Category: Events

Microsoft Community Meetup in Islamabad

Last week, I had honor to interact with community at Microsoft Community Meetup Islamabad where I got the opportunity to share my thoughts on community contribution and its significance.
I talked about why community contribution matters to society and what are some of the common benefits of community meetup.

I was amazed to see the willingness of people to participate in community activities and enjoyed the same discussion with them on dinner. If you would like to get involved in community as volunteer or need to discuss with me, just don’t hesitate to contact me or tweet me.

DevNext NED Volunteers’ Meet up

As the new academic year begins, DevNext volunteers at NED University had a small meet up to discuss about the role of new volunteer force of DevNext at NED.

DevNextVolunteers

Adil Mughal, DevNext User Group Leader, discussed with new volunteers about the User Groups, INETA, and DevNext history in NED. Adil talked about how DevNext is serving students by providing a platform for them and what they can do to serve the students community.

Adil MughalVolunteers

As always, It is great having an interaction with future engineers. We hope that new volunteers will play a better role in serving their University and community.

Source: http://www.devnextug.org/2011/01/devnext-ned-volunteers-meet-up.html

Event Summary: Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest

Reference: http://edotnetdevs.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/event-summary-visual-studio-2010-ultimate-loadfest/

Visual Studio 2010

THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING VISUAL STUDIO 2010 ULTIMATE LOADFEST!

4th December 2010, we had another exciting event “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate LoadFest”. The event was held at FAST- National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi. We would like to thank all the organizers, speakers, participants and volunteers for making this event successful. Especially to our speakers Adil Ahmed Mughal, Jibran Jamshed and Munir Usman for their valuable time and attention to this event.

Agenda:

  • What’s New in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate? by Adil Mughal
  • Application Life cycle Management (ALM) by Jibran Jamshed
  • Refreshment
  • Mastering Debugging in Visual Studio 2010 by Munir Usman
  • Lucky Draw [Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN Subscription, Pluralsight subscription, Microsoft Bag]

    Adil on New IDE ImprovementsThe first session focused more on the new features in Visual Studio 2010 IDE. The speaker started discussion on the New Project Dialog improvements and Start Page customization in Visual Studio 2010 then moving towards Core IDE improvements that includes WPF based editor, easy code navigation, improved IntelliSense, column selection, call hierarchy etc.

    Adil then talked about how Visual Studio supports “Test Driven Development” and Code Focused development approach. Then ASP.NET improvements such as ASP.NET/HTML mark up snippets, Cleaner HTML, automatic HTML encoding were discussed. Finally, Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX) was discussed and some powerful/highly rated extensions such as Productivity Power Tools, Power commands etc were demonstrated to the audience.

    Jibran on ALMThe second session was about application life cycle management with major focus on Team Foundation Server 2010.

    Jibran highlighted the issues faced by software development teams in the overall application life cycle and how Team Foundation Server (TFS), along with its numerous features and integration with other tools, can address those issues. He also demonstrated creating new team projects, selecting MSF process, code version control, work items and test cases execution against those work items in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and TFS.

    Munir on Debugging in Visual StudioThe third session was on mastering debugging in Visual Studio 2010. The speaker started discussion from basic debugging, such as usage of debugging points, stack trace, immediate window etc, to advance debugging features offered by Visual Studio such as conditional debugging, hit count, filter, macros, data tips, debug labels etc.

    In the end the Munir talked about the historical debugger (IntelliTrace) in VS 2010 ultimate and demonstrated how useful this feature is for developers.

    In the end goodies were distributed via lucky draw. Following were the winners:

    • Sheeraz Sheikh – Winner of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription
    • Winner of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscription
    • Fahad Khan – Winner of 1 Month of free training of Pluralsight on-demand
    • Hassan Zahid – Winner of 1 Month of free training of Pluralsight on-demand

    Adil & Munir - Lucky Draw MVP Bag SpottedVS LoadFestVisual Studio Pamphlet

    For more picture, please visit photo album on Emerging .NET Devs Facebook Page. If you have attended the event, please take out few minutes to fill the feedback form here.

