On March, the 30th and 31st Microsoft Bulgaria organized the Microsoft Days 2010, Annual Conference dedicated to the latest technologies (from Windows 7 to Windows Azure, from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Office and Visual Studio 2010).
Highlighting the presence of Microsoft technical spokespersons and Microsoft MVPs (very well represented by Martin Kulov and Emil Stoychev), the agenda has not been finalized yet but, looking at the speakers, I guess it will be a 2 days deep dive into some of the most important Microsoft technologies.
You can register here while, if you wish to know more, make sure to check the Event Facebook Page and their tweets !
Link to: Дни на Майкрософт 2010
With the motto “Meet, Learn, Share”, the .NET Communities, DevLeap and the Italian DPE Academic Team organized the first Italian Community .NET event in collaboration with the University of Rome, Software Engineering Department.
On March the 13th, the local communities & User Groups ASPItalia, DotNetRomacestà and UgiDotNet, together with the Microsoft Student Partners, will meet local developers and students in an 8 rooms venue.
Delivering almost 30 sessions right now split on 4 parallel tracks for the following areas: WEB – Design – Languages – Mobile, plus one path focused on job opportunities (as you can see by the agenda), the “speaker bureau” highlights some of the most popular local developers, Microsoft MVPs (Daniele Bochicchio, Andrea Saltarello, Cristian Civera, Alessio Leoncini, Marco Russo, Marco Leoncini and Stefano Mostarda) and professional Microsoft Student Partners holding different sessions covering from Web development to SQL Server, from Windows Azure to C#, etc.
If you wanna know more about it, be sure to follow them and ask me if you need any translation (just the language, not the code 
) !!
Link to: .NET Campus 2010
On the 23rd of January, the UgiALT.NET User Group organized its 5th technical conference.
This conference will be hold as an open space, with sessions requested before the event. 4 meeting rooms, 4 tracks (ALT.NET methodologies & practices, Mobile Development, web developing and Beyond .NET) and the possibility to host up to 150 attendees.
Highlighting MVPs Ugo Lattanzi, Hadi Hariri (Spain), Simone Chiaretta (event organizer, together with other community members), Gian Maria Ricci and Davide Mauri, the conference will see important local and international developer speakers and consultants.
You can find the agenda and the list of speakers here. Also, if you want to be updated on the UG activities, you can subscribe its twitter account !
Link to: V UgiALT.net Conference - UGIALT.net
Let me share with you an interesting offer from MVP Andrei Ignat, Visual C# and VB .NET programmer with experience in developing programs that interacts with databases.
When ASP.NET MVC has been developed, he became a fanatic. And he worked with great pleasure on developing sites with MVC.
So he put his experiences with ASP.NET MVC in a mini-e-book "ASP.NET MVC Tips and tricks". The book is about best practices with ASP.NET MVC - both on server side and on client side. Also, for Romanian readers he’s offering the same book for free: http://serviciipeweb.ro/iafblog/2009/11/30/ASPNETMVCMiniEBook.aspx
He would like to thank the following people that helped him to improve it:
Jeremy Skinner (which suggestions, corrections and feedback were terrific!); Bogdan Maxim, who showed him mistakes related to photos/formatting and gave him suggestions on content; Mecu Sorin AKA Yoda - for additional suggestions on the subject; Stefan Pirvu AKA Strofo, - for suggestions on formatting and content for the book; Alin Berce - for suggestions on wording issues; Catalin Gheorghiu AKA Mr.Smersh, for pictures, code and resources. And for the suggestions he should’ve been used and code corrections Andrei Rinea, for details of the book; Gabriel Enea, Senior Software Developer, founder of www.joobs.ro for services, support, reviews and suggestions; Aurelian Popa for content, formatting and suggestions; Timothy Dolean, for suggestions on content and formatting; Tudor Turcu for suggestions on content. Last but not least, for every book that is bought through Amazon, he’s also offering one hour of programming/consultancy for free.
Just send him the Amazon confirmation or any document you have certifying that you bought the book and he’ll contact you back (ignatandrei@yahoo.com) !
Tags: books ASP.NET Romania MVC CEE developers
On January 23rd, it will be held the first online EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) Sharepoint Conference, covering all the different timezones, called “SharePoint Saturday EMEA”
Featuring MVPs Ágnes Molnár (Hungary), Claudio Brotto (Italy), Jan Tielens (Belgium), Marwan Tarek (Egypt), Mostafa Elzoghbi (USA), Muhanad Omar (Jordan), Nicolas Georgeault (France), Steve Smith (United Kingdom), Zlatan Dzinic (South Africa) and other important IT Professionals and Developers from all around the Globe,
“the SharePoint Saturday EMEA is a global event, with participating speakers calling in from various locations around the world. We have confirmed the following speakers and will be posting their abstracts of the sessions as soon as they are available”
The agenda is pretty intense, covering all the aspects of SharePoint 2010, so be sure to be on spot using #SPSEMEA with your tweets and register here !!
