It was great to see more than 2500 attendees and most of them were from different part of the country-India. There was no SharePoint session in Day 1 and Day 2 was targeted for SharePoint Administrators we had 05 sessions in the SharePoint Administration track. All 05 sessions had room-full crowd and it was interesting to see a very active Q & A sessions at the end of every session.

Day 3 was my day and it was the day we had to lock the session hall doors due to large audience. We had 05 great SharePoint sessions targeted for developers and some people didn’t move out of the room because they didn’t want to stand for the next session. My session was just after lunch and it was great to see people were coming in even 10-15 minutes before session star time. I couldn’t finish all my demos due to limited time and I had to answer the questions while the next session is going on. Overall, I’m very glad to see 350+ audiences for the session and it was very fruitful for all of them.

Joy @ Tech-Ed India 2011

Joy @ Tech-Ed India 2011

Big crowd for SharePoint Sessions

Joy @ Tech-Ed India 2011

My session listed among other sessions

Apart from the technical side of the event, it was my pleasure to meet my Indian MVP colleagues once again. I will never ever forget how they treated me and how happy they were when they noticed one of the big vertical banners had my face. Even I got surprised to see that and I’m very much grateful to Microsoft Learning for helping me to build my brand all over the world.

Microsoft Learning Banner

Also I cannot forget how privileged we are to have a special round-table discussion with Brian Hall – General Manager – Internet Explorer and Windows Live and we had a nearly 03 hour session talking about the future of Internet Explorer and Windows Live.

Round table with Brian Hall

Finally, my special “Thank You..!” goes to Harish Ranganathan and Vinod Kumar for fighting very hard to position me among the other great speakers and keeping trust on me. This was my 2^nd Tech-Ed India appearance and looking forward to continue this with all of your support. I will not be able to forget 23^rd – 25^th March, 2011 and it will be one of the greatest memories in my life.

People, who couldn’t make it to Tech-Ed India this time, keep on checking http://www.microsoft.com/india/teched2011/default.aspx for the recorded sessions.

Tech-Ed India 2011

Tech-Ed is an international annual technical conference organized by Microsoft Corporation in every continent to deliver high-quality technical content for the software professionals around the world. Microsoft India hosts Tech-Ed India every year and captures more than 2500 attendees and delivers more than 200 in-depth technical sessions over period of 03 days. Tech-Ed India delivered by more than 30 international speakers and they contribute to the success of this event by bringing their real-world industry experience to software professionals in India.

This 03-day event will focus on technical education, product evaluation and community. The event will include: Keynotes by Senior Microsoft Executives, Breakout Sessions, Hands-on-Labs, Instructor-led Labs, Product Team Tents, Free Microsoft Certification, Community Programs, Solution Expo, and many more social gatherings and opportunities for networking everywhere you look.

Tech-Ed-India 2011 for the 18th time will feature 200+ Deep-Dive Breakout Sessions, 20 Technology Tracks, 20 + Instructor-led Hands-on-Labs from 23rd March to 25th March, 2011. More information about the conferences is available here: http://www.microsoftteched.in

I will be speaking at the Tech-Ed India for the 2^nd time and I’m very happy to share my experience in the SharePoint Development track. Below is the information about my session if you are planning to attend:

Session Title: Developing real-life business process automation application with SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010

Session Abstract: SharePoint is considered as one of the best workflow hosting environments within Microsoft technology stack. Latest release of SharePoint product has been enhanced with lot of new features to make SharePoint is the ideal platform for building real-life business processes. While tools such as Browser, Visio 2010 and SharePoint Designer 2010 have improved a lot there is always big room for Visual Studio to play when building powerful workflows. Let’s build a powerful workflow with Visual Studio 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

What am I going to cover: I will be covering mainly what are the workflow changes in SharePoint 2010. I will be spending less time with the slides and more time with my Demos. I will be doing 02 demos, 1^st one will demonstrate the new reusable workflow development feature building to SharePoint Designer 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. Second demo will cover developing a workflow using Visual Studio 2010 including InfoPath Forms to capture user data, Custom Association Form developed with InfoPath to capture configuration data, Custom ASP.NET-based Initiation Form to capture workflow initiation data and a Custom Task Form developed with InfoPath to help continuity of the process flow.

Session Timing: 25^th March, 02 PM – 03 PM

After I came back to Sri Lanka, I started delivering MOCs again and I renewed my MCT for the 7^th consecutive time without any hesitation.

I need to mention that their new online payment and renewal process is a very big improvement.

Hoping to deliver lots and lots of MOCs for our Sri Lankan students/ employees.

Here they come…

• Session 1 – Deploying Web Apps at the speed of your Thinking – 6.44 (no of participants-462)
• Session 2 – SharePoint 2010 Workflows – 7.21 (no of participants-244)

Overall average for the Tech-Ed India event was 7.13

Thanks a lot for the people who joined with me for those 02 sessions and really appreciated your feedback.

Hope to do couple more great session in year 2011.

We see lot of organizations who do consulting on SharePoint, they have their web site running on either open source or any other technology. But we decided to set an example to our customers and partners by hosting our site with the technology we promote. We have our global site running on top of SharePoint Server 2010 and this exercise was started when the product was in beta.

I’m glad that now I have a real-life example to show to all my students apart from Microsoft SharePoint site. My salute to our IT Support team for their great effort.

I was lucky to get 02 break-out sessions, one in Web Development track and the other in SharePoint Development track.

There were more than 2,000 attendees and it was very exciting to see all of them in a big hall waiting for Visual Studio 2010 launch. We were lucky to launch the Visual Studio 2010 before all others around the world due to our time-zone. Mr. Somasegar along with few other guest launched Visual Studio 2010 during Tech-Ed India 2010.

Talking about my sessions, this is was the largest crowd, venue I have addressed. My 1^st session was in Day 1 and it was in a very very big hall with 7 big projector screens. There were more than 500 people in the session and it was very interactive though it was the last session in Day 1.

My 2^nd session was in Day 3 and it was about SharePoint Workflows. Though that was not such a big hall like the previous one, I had a room-full crowd for the session. Some people were even ready to scarify few minutes from their lunch to stay back and discuss some of the questions/ doubts regarding the technology.

This was my 1^st Tech-Ed experience in India and I will be definitely doing better in 2011.

My special thanks to Rushabh Mehta and  Pinal Dave for encouraging me all the time and very special thanks to Vinod Kumar and Harish Ranganathan for the opportunity to given to present in Tech-Ed India.

Keynote

Soma @ Keynote

Soma Announcing Visual Studio 2010

Demo of Visual Studio 2010

Demo of Visual Studio 2010

Kamal Announcing SQL Server 2008 R2

Me, Harish and Vinod

I have successfully renewed my Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) credentials for year 2010.

As you remember last year i blogged about the new experience of MCT renewal and even this year they have done the same thing. We now have option to pay by credit card and renew. Hope MCT team will improve it a lot by year 2011.

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.

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

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)