Archive
Microsoft MVP Award – April 2013
We had a lot of exciting activities, events and engagements during the last few months.
And time really passes by when you enjoy yourself doing these kind of things.
Other than the local events (which are lot, considering Microsoft events and User Groups/Community events), we had the MVP Global Summit 2013 in Seattle, WA which was a stunning experience! MVPs had the opportunity to interact not only among themselves (which I think brings a lot of adding value in terms of networking and mingling) but also with the Product Teams, the Teams who actually build and develop Microsoft Products. And that is only the tip of the iceberg, only one of the things you can get from the event itself …
Also, we recently had a refresh of the MVP Award Website, which, IMHO, is the best we ever had. A brand new website with tons of features and content (I love it !)
But, back to the topic:
Congratulations to the newly Awarded Microsoft MVPs (sorted by name), living in Central, Eastern Europe (excluding Russia and CIS Countries) and Italy:
| Influencer | Technical Expertise | Country |
| Alexandru Dionisie | Office365 | Romania |
| Bruno Kovačić | Windows Azure | Croatia |
| Danijel Malik | Visual Studio ALM | Slovenia |
| Dávid Fülöp | Visual C# | Hungary |
| Fabio Franzini | SharePoint Server | Italy |
| István Király | Setup & Deployment | Hungary |
| Luchian Grigore | Visual C++ | Romania |
| Marek Chmel | SQL Server | Czech Republic |
| Pataridis Panagiotis | Remote Desktop Services | Greece |
| Patrick Lamber | SharePoint Server | Italy |
| Toni Petrina | Visual C# | Croatia |
A BIG CONGRATS to the Microsoft MVPs who have been renewed this Award cycle: the list is long so I apologize in advance if I don’t post the whole list but I still want to congratulate them for their community involvement. Being renewed is as tough as being awarded for the first time and being involved in the online and offline community environments is a challenge.
And for the ones who didn’t make it, don’t lose hope: I’m sure if you put a little extra effort you’ll be able to get the Award again.
BTW, If you want to know more about the MVP Award Program, subscribe to our blog and check our Facebook Page to know more about it…
Enjoy your Award, hoping this would also be a nice Easter Holiday gift 
Microsoft MVP Award – January 2013 !
After Christmas, holidays (for the lucky ones who had them) and the New Year, I really hope you enjoyed them as mush I did.
This post is something a lot of people are waiting for: this is about the new Microsoft MVP Awardees @ the 1st of January.
As you may know, the Microsoft MVP Program is an Award given to exceptional people who voluntarily shared their knowledge on Microsoft products. Whether it’s an online forum or a technical speech, the Microsoft MVPs are independent people who gained the trust of their peers by facts. It’s about communities, it’s about sharing the personal/professional experience they acquired on the field. It’s about giving feedback, providing guidance to their online and offline peers. It’s about sharing.
And every 3 months, we evaluate old and new potential and current MVPs to get the best and brightest and I hope we’re doing a good job !
Finding the right people is the #1 goal and, as said, sometimes it’s not easy. But I can tell you I’m helped by a lot of people in this process. So now please join me in Congratulating the following awarded people as Microsoft MVPs (sorted by name), living in Central, Eastern Europe (excluding Russia and CIS Countries) and Italy:
| Influencer | Technical Expertise | Country/Region |
| Bill Stavroulakis | ASP.NET/IIS | Greece |
| Boriana Petrova | Excel | Bulgaria |
| Darko Jovišić | Dynamics CRM | Croatia |
| Grzegorz Gałęzowski | PowerShell | Poland |
| Jovan Popovic | ASP.NET/IIS | Serbia |
| Robert Voncina | SharePoint Server | Slovenia |
| Vlatko Ivanovski | Visual Studio ALM | Macedonia F.Y.R.O |
A BIG CONGRATS to the Microsoft MVPs who have been renewed this Award cycle: the list is long so I apologize in advance if I don’t post the whole list but I still want to congratulate them for their community involvement. Being renewed is as tough as being awarded for the first time and being involved in the online and offline community environments is a challenge. Think about it: do you have time to dedicate to the others? Do you have time to travel to another City or Country to make a speech or participate as an Ask The Expert during a Microsoft and/or a Community event? Do you have time to write articles and technical blog posts? Yes, the list is long and I can go on and on… But the driver is not the MVP Award, the driver is the Passion these people have, Passion to organize User Group events in their spare time, Passion to support users in troubleshooting their technical problems, Passion to write about the products they love more, Passion to share their experience on the field so others can benefit from that. Easy, eh?
