ACAD DEV CON '09 by BDotNETStudents

Have you seen 1100+ students gathered at any one place at a time?? Well the first time i witnessed a gathering of such a magnitude was at the ACAD DEV CON '09 on the 28th of march. Venue - PESIT college Auditorium, which had "two" Balconies ;).
Look at the number of people at the dev con ;) Sridutt, MSP from Dharwad, managed to get 50 students, all the way from Dharwad to Bangalore.. Three cheers to Sridutt!!!

A week before the “gigantic” event, everyone had one question in their minds. How to achieve the target of 1000 students? Tension levels were at an all time high as we had only 3 days to sell a HUNDRED tickets in each college ( internals were causing a huge problem :( )

Somehow we BITians managed to sell a 100 tickets, with more students wanting the passes. They were asked to register online at our site bdns.in..

Day of the dev con.. I reach the venue at 8:00 with bouquets for the delegates. Already the registration counters were swarming with attendees. I met so many of my friends from PU and High school - it was more like a get together for me;). By the scheduled time i.e. 9:00 the key note speaker, Pratima Amonkar, Head of Academia, Microsoft had arrived at the venue. At 9:30 (slightly off- sched) the devcon begins with the lamp lighting by Pratima and D.Jawahar. Sahithya and Chidanand had taken the job of Anchoring, which they did wonderfully.

The key note session was a very interesting and interactive session. Many students were coming up with interesting stuff for the question “who are you?”. The Key note session was followed by sessions on

Office 2007 – tips and tricks

Windows 7 and IE8

Windows Embedded.

This was followed by lunch which was pretty good. ;)

The after lunch schedule started off with a session by Samartha, Microsoft Student Partner on Windows Virtualisation. I so wanted to attend the session.. :( but was busy charging Sourab's Laptop. Did i mention i had my own session on "Silverlight" coming up?? yeah thats right.. Butterflies in my tummy, i was trying to control my heartbeats.. Facing a thousand students, that too this being my 3rd session on silverlight.. After Samartha's session, Raveesh, our Kwizzing Master entertained the attendees with his quiz - part a.. I must say, the quiz was super!! That guy will be the next "Biggest IT Kwiz Master".. ;)

Then came the most awaited 1 and half hour - 5 demos, 15 mins each on the following technologies

Microsoft Robotics Studio - Lakshman Srikanth D

Silverlight - Me myself ;)

Deep Zoom Composer - Abhishek kumar

Songsmith - Sattvik

Popfly - Anil B Pai

Lakshman had once told me " it is good to feel scared while going up to the stage. once on the stage, you are the ruler ". For a moment after introducing myself to the 1000+ attendees, I went totally blank as to what i am there for. At that moment, the words of advice came to my mind, and took with it all the fear. ( thanks buddy ;) ) for the next 15 mins, it was just me and my presentation. All the students gave feedback after the 5 demos, and i felt happy to see many mentioning Silverlight in the "What i liked " field ( though maximum votes went to Lakshman Srikanth and his Irobo :P)

Raveesh is back with the Kwiz - part b.. Guess wat?? I know all the answers!!! hehehe ;) no no i am no genius. I was with Raveesh when he was making the ppt for the Quiz.. Lots of good feedback for the "Kwizzing Time" too :)

Then came the photo session with the Chennai MSP Diwaagar who had come all the way from Chennai to attend the DEV CON. So is the bonding between MSPs :)


So we wrap up "one of the biggest event in the History of BDotNETStudents" with words of wisdom from the three Musketeers and Diwaagar. :)

Wait!Wait! there is more :) Lakshman announces treat for all MSPs, Dinner at Pai viceroy. Some ten- twelve of us had a sumptous dinner at the expense of "you know who"!!! ;) Yaardo duddu yellammana jaatre.. hehehehe

All in all - BDotNetStudents rocks!!!

Microsoft Boot Camp at Hyderabad

hello everyone.. Firstly apologies for no posts for the past 2 months. i promise to come up with posts periodically from now on.

so, wat have i got this time?? an account of the wonderful 3 days at hyderabad. Thanks to Microsoft, i got a chance to attend one of the largest gathering of tech evangelists and entreprenuers from all over India.

