TechEd SEA 2006 was held from 5th - 8th September at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center. The INETA APAC newsletter team (with help from SEA MVP Lead Lilian Quek) proudly presents you with a concise summary of the event. TechEd Southeast Asia 2006 kicked up a storm at Kuala Lumpur and was well-attended by an estimate of 2000 delegates.

Delegates were kept abreast of the latest Microsoft technologies by engaging in a series of high-quality talks by industry experts and professionals during the 4 days session. Besides the day events, delegates were also kept busy during the evenings with activities organized by the TechEd owners.




The Microsoft Singapore subsidiary also organized a party for the Singapore delegates,
called "A Night of Mystical Passion" (5 Sept), and was held at the Passion @ Poppy Collection. The event was hosted by Yasmeen Hammed-Chan (Audience Marketing Manager), and Howard Lo (Senior Community Program Manager) from Microsoft Singapore.

On the next day (Sept 6), a thank you and appreciation dinner was held at the Top Hat Restaurant for the SEA influencers. During the dinner, top MVP contributors also received awards from APAC DPE General Manager Dilip Mistry, Malaysia DPE Lead Tyson Dowd and APAC Community Regional Director Cally Ko .

A party themed ‘Geek night’ was held on the following night (Sept 7) to get the attendees to blow off some steam and drown in the sentimentality of the night.
The SEA MVP team also played the MVPs/RD tic-tac-toe game and Malaysian MVPs game at the MVP Community booth throughout the 4 days. The goal was to hunt down the MVPs from the "Wanted MVPs" list and get their signatures before Sept 8, with attractive prizes sponsored by some of the generous MVPs/RDs. It was definitely an exciting and adrenaline-high night and it certainly gave the participants a good chance to exercise after a few tiring days of attending the high intensity talks ;)

On the final day (Sept 8), a Server Fest was held whereby attendees need to visit the various zones (Forefront, SQL Server, Windows Server and Windows System Center zones) to get the answers/clues to the various games played. In addition, the winner of the MVP/RD Tic-tac-toe game was also presented with the grand prize of a MSDN Premium subscription (worth USD30,000), proudly sponsored by William Tay (SIN MVP/MSRD).



  

The contents of the kit will be posted on the CLT site near the end of 2006. We will ask user group leaders for event information including dates and projected attendance. This will help us ensure that we get the kit to the event leader in time to host the event. We will also be asking for CLT members to work with us to distribute surveys to event attendees as a part of your event.

• Bangladesh
  by Mohammad Ashraful Alam
  
  
  
  
  Styles, Themes, and Skins in ASP.NET 2.0 -- Best Practices
  Friday, September 15, 2006
  Kollyanpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  
  The Themes and Skins feature of ASP.NET 2.0 allows us to factor style and layout information into a separate group of files, collectively called a Theme. It makes the modification of site style, look and feel EXTREMELY easy to maintain and manage. Developers will discuss about the various way to make efficient, usable and beautiful UI using theme and skins.
   
• Madurai
  by Nirmalanand Jebakumar  
  
  The MaduraiDotnet User Group Meet for the month of September went off well with about 35 attendees. The meet started at 10.30 am at the Client Server Lab, CSE Department, Thiagarajar College of Engineering.
  
  The first session, “Introduction to ASP.NET” was handled by B.Padmashree. A session on “State Management using VWD 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0” was handled by J.Nirmalanand. We didn't expect a lot of people to turn up and so we had to conduct it in two batches :)
  
  Awareness about the Microsoft Academic Project Program 2006-2007 and the Imagine Cup 2007 were given to the attendees. The usergroup meeting lasted until 11.30 am. As the semester is drawing to a close, this user group meet would be the last meet for this semester.

Malaysia

• Kuala Lumpur
  By Chua Wen Ching
  
  The Malaysia's Independent Developers Community (MIND) recently revamped their website, and now sports a brand new look, and powered by Community Server.
  