And for the ones who didn’t make it, don’t lose hope: I’m sure if you put a little extra effort you’ll be able to get the Award !
BTW, If you want to know more about the MVP Award Program, do subscribe our blog as you’ll find some interesting stories to read…
Enjoy your Award and Congratulations again !!
WPC 2012: my personal summary (and slides)
I recently had the chance to participate to the latest WPC 2012 (local Windows Professional Conference) in Milano, Italy.
It was a terrific event: 27 Microsoft MVPs as speakers, an Ask The Expert Booth with +12 MVPs (+ a lot of friends and other Influencers) covering different technologies, together with the Microsoft Technical Support. Hundreds of technical sessions, giving full coverage of almost all the Microsoft Products and Technologies.
It was a great success in terms of Reach, Awareness and Support. Reach: almost 400 attendees, from ITPros to Developers to Consumers. More than 300 tweets around the Conference (#wpcit12).
In terms of awareness, the Microsoft MVP Award was highly valued during the conference: some minutes spent during the Keynote talking about it, the #Branding was everywhere, and MVPs often were wearing t-shirts with the MVP Logo on it. Recognition was another big part of it.
Just FYI, during the ATE the MVPs had around 250 technical discussions with the attendees. Divided per technology each day, attendees had the chance to interact not only with the speakers @ the Booth, but also with the other MVPs who voluntarily agreed to be part of the Conference supporting the attendees.
So now you know the MVP Award was a big part of it. But what about the rest of it?
Well, I also delivered a session on #SocialMedia called “Social Media in the IT World” and I have to say it was really interesting for the attendees. It was Different, not the kind of presentation you normally expect during a technical event. It was Relevant, according to the numbers of feedback and questions I gathered after my session. And for me it was fun too!
Understanding that many people still don’t understand the Power of the Social Media, the World of Mouth, the “Unmarketing” concept, Crowdsourcing, Personal #Branding and many others was kind of unexpected. So that is probably why my session was really valuable for the attendees.
I share my slides here, in a pure community spirit (as the MVPs taught me ), hoping that someone else will benefit from that:
I did not have the chance to show how I use my Windows Phone to “unleash” the Power of the Communities, but I’m sure I’ll have time to do that in my next talk.
And, by the way, we also had the chance to have some fun (in a pure community spirit ):
I need to thank a lot of people for a very successful event:
First and foremost, Barbara Palumbo, the “Puppet Master”, for his energy, proactive approach, driving the #wpcit12 team to Excellence. Claudio Salano, “The Boss” for having me @ the Conference. Nino Crudele, “Grinch” and #BizTalk Expert, for his tremendous valuable tips & tricks. And all others, all the MVPs, the Influencers, all the People I had the pleasure to meet for the first time, etc.
THANK YOU everyone for this wonderful experience !
MVP Award Program – July 2012
Holidays are approaching, slowly , @ least for the lucky ones, and it’s a good exercise, during this period, to look back and see what we as a Program have achieved from a community standpoint. Lots of events in the whole Region I represent (Central, Eastern Europe & Italy, excluding Russia & CIS Countries which are managed by my dear colleague Yulia Belyanina), lots of Product Group Interactions, lots of articles, webcasts, forum posts, blogging, local projects with every single Microsoft Subsidiary: it was definitely tons of things! I’m really happy about the Program, of course, because it changes a bit every year but the nature of it is still intact.