Yes, i m talking of the Boot Camp that was organised by MS for us Microsoft Student Partners.
a day to day account of all tat we did -
Evening 0 -
After planning for nearly a fortnight and with no clear cut plans, we head to Hyderabad. A group of 20+ Microsoft student partners begin their journey towards total fun and enjoyment. we were a group of around 10 in the same train, playing Dumb charades and learning about nanotechnology from a PhD holder. we reach Hyderabad at 6:00 a.m:) and yes, it was Sahithya's Birthday that day.

Day 1 -
We had tons of time till we were scheduled to check in at Ellaa Suites. So we decided on Sight-seeing, exploring Hyderabad's Charminar and Snow world. By 9:00 a.m we were joined by the chennai MSPs and hiring a mini bus we started towards Charminar. Only few knew that we would shortly be joined by our 3 senior MSPs - Raveesh, Anil and Lakshman along with Pulock and Sourab from Mumbai.


MSPs at Snow world, Hyderabad.

from there we head to Ellaa Suites, our accomodation for the next 3 days. Our room mates were to be MSPs from other regions, and i was put up with Prateeksha shah from Jamshedpur. i dint get to meet her as she had already left for the evening session at MS IDC.
We 3rd yrs had an internship test, after which had a good dinner. All the way back, we were planning Sahithya's b'day celebration. Anil,Raveesh and Lakshman somehow found a bakery and managed to get a chocolate cake, Raveesh claiming to have written the wordings. ;)
The celebration went on till 11 or so. then all vouched for watching "yes man". Me being an early sleeper, retired to my room , to find my room mate tucked in her bed. (Atlast i meet her :) ) Introduction and chit-chatting happened while unpacking the luggage.

Day 2 -

No mood to get up from the comfortable bed of Ellaa Suites. Somehow dragged my self out of the bed and got ready to leave for MS. the MS bus was wailting to ferry us to the venue, which was like a kilometer from the hotel.
Pramod, Raveesh, Sahithya,Me and Soumya :)

At MS IDC after a nice breakfast of Idly-sambhar, we attended sessions on
SQL server (OHT - overhead transmission)
Windows Mobile (Superb!!!)
Web Security (Awesome!!) etc..

At 7:00 we came back to Ella suites and are informed that a disc has been organized at "Jasmine". 2 hrs of fun and Dinner (not so gud :( ) , we played Dumb Charades till 2:00 a.m
BDotNET Students

Day 3 -
At 8:00 we trudge back to MS looking forward for the day's events(me looking forward to breakfast ;)) we had some cool sessions by Reza, Mark and we got to interact with MS employees. Our very own Lakshman And his Irobo had an interesting demo. After lunch, we planned to visit Golconda Fort. After a lot of confusion as to how to go there and wat to do of the luggage, we choose to take autos - "Phatphatiyas" actually.


We hired a "guide" who promised to show the real "Golconda fort". I swear we wouldn't have explored all those places without the guide. Especially the "Lotus" structure that echoed our clapping and the "Khufia" room - speak in one corner of the room and u can hear at the other corner. Guide says that was how the kings came to know of conspiracies being planned against them. After 2 hrs of exploring Golconda, we head to the kacheguda Train terminal. the phatphatiya fellw had promised to come back to ferry us to the terminal. Everyone packed into the auto, ME adarsh and Lakshman had to take another auto ( not that i m complaining :) we dint have to be jam packed like the others;) We reach the terminal just in time for our train.. No chance to have dinner :( Scouting for our allotted seats and requesting othe ppl to exchange seats so that we all are together, we settle down for our journay back to "Home Sweet Home".

At about 10:00 p.m , Lakshman and Soumya get into a debate ( topic- i m not aware as i dozed off and woke up only in the morning.. hehe ;) ) Apparently it was a very good debate and Lakshman was fully impressed wid soumya ( for her debating skils of course ;))

i am the first one to get up next day ( early to bed and early to rise makes Sneha healthy, wealthy and wise ;) hehehe) and since everybody else were snoring happily, i decided to sit out at the train door.. ooooooooooohhhh it was chilly :) at Dharmavaram i got to drink the best "masala chai" which added to the fun. At around 8, everyone seemed to be waking up, but Raveesh was still fast asleep.. Some more Dumbcharades and guessing movies like "Harold and Kumar's Escape to Gautemala"(Never gonna forget that ;) ) we reached our Very own Bangalore at 11:00 a.m.. Saying good byes to our companions for the past 3 days, Soumya, Chidananda and myself take an auto to home..
दिल में लेके यादें उन अनगिनत पलों की..

Adios ;)