We talked about Rizky’s project on SmallTalk with real time queued message processing. Chris shared the WCF option and BizTalk options on Message Bus, architectures and reasons for going to the cloud. Since @AntonDelsink was present we left well informed on Azure options. @zubairdotnet snagged up the Pluralsight prize again this month, next month he’ll work for a company that has a membership.

Looking forward to seeing you at our next event! Photo courtesy of @zubairdotnet.

We had a broad conversation all over the spectrum. Memorable topics: @zubairdotnet presented his tool on Windows Mango to arrange for a Cab in Dubai Based on your geo-location. The service however is not running on TRA side. @gurshinder proposed to develop a parking service instead, however there is no central repository of parking pay terminals to math them with the nearest of your geo-location. Thoughts bend around place, and duration. nice features would be a reminder and add-payment options… @gurshinder displayed on his iPad a nice application FlightRadar that shows all air-traffic movement in UAE, the application would also show movement in Europe however Asia and Americas are blocked, and do not disclose this type of information.

Usama shared when he worked with the cosmos virtual area projection on a 10’ wall of live data feeds from the military field. similar direct data using avatars. @zubairdotnet won a card from PluralSight for one Month of prepaid access to their learning content! I heard most of you came a week earlier as well! I appreciate the interest! Please note that the Open Coffee is every third Wednesday of the month at Time Square Centre Caribou coffee shop. Feel free to socialize outside of these moments, and please let me know the attendance, perhaps we can raffle off some sponsor goodies!

And traditionally let’s have the snap of the brave staying long enough to have a snap taken courtesy of @zubairdotnet, and a nice enough lady (no handle) to snap it.

Techies Shared the goodies from PluralSight with @antondelsink (T-shirt) and @magdyroshdy (one month membership).

Thank you @webnoel, @misrtophiles, and @rizvinazish for taking part in the raffle. All attending Techies Thank you for making this night a very fine tech MEF night! Find more on Mair’s Linked in profile.

Rizky did more than just cover QR-Codes he showed what it can do:

• B-card
• V-card
• website link
• geo location

Read all about that on sites like Wikipedia. The true nature was understanding it’s structure and how and where we could apply the QR-code. Rizky Covered:

• Decoding: image -> decode -> parse -> text
• Encode: text -> parse -> encode -> image
• Android development
• Android SDK
• Eclipse -> SDK extensions
• Think about explicit uses-permission (camera, read contacts, write external storage).
• Development experience is a bit more complex than VS

Rizky also did a great job on detailing the thoughts behind running on a mobile device, covering events such as:

• onCreate
• onPause
• onResume

But also paying attention to the contextual system (mobile phone) for:

• Tomb Stoning (you may not be around to do much when a call comes in)
• Intent (what does the user want to do with the app/plug in)
• Activity (when I do get processor time what should I do)

I have had a blast, it was on a Saturday! I hope you had the same take-away I have had! if not feel free to comment!

Dear Techie, a message from Microsoft:

Microsoft is pleased to announce the availability of Microsoft Web Camp in Dubai.  This is a worldwide event that teaches individuals how to build websites using ASP.NET MVC, WebMatrix, OData and more.

This Web Camp will cover the following:

• Opening Address, Michael Mansour
• Development on Internet Explorer 9, Shaymaa Al-Terkait
• Building an eCommerce Site in 13 Minutes with Web Matrix, Asli Bilgin
• Creating Cutting Edge Websites for Phones, Slates and Beyond with WebMatrix and VS2010, Ronald Widha and Zubair Ahmad
• Q&A with Pizza Dinner and drawing for a free Windows Phone 7!

Please prepare yourself for some hands-on experience (don’t forget bring your laptops!) and be ready to walk away with some new and useful skills that you can share with your colleagues and friends.

• What: Microsoft Web Camp – Dubai
• When: Saturday, April 16 16:00-20:00 PM
• Where: Dubai Internet City, Bldg. #8, GEMs Seminar Room
• What to bring: Your PC and your registration slip

Please feel free to bring your friends and ensure that you register HERE.

]]> http://techiesleaders.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/web-camps-dubai-april-16th/feed/ 2 techiesleaders clip_image001 http://techiesleaders.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/news-ie-9-is-available-with-a-challenge/ http://techiesleaders.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/news-ie-9-is-available-with-a-challenge/#comments Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:46:00 +0000 techiesleaders https://techiesleaders.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/news-ie-9-is-available-with-a-challenge/ Continue reading →]]> IE 9 is available for download and for us Techies IT comes with a challenge, a good one this time! The following Text reached me in MSDN Flash mail this morning: “Push HTML5 to its limits and compete for over US$40,000 in prizes. Participate in the IE9 developer contest today, and follow us on Twitter @IE and #devunplugged for the latest information and updates.”

Good Luck Techies, and hopefully some of that money will go to the UAE!

Thank you, all attendees, for making a good night Great! Talk was in-depth to the point and I think we all left wiser than when we stepped in. that’s not just great that is excellent attainment of the goal of a deep dive. Thank you Natasha and Amory for bringing the knowledge! We really enjoyed the stay at Lime Tree Cafe – IBN Battuta, Excellent carrot cake! and a fine selection of teas and coffees! Sad thing is we got booted at 21:05, as this mall closes at 22:00 when it’s not Ramadan. We will look for a venue on the regular event, I think Times Square Mall is a great contender, expect it to be there!

