K-MUG Session

Yesterday I came to attend the monthly user group meet organised by Kerala Microsoft User Group(K-MUG) held at Orion. Being a technology enthusiast I always enjoy being part of such tech communities, which really helps one to keep posted with the current developments in and around the developer arena; moreover I see events like these as venue to meet and network with like minded professionals in the industry as well.

The session kickstarted with "Design Patterns in .Net" by Yanesh Tyagi. He started by discussing on Gang Of Four patterns, which was well covered by backing with real time scenarios on when and where to apply these patterns. The best part of the session was the code demo, where he showed patterns in action with sample applications using C#. While discussing the "Null Object" pattern, a question turned out from the audience like can a line be drawn between a Null Object pattern and a Monad.The session was well delivered and shed insight on how the GoF patterns can be put to use for writing better libraries and frameworks. 

The second session was by me, which was on "Profiling & Instrumenting .NET Applications". The talk started with a brief overview on the types of software profilers, which was followed by a demo on profiling .NET applications with CLR Profiler, Performance Monitor and the VS.NET 2010. Some of the common caveats which could lead to memory leaks in .NET applications were also discussed during the session.

While the final session was on "JavaScript MVVM in ASP.NET with KnockoutJS" by Shiju Varghese. The presentation started with why one should use KnockoutJS (A JavaScript library by Steven Sanderson's a Program Manager for Microsoft), the talk moved on to discussing its technology\browser agnostic nature and the minimal footprint in of terms of file size. Thereafter he demoed a simple web application written in ASP.NET. The demo application implemented two way data binding at the client side using KnockoutJS. I was amazed to see how easy it was to implement such a kind of functionality using KnockoutJS, with very minimal lines of code. I would say every web developer should give it a try.

If you wish to present a topic which you feel like worth sharing, then please feel free to drop in a mail to admin@k-mug.org

Microsoft User Group Meet

Its a pleasure for me to invite you for the forthcoming Kerala - Microsoft User Group meet to be held on 9th July 2011 at Orion India Systems, 2nd floor, Tejomaya, Info park. At this event, I will be speaking on 'SharePoint 2010 Programming'. My session will be targeted for those who are new to SharePoint 2010 Development or wish to have a sneak preview of what SharePoint is all about(in short).

Well here's the agenda for the event.



09:30 - 09:40 Community updates
09:40 - 10:40 C# Test Automation by Praseed
10:40 - 11:20 Silverlight - Prism by Mahima
11:20 - 11:40 Tea Break (15 min)
11:40 - 12:30 Sharepoint 2010 programing by Abraham
12.30 - 01:00 Ask the experts

For registration and other details, you can check out here at the K-MUG site. I hope to see you at the event; till then happy coding!!!

Whats next after MVP?

I happened to meet an a guy who was an MVP in SharePoint, naturally that made me to get to know more on the MVP program and its benefits. During the talk, he was mentioning about his acquaintance who is a Microsoft Regional Director. Initially I was under that impression that the person he was referring to is an Microsoft employee, but later only I did realize the fact that 'Microsoft Regional Director' is a title awarded by Microsoft for those, whose contributions had inspired and had made a positive impact on the technical community at large through delivering speeches and presentations at major events like PDC, TechED, MIX etc. The crux with 'Microsoft Regional Directors' is that, they are the champions of Microsoft technologies and above the MVP's.

I think you must have heard about this guy 'Scott Hanselman'. He is a popular figure in Microsoft community programmes, who was conferred with Microsoft Regional Director status.

While searching on this elite Microsoft programme, I came to stumble upon some links that sheds some light on 'Microsoft Regional Director' (RD) programme, here are they. 

Who are the Microsoft Regional Directors? - By "J Michael Palermo"

Microsoft Regional Directors site. Here in this site, RD's from all around the world are listed by their names. I came to see that N.America happened to be region with the most number of RD's. Here's some more titles which you might see occasionally with professionals evangelizing Microsoft products\services.