Microsoft TECHED 2006 Sri Lanka

Microsoft TECHED 2006 Sri Lanka was held at Waters Edge Battaramulla on 25th – 27th of October. This was the second time that the TECHED was held in Sri Lanka.

I attended TECHED this time it was a great experience to me as I am a developer. There were 4 tracks that we could attend and I attended for the developer track sessions.

Track 1: Windows Infrastructure and System Management
Track 2: Messaging and Collaboration
Track 3: Enterprise Data Management, Architecture and Team Development
Track 4: Developer Technology

Day 1:

The one started with some keynotes from Microsoft and there were around 650 participants. The entire participant got the final program and a card with bar code from the counters.

After having lunch the first session of the developers track started around 1pm and my self and few of my friends attended to that session. After finishing that session my self and my friend Jagath went to the .NET Forum & MVPs stall and in that stall I met Razor and he surprised me by saying that I have won a gift from the .NET Forum. I was really happy that I won a gift from .NET Forum.

The forum gave gifts for the top ten participants of the forum and I was one of them. I got a t-shirt, a mouse pad calculator and some key tags as my gift. Thanks for .NET Forum selecting me as a good participant of the forum.

There were interesting sessions such as “WPF FOR DEVELOPERS”,”ASP.NET AND AJAX” which I attend was very useful for me. I learned lot of new things from these sessions.

All the sessions on day 1 ended around 5.15 pm and it was raining heavily at that time. One friend of mine gave me a lift and thanks for that friend.

Day 2:

Day 2 of the TECHED started around 8.45 am. This day there were 6 sessions scheduled and I attended to five of them. This day my self and my friends attended to some sessions in developer’s track and some in Enterprise data management track.

Some of the interesting sessions that I attended were “VS 2005 Data Binding”, ”Web Services in VS 2005”, “Improving Teamwork & Developer habits” ect…

Two of the sessions from the five sessions that I attend were done by Chad Hower (WHOO!!! HOO!!!) and those sessions were really cool and interesting and thanks for Chad for doing those presentations. Hope that next time when TEDHED happens in Sri Lanka that he will come to do some presentations.

The second day of the TECHED ended at 6.30pm.

Day 3:

The day 3 started around 9am in the morning there were six sessions arranged for the day and I attended 5 of them and today also changed tracks.

Chad Hower did 3 out of 5 sessions that I attended and those sessions were really interesting. Some of them are “SQL CLR”, ”Software Safety”.

All of the sessions ended around 6.15pm and we went to the counters and got our gift pack, which were a nice bag from Microsoft and a nice mug from Navantis. Thanks for Microsoft and Navantis for giving us this gift pack.

Then around 7.15pm the entertainment night and the dinner started and it was cool and I enjoyed it very much. There were a music band and a DJ to keep us entertained. Microsoft, Navantis, John Keels, and Suntel gave several gifts to the participants.

Microsoft gave some bags, t-shirts and Navantis gave a return air ticket from Malaysia and Suntel gave 2 CDMA phones and John Keels have some gift bags.

The party ended around 10.30pm on that day and my father came to pick up me from Waters Edge.

All together it was a grate experience for me and I learn lot of new technical things from TECHED this year. The food and tea was great and only the problem was that day-by-day the organizers changed the session schedule.

Finally I must thank Microsoft and .NET Forum for arranging this event for the second time in Sri Lanka and hope to attend next year’s TECHED as well.