Link to: Home - Live Online SharePoint Saturday EMEA
On the 2nd of February, the most important local .NET User Group (UgiDotNet) organized a technical workshop dedicated to the “envisioning”
Featuring MVPs Raffaele Rialdi, Corrado Cavalli and Andrea Saltarello, the event will be divided in 2 tracks covering different aspects of developing: from Silverlight to Web Solutions from an Architect perspective to Windows 7 multitouch sensors. Follow this link to register !
Link to: Workshop "UGIdotNET feat. Community Tour" - UGIdotNET
Hi all,
and here we are, after the long break, having parties and dinners with families and all, trying to put the mind back into business (
). I hope you all had a great time and enjoyed your holidays as I did. I’m very proud to announce the new Awarded Microsoft MVPs in the Countries I represent, as of the 1st of January, 2010:
(for privacy reasons, the list will be shortly updated) – updated
And of course a BIG WELCOME BACK to all the re-awarded ones: your activities in the online and offline communities have been positively appreciated by Microsoft again so you deserved it once again !!!!
Guys, you’re still on time to participate to the MVP Global Summit so hurry up with the registration and all !!
If you want to know more about the MVP Award Program, and maybe you think you’re on the right track to get it, please check the Official blog, the official twitter account and mine 
4Developers is one of the biggest programming event in Poland – 400 developers, 4 parallel tracks and more than 30 speakers ! 4Developers is a professional, technical conference for developers, project managers and all students interested in programming. It is a place to discuss latest developments, share experience, ideas and find solutions for most common issues concerning writing, testing, debugging and maintaining the code. 4Developers will be divided into 4 independent tracks to discuss technology and issues that arise in every software company
The event will take place on March 26th, 2010 in Poznan, Poland and of course there will be many MVPs attending as speakers !
But, if you wanna be part of the speakers’ crew, you have until the January 25th to submit your topics here !
Link to: 4Developers
The guys from VB Tips & Tricks did it again ! What ?
Yes, they wanted it so hardy they couldn’t resist and now what do we have?
A great new online and offline Community dedicated to Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight!
Yes it looks very promising as I see Alessandro Del Sole, Antonio Catucci and Renato Marzaro 100% involved in this !! Good job guys and keep up the good work !
Link to: Home Page di WPF Tips & Tricks
Last month, Microsoft Cyprus organized the New Efficiency Launch, called Microsoft Momentum 2009, dedicated to both ITPros and Developers.
During the event, the popular Cyprus .NET User Group (CDNUG) organized a community area where attendees and community members could reach UG Leads and Microsoft MVPs and network each other.
Artemakis Artemiou, Microsoft MVP and INETA Country Lead, together with Bojan Mijuskovic, Community members and my colleague and friend Karl Davies-Barrett, DPE Evangelist for Malta and Cyprus, talked about SQL Server 2008 R2, Excel 2010 PowerPivot (aka Gemini), SharePoint 2010 and Windows Azure.
While you can enjoy a summary and pictures here, be sure check out the User Group website for new upcoming events in the beautiful island !
Link to: Cyprus .NET User Group (CDNUG) - Microsoft Momentum 2009
And here we are, the Sinergija 09 event is almost over, but I still had the chance to have a quick chat with Tomislav Bronzin.
Tomislav is a Microsoft MVP, Regional Director and INETA Europe Vice President.
And here are some insights and suggestions for User Groups and Communities: hope you’ll enjoy it 
Interview with Tomislav Bronzin, Solutions Architect MVP
As Tomislav said during the interview, you can reach him offline at the next Developers BootCamp event…
Cristian Lefter, SQL Server MVP from Romania, kindly agreed on having a small talk about about his experience as a community contributor, UG Lead and MVP in Romania.
Interview with Cristian Lefter, SQL Server MVP
Cristian is the User Group Lead of the Romanian SQL Server User Group so you can reach him there 
and here we are again, late in the evening and after a great community roundtable with Microsoft MVPs, community leaders and students (I’ll post some photos very soon!), having a short talk with Tudor Damian, Virtual Machine MVP.
Interview with Tudor Damian, Virtual Machine MVP
This time I had the pleasure to interview Zeljka Knezovic, Communications Server MVP from Croatia. Zeljka is Senior Advisor for teachers who teach Computer Science in primary and secondary schools in the Education and Teacher Training Agency of Croatia.
Interview with Zeljka Knezovic, Communications Server MVP
See you tomorrow for more fast facts and chit-chatting ! 
..and here is another chance to meet a CEE MVP “face-to-face”:
Andrej Radinger, one of the most popular Windows Mobile trainer and speaker in the field (you can probably meet him @ Mobility Day events) and INETA speaker in Central and Eastern Europe. But let’s listen to his story:
Interview with Andrej Radinger, Windows Mobile MVP
(I’m sorry for the zooming feature: my camera is pretty good with pictures but not as good with videos 
)
