officially launched on December 8, 2006 (see launch report attached) and has planned for monthly gathering as well as Worldwide Community Launch event for Windows Vista, 2007 Office System and Exchange 2007 in Q1 2007.

4. Together with a group of passionate .Net developers, you are invited to an all-expenses paid holiday on a remote island (with no network access) what would you like to bring? Who would you like to be on the same island?

· “Work hard; Play hard!” Since it will be a holiday, why not enjoy life to its fullest by making it a memorable holiday with no work related gear but having plenty of networking opportunities amongst passionate .NET folks? If someone were to be with me on the same island, no doubt it would be my lifetime partner.

5. What words of wisdom would you give to fellow user group leaders?

· “Great people don't equal great teams.”

You are receiving this newsletter because you have expressed an interest in INETA by subscribing via our website or by being an INETA User Group leader. Click here to read our privacy policy, located on our website.