Microsoft Sri Lanka organized an event-Student CTP today targeting for Students in all the universities in Sri Lanka. Objective of this event was to showcase bleeding edge Microsoft technologies to students and make them aware of those new technologies.

We had few interesting sessions lined up and most of them Wowed the crowd. I did a session on Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 and demonstrated how easy it is to develop data-driven business application without writing code. I had only 30 minutes and couldn’t showcase what I really wanted, and I wish I had more time.

Windows 8 Developer Preview, Virtualization using Windows 8 and Lync were some of the other cool sessions we had in the agenda.

I’m waiting for more and more events like this and talk more about latest technologies and make students aware of them.

I was privileged to unveil Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 today in .NET Forum August meet up and we had over 30 attendees to hear/ learn about Visual Studio LightSwitch.

.NET Forum August - LightSwitch Session

.NET Forum August - LightSwitch Session

.NET Forum August - LightSwitch Session

March/ April are the MCT renewal cycle. Though I didn’t do much Microsoft Official Curriculum trainings during the last year, I enjoy being a both MVP and MCT since I was the 1^st be in my country.

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.

Microsoft accounted Visual Studio Service Pack 1 today and it will be available for MSDN subscribers from tomorrow – 8^th March. General availability will be from 10^th March and we are still waiting to get the complete list of bug fixed and enhancements.

If you are a MSDN subscriber you can download the Visual Studio Service Pack 1 from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/securedownloads/default.aspx

Stay tuned for the complete list of bug fixes and enhancements.

You can see the complete list of new features/ bug fixes part of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 here : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/983509

I got an opportunity to present to my home country once again after 10 months. I delivered the March, 2011 chapter of .NET Forum today.

I selected the same topic I delivered for the last year Tech-Ed India and the reason is I realized that the same session is being repeated in this year Tech-Ed as well. I realized how popular and important this topic is to developers.

The session was all about using Visual Studio 2010 and MSDeploy to deploy ASP.NET application at the speed of thinking. I realized most of the attendees found this topic really interesting and brand-new to them.

I started with an introduction to deployment pain point and then talked about what Visual Studio 2010 and MSDeploy provide us to deploy web applications efficiently.

Presenting @ .NET Forum

Presenting @ .NET Forum

If you are interested in the PPT, here it is: http://www.joyr.ws/downloads/MarDotNetForum.pdf

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.

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.

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

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