Are you looking for a Virtual Image for the purpose of evaluating SharePoint Server 2010 and related products?

Microsoft provides you 02 Virtual Images which we can run in Hyper-V and these 02 Virtual Images will have all the required components loaded and configured them with the recommended configuration.

Only problem is, we need more RAM and Hard Disk space and also Hyper-V enabled machines in order to use these Virtual Images. And the biggets issue is the download size. It’s almost 14GB.

Thanks a lot Chandana for getting it downloaded for me on time.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c51819b-3d40-435c-a103-a5481fe0a0d2&displaylang=en

Douglas McDowell (CEO-North America-Solidq) pointed out this article.

I hope this is something we all should read.

http://www.sqlmag.com/Articles/ArticleID/103612/103612.html

I have been using Windows 7 RC in my home Desktop until today. And it started giving me a warning to backup my data since it’s going to expire in 12 more days.

Awesome, I can’t believe that I used RC for such a long time. To be honest I didn’t have any reason to upgrade to the RTM version since I didn’t see any problems with the RC release.

Today I will be installing RTM to my Desktop. How many of you still on Windows 7 RC and used it till the last few days?

Guys, I’m really impressed with the feedback you gave me for my TechEd sessions.

Thanks a lot for all of you who took some time to give me your valuable feedback.

Having heard that I’m having the 3rd highest feedback rating (among lot of other world-class speakers), I’m ready to do more and more sessions for you guys to stay aligned with the cutting-edge technologies which Microsoft provides.

Following are the feedback ratings I received from you guys:

• Session: New Language Features in C# 4.0 – Rating: 8.6
• Session: SharePoint Development jus got better – Past, Present & Future  – Rating: 8.0
• Session: SharePoint Server 2010 – Rating: 7.4

Once again thanks a lot for who those who gave me your valuable constructive/ destructive feedback and hope to do better in next TechEd.

And thanks Wela, for giving me the opportunity to wave the Sri Lankan flag.

Today was the busiest day in the TechEd event. I had 02 session, one in the early morning – “New Language Features in C# 4.0“. I had a very good crowd and it was more than the 1st session I did on day 1.

The famous session I did in the afternoon-”SharePoint Development just got better – Past, Present & Future” and it was in the Grand Ballroom-the biggest room we had. It was really interesting to see room-full crowd. I felt very proud and it was one of the best session I did on SharePoint.

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Microsoft Sri Lanka invited me and few other TechEd speakers to present at the event they had organized in Virtusa.

Brian Puhl did a session on Security and I did 01 hour session on Visual Studio 2010 and the enhancements in the area of SharePoint Development in the upcoming release. There was a good crowd around 100 people and apart from the Virtusa guys, there were some invitees from APIIT, Universities, etc…

I managed to showcase most of the IDE features in Visual Studio 2010 and gave them an introduction on how easy it is the development for SharePoint 2010 using Visual Studio 2010.

I didn’t have any sessions scheduled today. I wanted to attend few of sessions. So I was there for the session conducted by my friend-Prasanna.

I spent some time with my MVP colleagues in the MVP stall and then went to do the session at Virtusa.

We started our great Conference – TechEd 2010 today and I presented my 1st session in the evening.

I did “SharePoint Server 2010” session and there were 154 attendees and the room was full. It was very exiting to see such a crowd and I covered few demos during 1 hour session.

My special thanks goes to Wellington Perera for giving me the opportunity to present at this event and also special thanks to Arpan Shah and Inder Rathore for helping me with preparing the PPT.

And the other specialty of this TechEd 2010 Sri Lanka is today 03 SolidQ presenters were presenting and this is for the 1st time in this part of world that 3 SolidQ Mentors participated as speakers in a TechEd.

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Joy @ TechEd 2010

Rushabh & Pinal attending Joy's session @ TechEd 2010

Just 01 more days left for the big IT Conference in Sri Lanka after 3+ years. I’m damn busy with preparing for my sessions though I’m suffering with cold.

I though it’s better if I could share the agenda of my sessions just in case if it’s confusing or difficult to locate my sessions in the agenda.

Come and join with me to discover the power of new technologies.

