.NET From India

Did you say Unbreakable?

Oracle from unbreakable to unpatchable

The title really caught my eye when going thru the latest ZDNet. If you have been reading my blog, you would have found that I was very pessimistic of the unbreakable claim when Oracle started that campaign.

But will it make a difference to Oracle's campaign?? I don't think so as this is not so much in the public eye. If it were a MS hole, every newspaper worth its salt will have its technology writer come up with an article on how bad the situation it is. I am yet to read a print article on the unbreakable claim that has been broken multiple times now.

Java Evolution too slow?

Found this article quite interesting. The problem with Java evolution that is being discussed can actually happen to any technology.

For example, when .NET came and did not have backward compatibility with VB, there was a big hue and cry on loss of backward comapatibility. So a decision had to be made between being compatible of innovation, MS took the plunge and rewrote for the better.

So it should be interesting to see how the Java community handles the tougher moments that will come up in the near future.

Most Innovative country in Europe

This article in Infoworld talks about a study that looks at technology exports, R & D funds etc for various countries in the EU.

Interesting to find Malta makes the most money via technology exports...:-)

Wow!! The Community Launch was Fun

The Community Launch got over.. It was a lot of fun...

We had a more than expected number of people turing up. I think we had around 400 people coming in yesterday and a lot of them had good things to say about the event..:-)

I started off the day and then we had a series of sessions. Logu wowed everyone with his GPS with C# stuff and some of the DirectX based demos..:-)
Then we had Ravi doing SQL Notification stuff. His VPC went for a six and so he was unable to do the planned demos though.

Then I did my VB session. I had almost decided not to use a PPT and go in for a demo only session. But on the last day put together a few slides PPT. But still mine was a high on demos session. Every demo of refactoring I have done till now has got claps from audiences and this one was no exception. I ended the session with a few glimpses on what is to come, LINQ, VB 9 etc...

Then Sankar did a AJAX session and Dhamayanthi closed with a Team System session. Dhamay had almost given up on the demos due to problems with her Laptop, but she worked the whole afternoon and sailed through with her demos in working condition...

I think the Speakers Question Time bought out such a variety of questions that shows the enthusiam and interest in this new technologies inside the group.

Of course the fun part of thambola had everyone laughing and enjoying themselves.

We had tried a few new things this time.
1. Setting up the Experts corner, where the speakers sat. This helps as the members do not have to search for speakers and everyone is in one place.
2. The Media Center PC stall. I think a lot of excitement was generated by this, atleast the crowd before the stall made me think so.

Ofcourse, all of this would not have been possible without the coordination and administrative support from Maha and last minute support from JD. Thanks to both of them..

PS - One of the by products of the event was that a lot of new members joined the group and we swelled to around 4700+ :-)

PS 1 - Logu has uploaded the PPT he used to his blog

Community Launch Tomorow

The Community Launch at CNUG is slated for tomorrow.

An interesting day of technology and fun to look forward to. We have around 450 members signed up to be there. So should be a full house tomorrow.

We have an interesting set of buttons for people to use on thier web site if they are attending.

Some Press

One of my other blogs Indian Consumer got some good press today from The Telegraph, Calcutta.

Article - Helping out, virtually

Chennai Community Launch

With Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Official Launches over in most part of the country, it is time for the UGs to start off. There are a series of so called Community Launches, where the UGs talk about the new technologies that have been released.

At CNUG we are combining this with our delayed third anniversary celebrations and having a full day techno-fun event. If you are in Chennai and are using .NET, this is one event you do not want to miss. All information on the event is available at the CNUG site.