    In the end, we would like to thank our sponsors without them it would not be possible to organize this event. INETA, Wrox, Pluralsight, DevNext, Fast.NET

    Sponsors

    Emerging .NET Devs : Oct UG Meeting Summary

    On 6th October 2010, We had another great User Group meeting at Microsoft Innovation Center but this time it was a bit unique and different topic i.e. Windows Phone 7. Yes! we invited Munir Usman (MVP) to share his experience of mobile development in particular Windows Phone 7.
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    The speaker discussed about the revolution in mobile application development and the ecosystem. The speaker demonstrated kick start applications to begin on Windows Phone 7 development.
    Thank you all for attending the event. We know many of you couldn’t attend due to limited number of seats but stay tuned because there are more shows coming up!!
    In the end, we would like to thank our sponsors INETA, Wrox and FAST.NET for making this event successful.
    About Emerging .NET Devs
    inetaLogoEmerging .NET Devs is a registered user group under International .NET Association (INETA).  The group is committed to it’s vision of disseminating information through lectures in events, sessions and to enable the developer community to collaborate with each other.
    Are you a developer? Are you passionate about technology? Do you want to grasp the Ins-and-Outs of the .Net Platform? Then this is right place for you. Join us on Facebook and/or Yahoo Group to participate further!
    Step in to gear up with .Net Platform!

    Recent Events in June 2010

    Within last few weeks we have organized two events under user groups. One under the umbrella of DevNext, in particular of NED University students and another one under “Emerging .NET Devs” for Industry Professionals. I’m gonna paste some details from their respective blogs:

    Windows Development Using C++ by DevNext

    Technical Discussion on Windows Development using C++ was being held at N.E.D. University for Second Year students on June 1, 2010 specifically to provide them help for developing their Object Oriented Programming Project. We had invited Mr.Shoaib Surya, Lead Software Engineer at Folio3 (Pvt.) as a volunteer speaker for this session.

    clip_image002

    To continue reading, please visit DevNext site.

    June UG Meeting Summary by Emerging .NET Devs

    On 8th June 2010, we organized another User Group meeting on “Workflow Foundation v4”. We would like to thank Mr. Muhammad Ali Sakhi, Microsoft Certified Trainer, for taking out time and delivering a session at the meeting on Workflow Foundation v4 with Visual Studio 2010. We would also like to thank attendees for making this event very successful. The majority of the participants were from Industry.

    To read further, please visit Emerging .NET Devs UG Blog.

    I hope you all have enjoyed the session, please feel free to provide us feedback to help us improve in future and stay tuned for more cool events on 10-4.

    TechElite and ProCom.net 2010

    Last week I had privileged to participate, as judge for software project competition, in TechElite and ProCom.net 2010. Both the events were wonderfully organized and I really appreciate the potential in our students.

    TechElite 2010 – NED University

    TechElite-Group (picture source: CIO Pakistan) TechElite 2010 was held on 29th April, 2010 at NED University of Engineering and Technology. There were 4 categories of competition:

    • Speed Programming
    • Software Modeling and Design
    • Network Management
    • Software Project Competition

    TechElite has really gained popularity and level in just few years and it’s now considered among the top Inter-University competition, so hats off to NEDians and in particular students of CIS department. Another point worth to mention here is the decoration of the overall department was done by the creativity team and despite financial challenges the students have done a great job to brand their event. Also they take care of their guests well. However there were few areas in which they need to improve such as some delay in event timings or some mix of software cum hardware projects in software etc. Finally, I think the initiative of Software Modeling and Design competition is really really good because usually student don’t focus in this area which has its own importance.

    Well done TechElite Team.

    ProCom.net 2010 – FAST – NUCES

    FAST-NU

    The 11th All Pakistan Programming, Engineering and Business competition ‘ProCom.net 2010’ was held on 1st and 2nd May, 2010 at National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Karachi. Following were the categories of competition:

    • Short Film and Animation
    • E-Zenith
    • I-Cube
    • Programming Competition
    • Software Competition
    • Gaming Competition
    • Hardware Competition
    • Circuit Design Competition
    • Network Design Competition
    • Innovative Business Idea

    ProCom.net is a well known All Pakistan Inter-University competition so usually the expectations are high and sometimes they meet and sometimes they don’t. Overall the event was good and I think most number of participants were in programming competitions.

    One of the best part was the participation of school students in i-Cube competition in which they demonstrated their project ideas and I think ProCom team needs to give further attention in order to make this category a great one. Another good thing was the participation from deaf and dumb school in software competition. Everyone appreciated their participation and efforts which was indeed a source of inspiration for all of us. However participation in software competition was not as per expectations on which I think future ProCom team must give attention to. Overall the program was fantastic, Thumbs up to Fastians.

    These type of events are really encourage and motivate students to share their ideas and projects plus it also acts as interaction point of students with Industry.

    Event Details: Windows 7 for Geeks

    Yesterday, 20th March 2010, I organized and participated as speaker, “Windows 7 For Geeks” event. The overall objective was to introduce the Windows 7 API for managed developers so that they, as a third party application developer, know how to utilize the capabilities and design experience of Windows 7 in their applications.