University of Wayamba is located in Kuliyapitiya-around 02 hours away from Colombo. They organized a 02 days .NET Workshop on 8th and 09th and I did a session on C# Language Features including Visual Studio IDE Features.

There were nearly 25 participants and all of them from 1st & 2nd Year batches. I did a 04 hour session and laid the foundation for them to take it to next level.

Joy and the team @ University of Wayamba

Joy @ University of Wayamba

Sri Lanka is getting ready for another presidential election. And we have stepped to new year-2010. Sri Lankan government announced year 2009 as the year of ICT and English.

In year 2010, Sri Lankan government will continue their investments in the area of ICT and English. As recognized individual in the industry we have been invited to share our ideas with the responsible individuals in the government and today is the 1st of series of Tech Colloquiums going to happen in this year.

Mr. Lalith Weeratunge, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapakse and Major General Shavendra Silva joined from the government while Mr. Sriyan de Silva Wijeyeratne joined from Microsoft Sri Lanka.

The event was held at Cinnamon Lakeside from 5 pm to 8 pm.

Tech Colloquium

January 1st was a very long day because I was waiting for the email from MVP Administrator but it didn’t not reach my inbox. Oh it came on the 2nd.

As I expected they have renewed my MVP status and this is the 3rd time in a row I’m getting nominated as a Microsoft Most valuable Professional (MVP) and the other important thing is they have changed my MVP criteria from Visual C# to SharePoint Server. So that’s it.

I’m very much proud to say I’m the 1st and only SharePoint Server MVP in Sri Lanka.

It’s been a very very long time (3+ years) that we had a TechEd Sri Lanka due to various reasons. Our guys missed a lot of stuffs and it’s time to have one. For those who are not capable of flying out of country and attend any other TechEd events, it’s time to have a TechEd locally.

Guys, get ready and stay tuned…

TechEd 2010 Sri Lanka

Microsoft launches Business Intelligence Developer Network (BIDN) Beta site today. BIDN is a FREE ocean of information starting from novice BI guys to experienced BI guys.

Come and join : http://www.bidn.com/

Guys, long awaiting SharePoint 2010 Beta 1 was released to public last night. If you are a MSDN Subscriber or TechNet Subscriber why wait anymore?

I have already started downloading and its 3% completed.

Guys, Microsoft made available Office 2010 Beta 1 last night for MSDN and TechNet Subscribers to download.

Check it out and I’m already on my way.

If you have a 32-bit implementation of MOSS 2007, you can’t perform an in-place upgrade to SharePoint 2010. Microsoft recommend 1st upgrading from MOSS 2007 32-bit to MOSS 2007 64-bit and then upgrade to SharePoint 2010.

With this best practice, we will be able to identify what assemblies, WebParts, iFilters, 3rd party controls, etc. not supported in 64-bit environment and we can recompile them.

Get ready for SharePoint 2010 upgrade: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=155576

If your existing SharePoint environment on Windows Server 2003 and in 32-bit, Microsoft recommend upgrading from 32-bit to 64-bit and also from Server 2003 to Server 2008 at the same time and then upgrade from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010 as a separate exercise.

With regard to Database server, if you are using SQL Server 2000 in a 32-bit mode, upgrade it to 64-bit SQL Server 2005 SP2 or SQL Server 2008 at the same time and then upgrade it to SharePoint 2010 as a separate exercise.

Don’t mix up architecture upgrade (32-bit to 64-bit), underline product upgrade (Server 2003 t0 2008 & SQL Server 2000 to 2005/ 2008) and SharePoint upgrade since we will not be able to isolate any issues arises.

Have you ever used Content Deployment tool in SharePoint Server 2007?

Have you eve come across of pain in transferring initial data from Development server to Staging server or Staging server to Production server? How did you do that? Backup & Restore? Recreated the entire solution? Did you know the best approach for that?

Well, Content Deployment in SharePoint Server 2007 is designed for transferring initial content including site structure and the master data from Development server to Staging server or Staging server to Production server.

There were not enough information about this tool and here are some good articles:

Escalation Engineer Stefan’s Content Deployment – Best Practices

I have seen the success of this tool with few of our local clients (MAS, Dilmah ).

How many of you like stsadm command? How many operation you have used from the huge list of operations comes with stsadm?