Main topics of the night were:

• If you wish to present on Tech-Ed 2011 you need to get your proposals in ASAP as track owners @ Microsoft are choosing their speakers for the slots right now.
• You can improve your chances on getting a slot by:
• looking at the Tech-Ed 2010 Europe notes and pick from the popular sessions on your topic
• Send the track owner a video of your earlier presentations
• Show your track record
• Have held a slot and it was graded high
• Many people present have experience talking on Tech-Ed talk to them on the how to and what their experiences were.
• Suggestions are to find an earlier event to trial your presenting/teaching skills.
• Find a local event (close by at least) where you could present in a less-risk involved way
• See if you can present for your/a user group nearby
• Techies will try to organize a deep dive end of the month where you can have a 5-10 minute brief session on what you wish to present on at Tech-Ed. there will be a recording and the raw-format data you can post-process to share it on you-tube or send it to the track owner.
• Community lounge
• We would like to have community lounge white-board (big) where people can share thoughts, ideas, designs etc.
• Let’s organize a Techies T-shirt with your name on the front and Techies logo front-and-back
• there will be monitors where you can hook up a laptop to and display your code/program to others
• Use this for networking share your couch to get a colleague user group leader/member into Tech-Ed ME 2011, might be the beginning of cross-border networking kicking off!
• Raffles and discounts
• Watch the twitter sphere on the leaders site  bit.ly/Techies and in the Linked-in bit.ly/in-TechiesUG site!

Of course we discussed all over the map social aspects of Techies.ae and the individuals attending. I did think of getting a photo, sorry Natasha you could not be in this one as you had an appointment in Redmond. Hope we can organize the deep dive this month still on sharpening and trying out Presentations. The snap follows…

Starting this month we are really on the road. We have tried out Times Square Center. I decided not to try International Airport as the only affordable coffee would be a Metro ride away , I tried having a coffee and was surprised at the end of the hour that it had been AED 65 for coffee and parking, I should have checked the parking, glad I tried it. We do like the Times Square Center venue (apart from having a large Sharaf DG, and Toys ‘R Us, and some interesting cafes), we may return for a coffee sometime in the future… Next stop ibn battuta mall.

Discussion was broad again, as always on an Open Coffee, many topics passed especially broadband and ancient internet technologies: Usenet, IRC, Kazaa, Torrent, etc. Congrats go out to Ronald, as he now is a dad, Cheers!. Plans were made for next sessions. We will start doing Deep Dives again. Starting this month with a session on Testing in Agile by Khalil Shalalfeh. We shall post the session shortly. Expect a session on SQL 2008, and SharePoint 2010 to come in this year still. We are still looking for people who want to present and people who would like to Enthusiast IT professionals and developers by hosting an in-depth event.

All techies present agreed that 1 invite for a whole year on every third Wednesday does not really work for Techies.ae. we will split these up into separate events you can sign up for. Sorry if you had signed up before, you will have to do that ever single event. Added to these will be Deep Dives as the Ad-Hoc events.

As always we came late, primarily due to getting fined and again forgot to take a snapshot this time so a random snap in it’s place…

Having visited places in DIC the last week we decided to keep it at the regular Starbucks Jadaf JBR venue. Most places were very quiet every night visited! Could be a Ramadan thing! So from Next month we will take a road trip! Be prepared for venue location changes! We are looking to have an Open Coffee Next Month in or around the Dubai International Airport.

Discussion was broad again, as always on an Open Coffee. Special this time was having three visiting students doing a research paper in assignment from Microsoft. The students talked to Natasha and came to our Open Coffee with questions on what we talked about. They got their hearts content as we covered the full Techie environment: Hosting, Server configurations, Connectivity, Cloud, On-Premise versus Service-based. Development strategy, methodology, Application Life Cycle, Internet Explorer 9, Graphic cards, GOM, and all the smaller conversations that did not reach my ears, or I failed to remember. We shared our insights nabbed from some cakes and had a beverage. The new oreo cake we can do without… definitely not our favorite.

As always we came late, primarily due to Ramadan and left late. and again forgot to take a snapshot this time so a snap of the venue’s location in it’s place…

As per request we have had a special Open Coffee this week. Thanks to Starbucks to let us use their first floor, and the Jazz music was at acceptable levels this time!

Discussion was broad as always on an Open Coffee. Major topics covered were Multi tenancy on SharePoint 2010. How to separate the user base in that multi tenancy environment. Short demos on how to create SharePoint 2010/2007 Solutions with Visual Studio 2010, we love this tool. Short discussion on Office 2010, demonstrated Outlook 2010 features and gadgets, placed some time on ability of using multiple Exchange Accounts in Outlook 2010. Lastly we discussed Hosting facilities of SharePoint 2010 versus the BPOS solution offering from Microsoft.

As always we came late and left late. and totally forgot to take a snapshot this time so a snap of our host in it’s place…