Just got back from the MVP Summit last evening and boy did we have fun. I’ll be posting about what I’ve seen and heard in the past week as soon as I can figure out which stuff I shouldn’t blog about. Typical of Microsoft, we were asked to sign NDAs on most of the stuff relating to Longhorn, the next Office and the next Visual Studio (not Whideby the one after that).
What I can say though is that I’ve met some truly wonderful people starting with MVPs from all over Asia to Microsofties in Singapore, India and Redmond. I’ve made many friends and jelled with some really, really cool people who do work on the bleeding edge. Man, what more can a geek ask for!
Prasanna’s session on NHibernate at this month’s user group meeting was a really cool eye opener into the world of ORM. I’ve heard a lot about Hibernate never truly realized that it was fast becoming so popular and is now taking on heavyweights like EJBs.
With ObjectSpaces looking more like a distant dream, NHibernate is for the here and now. Prasanna did a really super job in explaining the concepts as well as getting down the nitty gritty and walking us through code demos to show how a refined object oriented architecture can be used to build Enterprise apps. Kudos to him!
Get the slides and the demo from here.
Oh and by the way, since our first anniversary of the .NET User Group is coming up in a couple of months we were planning on holding some sort of tournament that all our user group member could take part in. A lot of ideas were bandied about and we’re now choosing between a six-a-side cricket tournament or an indoor cricket tournament. What do you guys think?
To continue on with yesterday’s post, after the Imagine Cup judging was over all the MVPs got together and went for a night out. We first hung around at the pool parlor waiting for Ed, Stanley and Jinashri to turn up. I’m not much of a pool player but Manzi was a natural. We even had a Manzi vs. Ed with Manzi coming out on top, Ed’s excuse was that he needed some beer to steady his hands.
We then headed over to the bowling alley and the MVPs fired on all guns to leave the Microsoft guys in the dust. Ruwan and Manzi did all the damage. Any MVPs in Singapore who want to take on the Sri Lankan golden boys?
Ed taking aim, while Ruwan goes for his shot.
Stanley taking it cool with the beer and Ruwan in action.
Hmm… Ed and Manzi have seem to have identical bowling styles.
Hey Alan, where’s the ball dude!
With all the work going on at office, I didn’t have much time on my hands to be doing any posting. Anyway this post is way overdue and goes back to the 25th of March when two industry heavy-weights, Duminda Ratnayaka (CEO of Celltel, a visionary who launched the first mobile company in Sri Lanka way back in the early 90s), Dr. Emerick Fernando (another great guy who once used to work at Microsoft and was also CEO of Global Software Labs in Colombo) along with a bunch of MVPs (Prasanna and Wela) and Ed Quek from Microsoft Singapore got together to judge the best teams for the Imaging Cup.
Congratulations to the four teams who made it to the final round of the Sri Lankan leg. One of these teams will be the ultimate winner and will be representing Sri Lanka in the worldwide competitions in Japan.
- Fuzzy Climate (Weather Warning using Human Observation, University of Moratuwa)
- QuickAid (Medical Volunteer System, University of Colombo, Medical Faculty)
- Mobile Reporter (Reporting everything with combined voice data and video, University of Colombo)
- SivuMithun (Purchasing Process for Farmers and Mudalalis, University of Moratuwa)
Ed, Sriyan (Country Manager, Microsoft) and Jinashri (Education Programme Manager, Microsoft) looking on while Duminda talks about the judging outcome.
Dr. Emerick looks on while Duminda does more talking!
Wela on the phone, while Prasanna shows off our potential, his passion!
Manoj has posted the presentation that he made at the last .NET User Group meeting in Colombo. Going by the slides on the presentation it looks like I’ve missed out on one of the best presentations that we’ve had at our user group.
And speaking on Manoj, he’s gotta be one of the best MVP DJ’s that we have. (I wonder how many MVP are DJs?) Manoj was the DJ at my sister’s wedding a couple of weeks ago. And boy was his blend of English, Tamil and Sinhala songs are delight to listen to. It was like listening to a smoothly flowing wave. There weren’t any interruptions or quick bursts from one song to the other. My man Manzi knows what he’s doing.
That reminds me, I haven’t posted the video clips and pics from the Christmas party that Microsoft hosted for us after the ASOCIO. Boy did we have a good time. Manoj, Alanzo (Microsoft) and even Sriyan (Microsoft’s Country Manager) took turns banging away at the guitar.
Manzi rocks! .NET really ‘ROCKS’!