    I’m very glad to see the growing interest of the technical community and students in such events. For me speaking in community is not all about sharing! It’s about interacting and having an in-person relation with community. So thank you all for coming to the show. For details about the event, please click here to read blog post on Emerging .NET Devs site.

    Microsoft Web Days

    We had a fantastic time at Microsoft Web Days on 27th January, 2010 at Microsoft Innovation Center, Karachi – Pakistan organized by Microsoft Pakistan DPE Team.

    Naveed Bajwa The event started with WebsiteSpark overview by Naveed Bajwa, DPE Lead – Microsoft Pakistan. Naveed talked about what are the benefits this program offers and which companies are eligible for this program.

    Audience also raised few concerns on WebsiteSpark program and also discussed how Microsoft is validating startup companies. The eligibility of this program was also discussed thoroughly with the audience.

     

    Jibran JamshadJibran Jamshed, Technology Consultant at Microsoft Innovation Center – Pakistan, demonstrated cool features of Internet Explorer 8 such as Web slices, accelerator etc.

    He also talked about IE 8 performance comparison with other browsers. An interesting part was making of configurable deployment setup for enterprises for IE 8.

     

     

    Zia Khan - MVP

    Zia Khan, Microsoft MVP, discussed web development on Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC and Windows Azure. He started my discussing ideal client and server side platform then moved on to ASP.NET MVC and what are its major advantages.

    Zia also emphasis on the power and autonomy that Cloud computing gives to developers and encouraged developers to start their own development setup.

     

     

    Wajahat AbbasWajahat Abbas gave presentation on SharePoint and www. He talked about SharePoint online services, hosting and also discussed on Cloud Computing.

    The best part I liked of his presentation was not related to SharePoint but a quote of German philosopher he shared in the end. I would like to quote here as well 🙂

     

    “A pigeon in its flight considers the air to be the only hindrance in its way; it imagines that had there been no air it would have flown faster and with greater ease. Yet without the air it would have been unable to fly in a vacuum and would fall to the ground. Hence the same element that poses resistance to the pigeon in its flight is basically that which makes flight at all possible.“ Kant – German Philosopher

    Finally, Aleem Bawany, General Manager – Online Strategy and Development – Express News, talked about current trends in web development. His gave special emphasis on what experience user expect in current time from your web site. He also discussed the importance of client side programming for better user experience.

    Last but not least, Jehan ara, President PASHA, gave a keynote in the end encouraging Microsoft Pakistan and developers community.

    I really enjoyed the show and it was well organized. Microsoft Pakistan is really rocking these days and I hope they will bring more detail technical events in the upcoming days.

    Microsoft Bloggers Day

    Microsoft Pakistan, DPE Team, recently organized an event for Bloggers to talk about Windows 7, IE8 and Microsoft initiatives in Pakistan. The event was held at Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC), Karachi, Pakistan on 23rd January, 2010.

    The event was well organized and It was really fun to attend. Following was the agenda:

    • A Dive into Windows 7
      by Zafar Ul-Islam, Enterprise Technology Strategist, Microsoft Pakistan
    • IE8 – The Real Web for the Real World
      by Jibran Jamshad, Technology Consultant, Microsoft Innovation Center Pakistan
    • An overview on Microsoft Pakistan initiatives
      by Naveed Bajwa, Developer & Platform Group Manager, Microsoft Pakistan
    • Open Discussion followed by Lunch

    I enjoyed the Q & A part the most and bloggers really showed their interest in Microsoft Initiatives in the country. We also tweet about the event with hashtag #Win7PK. Also join the Facebook page of Microsoft Pakistan.

    Session Summary: .NET Overview and Visual Studio

    I recently participated as speaker at “MAJU TechCon 2009” held on Saturday, 21st November, 2009. I delivered a session on “.NET Framework and Visual Studio”. The event was day long and targets mostly to students of undergrad and post-grad.

    Adil at MAJU TechCon 09

    The objective of the session was to introduce .NET Framework as a next generation Microsoft platform for building end-to-end applications and why students should learn to program using .NET Framework. Following was the agenda of the session (slide copied):

    AgendaSlide

    At the end, we discussed the upcoming .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, in particular, how .NET 4 address the multi core systems and a little on Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). I also demonstrated small samples on using Parallel APIs in .NET 4.0 Beta.

    In the end, I would like to thank everyone who attended the session. The slides and demo are available on my Box .net folder available, refer to sidebar on right hand side on my blog in folder “MAJU TechCon”.

    Please click here to see my earlier post for information about event schedule and program details.