Just an example: we recently announced the new MVP Award Program website, which has been totally rewritten with a Metro-style UI, and the possibilities to do a lot more than the old one.
Back to the Nomination process, and as you may know, we have 4 Nomination Cycles:
- January, 1st
- April, 1st
- July, 1st
- October 1st
This is about the III one, the July Award Cycle. The cycles involves lots of stakeholders and nothing is taken from granted (renewing MVPs knows that very clearly ). The are people from the local Microsoft Subsidiaries, of course us Community Program Managers (aka MVP Leads), the Business Group Leads and the Product Teams.
I cannot stress enough the fact that the Most Valuable Professional is, in fact, an Award. It’s not a certification, it’s not a Partner-affiliation program, it’s an Award. And it is given to the ones who consistently shared their expertise, with their peers, in the online and offline communities. It’s something you gain in the field. And Microsoft, with this Award, wants to THANK these people for their extraordinary community activities, together with a strong competency on a specific area/Product.
With that said, Please WELCOME the new awarded Microsoft MVPs, sorted by Name:
| Influencer | Technical Expertise | Country/Region |
| Jan Matejka | System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management | Czech Republic |
| Kamil Skalski | System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management | Poland |
| Laura La Manna | Visual C# | Italy |
| Lukasz Kaluzny | Virtual Machine | Poland |
| Marius Ene | Directory Services | Romania |
| Tomáš Slavíček | XNA/DirectX | Czech Republic |
A BIG CONGRATS to you guys MVPs and of course to the ones that have been re-Awarded. The MVP Award lasts 12 months and every single candidature is treated carefully and thoroughly so I totally understand the excitement (and sometimes the pain ) to wait for an email saying that you’ve been Awarded again.
There are also people (very few, to be honest) who has not been awarded: as I’m not happy about that, sometimes there are reasons: people changed their jobs, moved to another Country, or for whatever reasons they decided to stop being active in the communities or they’ve not been active enough to be re-awarded. I always tell them that they can keep me as their primary point of contact for contacting Microsoft moving forward: and you never know, one can be out of the Program for a while and then back after a few months so, as I always say, don’t lose faith . We also launched an initiative to keep in touch with both, MVPs former MVPs through a LinkedIn Group (membership is limited to active and retired MVPs) http://ow.ly/bKmIC which, IMHO, is a good way not to lose contact with the MVP community as a whole.
Also, If you don’t know exactly what the MVP Award Program is, take some time to subscribe to our blog as you’ll find some interesting stories to read…
If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow @MVPAward , myself and the #mvpbuzz hashtag: you’ll be amazed to see a great MVP community sharing a lot of real-life stories (covering different Microsoft products and technologies) that may also comes at hand when you’re in trouble
That said, Enjoy your Award and Congratulations !
Virtualstudy.pl: let’s go virtual !
When I was @ the Microsoft Technology Summit in Poland few weeks ago I had the pleasure to talk with a lot of MVPs @ the Community Booth that had been set up for the event. BTW, that was a HUGE event with, I presume, almost 2.500 attendees. As you can imagine, it’s the biggest annual Microsoft event in Warsaw and, from what I’ve seen, it was a real success.
BTW, I’d like to point out a great article on the event (in Polish) by MVP Piotr Pawlik.
Well, during these conversations a lot of interesting things normally come up. One of those was regarding the VirtualStudy.pl (not to mention all the other communities like WSS.pl, codeguru.pl and a lot more).
Thanks to the hard of the community members, VirtualStudy.pl now has a full support of English language, an English forum and even a few videos in English available as VOD.
At the same time the board is now looking for presenters who would like to prepare and present sessions in English (possibly with good presentation skills).