  
  
  Check it out at http://mind.com.my/
  
  In Sept, MIND invited representatives from K2 Singapore, Mr. Samuel and Mr. Johnny to participate in the MIND Workflow Day, where they shared with  50 members from MIND the upcoming product offerings from K2, codenamed BlackPearl.
  
  The session was held in Microsoft Malaysia Auditorium. The term workflow is still new to a lot of people in Malaysia. However, many of them have been doing workflow in the past, but do not realize that the stuffs they have been doing were related to workflow. In the past workflows were done in a very programmatic way. There was no visual representation of workflows during development.
  
  Thanks to Microsoft who will be releasing Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation which will be integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. Things will be much easier.
  
  The speakers provided a general overview on what workflow was and slowly moved on into more advanced usage of workflow in K2 2003.  We would like to thank the speakers for their contributions to the MIND community.

Singapore

• The SGDOTNET September UG event was organized jointly with MSDN Connection (Singapore). The event featured speakers from the VB product team coming down on 4th September - Jay Schmelzer (Group Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team) and Antoine Cote (Development Lead on the Visual Basic Team).
  
  The 4th September event was well-attended by 300+ attendees and took place at Microsoft Singapore auditorium. Jay shared about Smart Client Development Using Visual Studio Tools for Office and Windows Mobile, and showed how developers can take advantage of Excel or Word in Visual Basic applications. Antoine shared about the top ten Tips and Tricks from the Visual Basic Team, and talked about the favorite features and productivity tips from the team that wrote the product.
  
   

Up Close with .Net Leaders

William Tay
Microsoft Regional Director

MVP (Solutions Architect)

 

1. What are your visions for INETA APAC?
My vision for INETA APAC is simple. I would like it to be the de-factor facilitator for the birth and co-ordination of usergroups in this region. In addition, I would love for it to add value to the younger usergroups by providing mentorship and guidance to their leaders as well as providing the in-between services to help usergroups grow to reach their potential.


2. What does being a MSRD mean to you?
It means being part of a closely-knitted group of independent Microsoft experts and professionals around the world and being that bridge between the product groups in Redmond and the read world.

3. What do you think will be the next killer application?
Great question. Surprisingly, I think a non-new application will be the next killer application. With the proliferation of the internet as a platform today, it is key that the mass-consumed killer application must be of a non-intrusive technology and instead work on top of the Internet to bring out its best. Any application/technology that re-invents itself by plugging the current holes as-is today deserves a shot to be the killer application, and it must not be limited to platform of choice. I think Cardspace and the propogation of the Federated Identities and the Metasystem on ALL platforms is my next killer application. If I have my way today - I will kill off all disparate identity systems, especially passwords and all those password minder / digital wallet systems that prey on top of the fact that security and human convenience is, most often, oxymoron to each other. What they are doing is essentially breeding more chaos into a system that wasnt designed for it in the first place. As an analogy, I tend to view it as "Re-arranging the furniture on board an already-doomed Titanic"

Just like the above, any kind of distributed technology will always catch my attention. Once we get the intrinsics of the plumbings out-of-the-way (which I think may take some more years), I would love to see personal-portable computing. The ideal would be the concept of portable codes embedded in a chip that makes full use of the entire meshgrid infrastructure (again, a few more years to hit mainstream use once the vendors get their act together). With that, you can download your entire desktop workstation to wherever you are by carrying a small chip. There are pieces of it available today - but the entire picture would take some years to piece together.

4. If you are trapped on an island without network connectivity, what would you like to bring? Who would you like to be on the same island?
All the books I couldnt read because I have network connectivity ;) And on an deserted island where all dimensions of stimulation is key, there is no one else I would like to bring with except my wife and kid :)

5. What words of wisdom would you give to fellow user group leaders?
Stay with that burning passion that brought you there in the first place. If you stay true to that void of any distractions, only good things can result. The journey itself and the people you meet along the way is, most of the time, the ultimate reward itself. That said, do remember that great leaders look ahead of their time and one of the key things they do is to prepare, mentor and groom the next generation.