The Tech.ed took place at the Lalit Ashok hotel,not from where I was living. The heavy and un -predictable traffic of Bangalore meant that I had to start at least an hour before to reach the venue on time.With lots of expectations and a bit of anxiety, I made it to the venue.It was nice to attend the conference without any registration fees, Kudos to my MVP team lead Abhishek Kanth for lobbying on our behalf! First thing, I met my friend Pranav at the hotel.Pranav is an active member of the Microsoft User Group Hyderabad.
[caption id="attachment_972" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="At the Tech.ed Expo"]
[/caption]While there were plenty of tracks and sessions taking place for IT pros and Developers,I wanted to concentrate on the MVP sessions and round tables which were to take place through out those three days.I spent some time in attending some sessions on HTML5,Sql server, and Windows Azure.
Highlights of the Event :
On the first day, we had the "Meet your MVP" session. An opportunity to know and interact with all the attending MVP's and User Group Leads.I was quite surprised to find a couple of them from Hyderabad! They all had the same feeling too.We never knew there were 8 to 9 MVP's from the city.In all 35 MVP's and a couple of User group leads and Community members attended the session. Our team Lead Abhishek Kanth explained the agenda behind the meet and gave us a broader outline of what was in store in the coming days
[caption id="attachment_974" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Abhishek Kanth explaining the agenda"]
[/caption][caption id="attachment_978" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="At the "Meet the MVP" session"]
[/caption]I figured out that most of them were from either ASP or Sql based backgrounds.I guess I will find more of them from my category at the MVP open day.We introduced ourselves,explained how it all started and shared a bit about the online communities,blogs and forums which we regularly participate in.Having settled down at the venue it was time to set out and attend some sessions/tracks on .NET since consider my self a noob in that domain.I also tried out some cool stuff for the first time,like the Microsoft Kinect Gaming Controller and The Microsoft Surface
[caption id="attachment_976" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Trying out the Kinect Device"]
[/caption]As an MVP I had a unique opportunity to interact with some folks from Microsoft who are behind some of its emerging technologies like Windows Azure,IE9 and the Common Language Run time in Visual Studio.We met Bharat Shah(General Manager, Developer Experience ) ,Jason Zander(Corporate Vice President ,Visual Studio) and Brian Hall (General Manager for IE9 and Windows Live) and Yousef Khalidi(Distinguished Engineer,Windows Azure)
[caption id="attachment_977" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Round table meet with Yousef Khalidi, Distinguished Engineer Windows Azure"]
[/caption]There was some great food and and the ending of the tech.ed had a surprise in store for us.Cricketing legend Anil Kumble took the stage and answered a couple of questions about the lessons he learnt in his life and shared some wisdom for us to grasp.Over all the attending the event was worth it and I am really looking forward to the MVP Open day at the India Development Center in Hyderabad in sometime around May.
[caption id="attachment_979" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Cricket Legend Anil Kumble at the Tech.ed"]
[/caption]I am leaving this place today with many good memories.I may come back in the future to this garden city.But till then Adios Bangalore!
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