It had to happen. Two years ago I made a conscious decision to make my family the center of my universe and my #1 priority. Joshua is now 16 months and Rafael is 2 months old, these are the best years of my life and I want to make every minute count with them!

This of course means sacrifices and the MVP is one of them. However it does not take away the immense joy and satisfaction I get from seeing the Sri Lanka .NET user group grow to be one of the largest in the country. And Wela has a few more tricks up his sleeve so keep watch.

One of the cool things that happened at the MVP Summit this year was that I got to meet two people I really admire and both of them are Scotts.

What was even cooler was that Scott Hanselman recognized me at the summit, now that's one cool dude who knows his readers. Hai there Scott!

If your in the local forum you'll know by now that I'll be speaking today on RAD as in RoR speed.

What's funny is the 'About the author: (Same as before)' on the session outline.

Dinesh, our very own SQL Server MVP, just announced the launching of the SQL Server User Group along with an online forum for all things SQL Server at www.sqlserveruniverse.com. They'll be holding their inaugural user group meeting this Thursday at the Microsoft office.

Way to go!

Microsoft Sri Lanka is offering a generous gift (limited number) this Christmas season to all dotnetforum community members on a first come first serve basis.

The only catch being that the exam voucher expires on 31-Dec-2006, so you'll need to be ready to do the exam in super quick time.

The voucher entitles you to take one of the following exams:

- 70-431: TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - Implementation and Maintenance
- 70-536: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 – Application Development Foundation
- 70-551: UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Web Develop by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
- 70-552: UPGRADE: MCAD Skills to MCPD Windows Developer by Using the Microsoft .NET Framework
- 70-553: UPGRADE: MCSD Microsoft .NET Skills to MCPD Enterprise Application Developer by Using the Microsoft  .NET Framework: Part 1
- 70-235: TS: Developing Business Process and Integration Solutions Using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006

If you are interested please get in touch with Wela (BTW I just found out that he’s our new Developer Evangelist) on 777.281.021.

Another humble request is to not waste this precious resource as you might be depriving someone else a chance if you do get the voucher and not take the exam.

Thanks a lot for all the positive feedback I’ve been hearing from you guys on yesterday’s presentation. I need to make a public apology to Manzi though, sorry man for cutting into your presentation time.

As promised you can download the .NET 3.0 Overview Presentation [10MB]. Ed saved my day but had to fight the devil himself to get this presentation across to me.

Julie Lerman has a good post that clarifies .NET roadmap and word soup. If you missed my session yesterday check out the video of a similar session from Tech.Ed Australia at Charles Strelings’s blog. I spent a whole night poring through the presentation to figure out the demo script and I’m glad you all enjoyed it.

FYI: The official .NET Framework 3.0 site is at www.netfx3.com

I will be presenting an ‘Introduction to the .NET Framework 3.0’ today at the October User Group meeting which will be held at the Microsoft – Sri Lanka. 

Manoj too will be co-presenting with me on Atlas, so remember to drop in early before the house gets full.

NB: If your planning on attending, you might be interested in checking this post http://dotnetforum.lk/forums/18769/ShowPost.aspx.

Quick note out to all you guys that we’ve shifted the user group meeting to the Microsoft office at WTC and unfortunately you can only attend if you registered early due to seating issues.

Don’t keep that from holding you back though, feel free to gate crash if you don’t mind standing!

Remember: There will be no UG meeting at Gateway, Borella instead at Microsoft, 31st Floor, West Wing, WTC.

This month’s user group meeting would go down as one of the funnier ones. Imagine me presenting in a pitch dark room with no lights, I only realized how hilarious it was after I saw Wela doing his presentation (mine was the first). All I could see from the back was his black silhouette against the presentation backdrop. I would definitely have been a sight to watch (and not in a good way).

Overall I enjoyed doing yesterday’s presentation which had zero demos, but we really did spend time drilling through the CLR, exception handling, garbage collection best practices with a heavy dose of the IDisposable interface thrown in for good measure.

If you were at yesterday’s session please do leave your comments (both good and bad are equally welcome).

I’ll also post the link to the slide once Wela uploads them somewhere.

Wela’s presentation on CSS, Themes and Skins was quite insightful. I learnt a couple of tricks including Style Hierarchies in CSS as well as the abc’s on ASP.NET Theming.

After a gruelling 3 hours the winners of Imagine Cup ‘06 were announced for the Sri Lanka. It was great to see the time and effort that all the teams had put into preparing their presentations. There were video clips and full 3D animations to convey the solutions they were offering.

Unfortunately although four of the five finalists were from Colombo University, it was the team from Moratuwa University that stole the crown. There were lots of opinions on who should have wont it, and my take on the matter is that although there were better polished and more complete solutions it was the Panchayudha solution which had a unique outlook on solving a real world problem and doing so, they have a better prospect representing Sri Lanka at the global finals.

Kudos to Jina from Microsoft who organized and ran the entire show which went quite well given the logistics of planning an event with over 20 students presenting.