We had a fantastic Community Techday at JSS Center for Management Studies, SJCE Campus, Mysore on Feb 20, 2010. The program was scheduled to begin at 9:30am. People were already present by 9:45am. Pooran Prasad whose scheduled talk about ASP.NET 3.5 and WCF, called me previous night that since some relatives have come to his house suddenly, he will not be able to come. I contacted Renuka Prasad, whose session was next at 11:30am and requested him to come early so that he can start an additional session at10am. he and Vinod Kumar were traveling together from Bangalore. Eeven though they started at 6:30am from Banasavadi bangalore, they reached the venue at 10:30am.
Since they were not seen, I started my keynote and went on and on till they came. I made the keynote session very lively by giving lot of anecdotes, the journey of Windows from version 1 to 7, giving lot of examples of all those software that we used in between. I made it very interactive, every time asking questions to the audience. Hey, I could have converted that session into a quiz session and given away all those goodies. But I did not do so.
Renukaprasad started with Sketchflow. After tea-break, he took the session on Silverlight. As usual, people appreciated all those examples and demos shown by him. Then the great SQL champ Vindo Kumar took over the stage. People were simply engrossed in his demo of tips and tricks with SQL Server. When it comes to SQL Server, there are very few speakers in India who can match Vinod Kumar. I heard people talking during lunch time that their colleagues who did not come for the event did really missed a very good session. They even called their colleagues to join the afternoon session and the audience number increased post-lunch.
First session after lunch is normally very difficult for the speaker. He has to make sure that no one sleeps. That task was very weel handled by the Vic. He took a session on Expression Blend. No need to say anything about Vic. All those who are regular to Microsoft events know how good speaker is Vic.
Since Vinod wanted to go back to Bangalore, myself and he swapped our sessions. He did a good session on tips and tricks with Office. He also gave sneek previoew of Office 2010.
Then it was my turn to talk about Windows7. It was more like a dual speaker session with Vic adding many points missed out by me. Sometimes he was adding the points which were there in my agenda 2-3 slides down. I believe people enjoyed this session as well. That’s what they told me at the end.
Last session was again by Vic. he gave a demo of the new programmability features of Windows7. One can write programs in .NET making use of these features. He had brought some sensor board with him. he connected that to his laptop and showed how the sensor features work like sensing the direction, light, touch, etc.
At the end I picked up names from the box and gave away the goodies. They were licensed copies of Microsoft Flight simulator 2004 and some T-shirts.
Over all a very good program as per the feedback that I received. many people were expressing their interest to attend many more such events.
Thanks to all those who made it a memorable day by participating. I am extremely thankful to the speakers Renukaprasad, Vinod Kumar and Vic, who came all the way from Bangalore spending a whole day to share their expertise with the IT folks of Mysore. It will be my fault if i don’t mention and thank two persons who worked silently to make the event happen. They are Ravichandra and Suresh. They did travel to many IT companies in Mysore and distributed the posters and brochures. Most people who came to the programs are due to these brochures.
Photos at http://mysoregeeks.com/photo-gallery/?album=CommunityTechdayFeb202010