VirtualStudy.pl was created to allow users to attend online meetings and learn free of charge. Since the beginning they had quite a few interesting courses like Windows Server, SharePoint 2010 Training, SQLServer 2008, Windows Phone 7 programing, as well as 6 month C# training course which finished with an exam and certificates) where the average number of attendees was around 200-300 people.
Currently VirtualStudy.pl hosts all the previous sessions on a on-Demand basis (few hundred sessions are already available to watch).
These online sessions do not contain any marketing content, but it’s pure technical Microsoft knowledge.
And at the moment they are currently organize their first VirtualStudy.pl Conference 2011.
So this is a call to action for anyone with technical skills on Microsoft Technologies who wants to deliver English presentation.
And, just to close the topic that I started at the very beginning, these are some pictures from the MTS:
And this is me, powered by a customized Chrome-Joke T-shirt (), when I just got a nice & unexpected gift:
Thank you for the wonderful time guys: I’ll see you next time in Warsaw (or even before, @ the MVP Global Summit !!)
A glimpse of the future !
I had some great holidays during this summer, up in the mountains.
And I deliberately chose not to bring my laptop with me so not to be tempted to work. Anyway I used my Windows Phone to check my emails: not on a regular basis but at least to check the most important stuff that was going on. I wanted to take out job stuff from my vacations but I couldn’t resist. Every year I bring my laptop with me mostly for the candidates’ reviews (to see if everything was working the way I was expecting to).
So that was my first lesson: never leave my laptop @ home.
Because after I came back, I switched it on only to realize that the hard disk was broken. Oh my, I was so disappointed, especially because I was not so sure that I backed everything up.
With all the cloud services we now have at our disposal, none of them had all the stuff (at least the recent one) I was supposed to reinstall on my laptop. Fortunately, I made a backup on May, 2011 on my external hard disk so not everything was lost. Also, SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh did help me in recovering some of the most important files I had.
Having said that, it was not over…
I ordered a new hard disk from HP (thanks to the local IT for the big help!) but it took about a week to have it. In the meantime, my smartcard was not working. Bummer !
As you may know, in order to have Direct Access on Windows 7 working, you have to use BitLocker and then use your smartcard to enable the corpnet access.
So I was lost…
Not to mention I got flu that took me @ home for almost a week.
So I went to the local IT and ordered a new one but it takes some time.
Long story short: I have my laptop (which is great), I recovered most of the files (even better) but I still need my smartcard. Well, close enough, I’m @ 80% I’d say…
Back to us,
during the hiking time back to the mountains I had some time to think about all the activities and top stories and the great collaborations with all the Countries I have the pleasure to represent as the Community Program Manager for the MVP Award Program. I guess everyone does that: when you have time and you’re relaxed, it’s much easier to build your last year’s history. Even better, you have a lot of creativity and lots of ideas that you want to put into action.
So, apart from being stuck right after my holidays, I’m SO READY to start the new (fiscal) year!
And you know what? There are a lot of things happening and planned to happen in the next 90 days. Lots of events, lots of engagements and of course the Microsoft and the 3rd party forums are still running and they get healthier.
You know I’m addicted to the social media and, to me, it’s the best way to monitor what is going on in the communities. As I represent 20 Countries, it’s not that easy to track everything you want to but at least you got what I need.
Also, I found a new way to use my Windows Phone more effectively: basically I created groups in which there are people (aka Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn accounts) that I want to monitor. In that way, and when you don’t have much time to use a PC client, I was able to get the most important things, at least important for me and the Communities.