Here is a Silverlight interactive application for you to get familiar with all the stsadm operations and this a very productive application for SharePoint engineers.

It will show you all the stsadm operations and you can click on an operation to get the description, and a link to the full article in TechNet. And you will be able to use the full-text search to search for an operation and locate the required information very easily.

stsadm Technical Reference for WSS 3.0

stsadm Technical Reference for SharePoint Server 2007

Are you .NET Developer and are you looking to taste SharePoint 2010 Development?

Here you have few videos and 10 Hands-On-Labs to get started:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/ee513147.aspx

Last October 19th was a special day for entire world. Microsoft unveiled SharePoint 2010 in SharePoint Conference @ Las Vegas.

We were all under special NDA and our hands were bound by that. I managed to keep my mouth shut and finally we are FREE to talk about it.

I did very 1st session on SharePoint 2010 today @ .NET Forum and we had a very crowd. Most of them from different organizations and that was a very good indication for Microsoft Sri Lanka to judge how customers are waiting to see the product.

There were nearly 70 and I gave more focus on the SharePoint Development area using new Visual Studio 2010 Beta. I covered WebPart development & deployment, LINQ to SharePoint, Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and few other general features.

I noticed how enthusiastic they are and they are in real hunger to see the Beta coming.

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

Joy @ SharePoint 2010 Session

With the key note by Steve Ballmer today (19th) at SharePoint Conference, Microsoft unveiled SharePoint 2010 and they will be releasing 1st public Beta in November.

I’m waiting to see some exiting events happening locally and getting ready for few sessions. I would recommend all those who love to see what’s there in the new version of SharePoint, here is the best starting place:

http://blogs.msdn.com/arpans/archive/2009/10/19/welcome-to-sharepoint-2010.aspx

I always like to read Arpan’s posts and here yet another useful post.

It’s been a long time Microsoft published 3 videos on SharePoint 2010. I’m not sure how many of you have watched them completely.

Here is you get a chance to download them and watch offline:

• Overview Video: 1001251_SharePoint2010_Overview_SneakPeek_Rizzo_mobile.wmv
• Developers Video: 1001251_SharePoint_SneakPeek_For_Developers_Andrew_mobile.wmv
• IT Pro’s Video: 1001251_SharePoint_SneakPeek_For_IT_Professionals_Riley_mobile.wmv

Guys, go ahead and download them for offline view.

I’m very much proud to announce that I have been selected as a Mentor for Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ) today.

My special thanks goes to Rushabh Mehtha, Managing Director, Solid Quality India (Pvt.) Ltd. and my CEO – Keith Samuel for the recommendation and the guidance towards this achievement in my life. It was a very tough task becoming a Mentor in SQM since we have very few, handful Mentors around the globe. I got the God’s blessing to become the 1st ever in Sri Lanka and this is a great great achievement in my career.

My area of Mentoring will be SharePoint and Custom Development and i will get the opportunity work with great set of highly skilled individuals in future.

What is SolidQ?

“Solid Quality Mentors (http://www.solidq.com) is comprised of more than 100 of the world’s top technical experts who specialize in assuring client success using integrated Microsoft technologies. Since being founded in 2002, we have become a trusted global provider of advanced education and solutions for Microsoft Data Management and Development platforms.

As a global provider of training, mentoring, and support, Solid Quality Mentors creates unique offerings, crafted specifically for your organization’s needs. We work daily with the constantly evolving SQL Server and Microsoft Business Intelligence platforms to ensure that your company achieves optimum performance from their Microsoft IT investment and takes advantage of the latest database application features to remain competitive in this ever-changing industry.”

Solid Quality Mentors (SolidQ)

Microsoft’s new financial year started by talking to all the Microsoft managed partners and they introduced new product which they want partners to focus and sell during next financial year.

There were nearly 120 participants including CEOs, CTOs, Sales & Marketing, Technical Specialists, etc. and there were 2 tracks-Business Forums and Technical Track.

I was asked to present SharePoint Server 2007 and to talk about the selling point so that partners can go and sell SharePoint 2007.

I covered all the key features in SharePoint Server 2007 and focused more on the verticals such as Business Process Management, Content Management, Search which every organization can focus in their initial implementations.

Joy @ Microsoft Partner Kick-off