So from an offline perspective, here is what is going to happen in the next 90 days (again, this is not a comprehensive list):
Mobility Day – Zagreb, Croatia (September 21st)
SQL TUNEIN – Zagreb, Croatia (September 26, 27)
Bleeding Edge 2011 – Gozd Martuljek, Slovenia (September 29th, 30th)
DevReach – Sofia, Bulgaria (October17-18)
Microsoft TechDay 2011 Baltic Region (October 18th till 20th)
Estonian page contains links to TechDay Lithuania & TechDay Latvia as well
Microsoft Technology Summit – Warsaw, Poland (October 18-19)
Sinergija – Belgrade, Serbia (October 18-20th)
Microsoft Vizija – Skopje Macedonia F.Y.R.O. (October 20-21)
Virtualization Conference 2011 – Milan, Italy (November, 16-17)
Windows Professional Conference – Milan, Italy (November 22-24)
Microsoft Fest 2011 – Prague, Czech Republic (November 26-27)
ITPro-Dev Connections 2011 – Athens, Greece (November 26-27)
As you can see many events (or I should say at least some of the most important ones) are happening in the Region, with a strong Microsoft MVP participation, whether the MVPs will be speakers or Ask The Expert. These are events that are community-driven and/or Microsoft-driven with the help of the Communities and I guess it’s a great opportunity for all the community members to stop by to some of these events and have a chance to talk with them about Microsoft technology.
And bear with me if I missed some events: feel free to comment on this post and let me know (I’m still digging around to see what’s going to happen and also starting to have conference calls and Live Meetings with my colleagues in the Region but of course it takes time so any help would be much appreciated!)
Of course I didn’t forget about the MVP candidates’ review, which is, as a matter of fact, the first thing I want & need to make sure it’s okay. So expect a blog post, as always, the 1st of October, late in the day, to see new names/new faces and great community contributors being awarded as part of this exciting community which is the MVP Award Program.
So, putting aside all the issues I had after my holidays’ return, I’m VERY VERY excited to start a new year with a lot of activities being so confident that the communities and the Microsoft MVPs will have a big part on the new wave of Microsoft Products and a strong impact on the future of Microsoft Technologies moving forward.
And you know what? I want to be part of it too !!
Love my randomized tag Cloud !
This is a tag cloud based on my blog.
It is not based on my personal tags (in fact, most of them are not shown in it) but it relies on the word counting in all the blog posts I did.
(created with Wordle)
And this is my twitter cloud, created with Tagxedo…
IT Camp 2011
It’s a big 2 days timeframe for developers and ITPros in CEE.
On May 26-27, the 2 Romanian communities CodeCamp and ITSpark organized a 2 days event dedicated to both developers and system administrators: the IT Camp 2011
Featuring International speakers, this event, which will be hold in the forth most populous city in Romania (Cluj-Napoca), will see 10 Microsoft MVPs, all of them with different technical backgrounds and from different parts of Europe (you can add their personal Twitter/LinkedIn/RSS from the speakers’ list).
You may want to know what the topics are…well, from their own voice:
“We will be discussing general interest topics such as Private Cloud, security, Windows Azure, RIA using MVC and Ajax, System Center, SQL Server, Dependency Injection in ASP.NET MVC 3, Exchange High Availability, ASP.NET and PHP apps on IIS, Workflow Services in Windows Azure, SharePoint Server support for ISO and COBIT certifications, Link, WCF and REST in the Cloud and more”. So a lot will be covered !
While I suggest you to follow them, you can register here !
Link to: IT Camp 2011
Microsoft MVP Award – April 2011 Awards !
Everytime is a challenge, everytime is a “working hard” to make sure all the valuable members of the Communities are Awarded. It’s a process that never ends…
And it’s not that easy, monitoring all the Communities in CEE & Italy (the Region I represent, excluding Russia & CIS Countries), and find the “best of the best” inside those entities.
But I’m helped, of course: thanks to the continuous commitment of the Microsoft local Subsidiaries, and the help of the MVPs themselves, we get new outstanding nominations throughout the Region every Quarter.
So what can I say, apart from CONGRATULATING the new and re-awarded MVPs?
I never experienced that but, if I would be a technical expert in the IT Industry, getting the MVP Award e-mail should be really satisfying, from a personal and professional standpoint.
I always feel the excitement from the new MVPs, but also from the ones who are renewed, it’s still a very emotional part of their jobs and careers.
And this is thanks to what you do, on a voluntarily basis, that makes you a Microsoft MVP, even if you are not “MVP-branded” yet . Doing communities activities, being available to the local subsidiaries when it comes to do technical presentations or articles or whatever it is, you’re part of the Community Ecosystem as an “Influencer”. People listen to you, listen to your advice, and take actions on your technical feedback. And this is definitely TRUST, something you gain year over year with your continuous effort in helping the communities grow from a technical perspective. So this is just to say THANK YOU, again, for what you do.
Back to the April Award Cycle, I’m very happy to announce the new MVPs (sorted by name):
| Influencer | Country/Region | Technical Expertise |
| Alberto Ferrari | Italy | SQL Server |
| Anton Staykov | Bulgaria | Windows Azure |
| Bahrudin Hrnjica | Bosnia-Herzegovina | Visual C# |
| Daniel Stefaniak | Poland | Management Infrastructure |
| Dimitris Papadimitriou | Greece | Connected System Developer |
| Francesco Sodano | Italy | SharePoint Server |
| Igor Pavlekovic | Croatia | Exchange Server |
| Jevgeni Tsaikin | Estonia | Device Application Development |
| Marcin Dembowski | Poland | Internet Explorer |
| Marcin Iwanowski | Poland | Expression Blend |
| Mirko Mainetti | Italy | Dynamics NAV |
| Nicola Ferrini | Italy | App-V |
| Toomas Ruus | Estonia | Exchange Server |
(as soon as you’ll publish the news on your blogs and/or on your MVP Profiles, I will add the links to your name so anyone can see who you are ).
I won’t put the list of all the re-awarded MVPs as it’s very long but, if you ask me to do it, I’ll do it !
Of course we had some declined MVPs. And this is natural: sometimes people don’t have time to dedicate to the communities anymore, some others changed jobs so this make it difficult for them to be active again: any other reason in between I don’t want to lose connections with these guys because I’m sure, sooner or later, they’ll come back again !
BTW, If you don’t know nothing about the MVP Award Program, why don’t you subscribe to our blog? You’ll definitely find some good interesting stories to read about !
That said, Enjoy your Award and talk to you soon !
Microsoft WinDays 2011 !
Following the great success of the last year’s event,
Croatian WinDays strikes back with a new 2011 promising event !
" There is no better place to search for new and different ideas than the leading business and technology conference in Croatia – Microsoft WinDays11!”
The Conference will be held in Rovinj, Croatia and it will be split in two conferences:
WinDays11 Microsoft Technology Conference 4 – 7 April, 2011
WinDays11 Business Conference 7 – 8 April, 2011
“Whether you’re an IT professional, company director, an expert in sales, marketing or business development, you can always happen to run out of new ideas. We are all here to help: a great source of ideas runs dry, and it is necessary to look for inspiration. There is no better way to do this than to surround yourself with people who, like you, live and profit from new ideas and their implementation, which is even better, ideas really begin to live only when you share it with others.”
Featuring MVPs Ilija Brajkovic, Marin Franković, Damir Dizdarevic, Robert Petrunic, Domagoj Pavlesic, Dobriša Adamec, Vibor Cipan and I’m sure many more, covering lots of Microsoft technologies (as you can also see by the picture above): from Lync Server to Windows Phone 7, from Silverlight to IE9 and Office 365 just to name a few…
Feel free to follow the upcoming news and see you in Rovinj!
Link to: Početna – Microsoft WinDays11. Prostori ideja. Drugačije ideje
Microsoft Technical Conferences 2011- The All-in-One !
Yes, you read it right:
Microsoft Italy organized the biggest Technical Conference of the year.
Featuring 3 in a row Conferences:
SharePoint and Office Conference 2011
SQL & Business Intelligence Conference 2011
Unified Communications & Collaboration Conference 2011
From the 19th to the 21st of April, and in one single place, you will be able to listen and interact with some of the most prominent speakers and gurus of these technologies.
Featuring (for SPS & Office Conference) MVPs Claudio Brotto, Peppe Marchi, Igor Macori and Romeo Pruno.
As well as other MVPs as speakers during the SQL BI Conference: Davide Mauri, Gianluca Hotz, Igor Macori and Marco Russo (as well as Alberto Ferrari, I really rely on this guy 
)
While during the 3rd one, my friends Andrea Garattini and (former MVP) Massimiliano Luciani (and other important speakers) will “unify” your stuff pretty well !
With that said, if you’re really into technology and you wanna chat with these important professionals and gurus, you may to register yourself to all of the 3 to get a discount. It doesn’t happen so often to have such a bunch of great Microsoft, Partners and MVPs, together with their community peers, in one place for 3 days so I’d strongly recommend it!
You can learn more about the whole event by clicking the link below…(and I’ll see you there!)
Link to: Microsoft Technical Conferences 2011
24 Hours in the Cloud
Hi all,
just wanted to let you know of an upcoming event, organized by GITCA (Global IT Community Association), called “24 Hours in the Cloud”. The idea is to, over one day, let User Groups present for an hour on a Cloud related topic and then hand over to another group one time zone to the west.
Here are some technical topics suggested so far:
- KeyNote: Association for Computing Machinery
- Introduction to Windows Intune
- Introduction to Office 365
- Office Web Apps
- Introduction to Exchange Online
- Coexistance with and migration to Exchange Online
- Introduction to SharePoint Online
- Introduction to Microsoft Lync Online
- Introduction to the Private Cloud
- Deploying Hyper-V Cloud
- Introduction to the Windows Azure Platform
- AppFabric Overview
- Windows Azure DataMarket
- Cloud Security
- Azure Security Overview
- SQL Azure Security
- Single Sign-On from Active Directory to a Windows Azure Application
- Introduction to SQL Azure
- Setup and Configuration of SQL Azure Databases
- SQL Azure Security Using Data Sync
- Introduction to Windows Azure
- Windows Azure Security
- AppFabric Caching
- If you are an MVP, a User Group Leader or a UG member, you may want to talk with your community peers to decide whether to participate having an active part on it by doing a User Group/Association technical presentation.
- How to apply?
- Go to this website and read about the event. Add a comment/blog post to that post to say you’re interested and to submit your ideas on any particular technical topic you may want to present. Also, you can submit your own ideas and apply by sending an email to 24HitC@GITCA.org
Link to: Welcome to GITCA.ORG
Code Camp 2010 (F.Y.R.O. Macedonia)
On 6th of November the Macedonian .NET User Group, under the hat of INETA and Microsoft organized Code Camp 2010 event in Skopje, Macedonia.
With more than 500 attendees, they broke a record for community event in the F.Y.R.O. Macedonia. Free online registration service for this event was used. After the first event announcement in their newsletter, they saw some 200 registrations on the very first day!
In the end, on 5th of November an astonishing number of 690 registered attendees was reached.
Some Quick Facts:
- Date: 06.11.2010
- Venue: FON University – Skopje
- 500 attendees
- Live Meeting 200 streaming sessions attendees
- 70 prizes
- 10h recorder presentation materials
- 1500 photos
- 3h video recorded material from the event
- 300 liters juice and water for refreshment
- 600 coffees, 600 teas, 400 chocolates & 60kg snacks
- 22 members in the organization board
Everyone that could not reach the event on-site at the Venue could follow the sessions live, through MS Live Meeting streaming. Statistics shows about 200 Live Meeting attending sessions during the 10 hours of presentations – much more than expected.
CodeCamp was published on social networks like Twitter where each sessions start was announced. All attendees were joined on their mobile devices on the open Wi-Fi network. They were actively participating in the online conversations, commenting about sessions, speakers and the event.
The event saw the participation of 10 speakers, of which some of them MVPs and others from the MKDOT.NET community), in two tracks (here is the agenda of the event)
The feedback got was great, one of the best community event ever held in the Republic of Macedonia.
If you wanna see what happened there, just click on this link …
ITPro Dev Connections 2010: recap
I already blogged about this but I thought it was worth mentioning the great success this event was:
|
On the 27 and 28 of November, the Top Greek Technical Community Event took place at EKETE, delivered by the local “technical heroes” addressing all technical professionals. Sold out long before D-day and with a huge coverage in all new media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums and blogs) the conference was branded as the one delivered by experienced technical speakers with hands-on knowledge in the technologies presented and a deep understanding of the Greek market. Attendees came from the private and public sector, Microsoft customer and partners. |
|
In a true community spirit, the two days, rich in content and full of energy, offered technical presentations from level 100 to 400 while giving everyone the opportunity to meet old friends, make new ones and create valuable connections! After the completion of the event, a super slick Silverlight application prepared by the MVPs will be show casing all presentations, where else… but in the cloud! Special Thanks from Microsoft Greece to Microsoft Speakers and especially Nasos Kladakis, and a Big ‘Congratulations’ to the local Microsoft MVPs, MCTs and Microsoft Student Partners (George Andritsos, George Birbilis, Antonis Chatzipavlis, George Capnias, Dimitris Gkanatsios, Vaggelis Kapsalakis, John Katsiotis, Panagiotis Kefalidis, Manos Kelaiditis, Aggelos Mpimpoudis, Philippos Panayiotidis, Konstantinos Pantos, Yiannis Panagopoulos, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Chris Spanougakis, Andreas Tsouchlaris, George Varakis) for orchestrating this amazing experience! |
And some numbers:
2 days, 400 attendees (260 IT pros + 140 Devs), 31 speakers + 20 volunteers , 29 presentations, 4 parallel tracks with IT Pros & Devs content, 1 Xbox - Kinect play area, and some Sponsor that were present at the event (including Xerox and Dell)
To me, this is a great example on how Microsoft can easily collaborate with the local communities and User Groups to make successful events so congratulations again !
Sinergija 10 & more !
I took some time this morning to recap on the recent event in which I had the pleasure to participate. It was in Belgrade, Serbia, and I already talked about the previous one in this post.
Sinergija is one of the most important event in the Balkans, together with some other events. ITPros and Developers had the chance to interact with each other and meet a lot of Microsoft folks and international speakers sharing their experiences on Microsoft products.
Also, this year Sinergija was at it 10th anniversary, which made the event even more important.
My colleague and friend Borko Kovacevic wrote some notes regarding the event which I guess it’s nice to share with you. Sinergija 10 gathered more than 1500 people on each of five days of the conference, and more than 3000 people on all Sinergija related events!
Some numbers:
5 days
150 technical presentations
30 business presentations
30 conference partner
1500 people on Technical Conference
700 people on Business Summits
150 speakers
80 IT Influencers from all over CEE
100 Press Representatives
150 Sinergija staff members
120 MS employees
1.500 people on Sinergija Party
1000 visitors of gaming and EXPO events per day
I specifically highlighted the Influencer n° as, together with the CEE HQ, we organized an Influencer Summit inside the event, where MVPs, Regional Directors, Student Partners and “Influencers” could meet and interact with us for a full day.
There were a lot of people who I personally met during other events and I have to tell how much I appreciated all the discussions and talks with them, representing almost 15 Countries in Central and Eastern Europe. MVPs from Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Poland, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.), Bosnia, Bulgaria, Romania, I can’t even mention all the people that was there. We also had Tomislav Bronzin (Vice President INETA Europe) and Bernardin Katic (Director at Large) who represented INETA Europe and GITCA who were available for discussing community and User Group issues and requests. Even the local General Manager from Microsoft Serbia came and make a short speech during our event which I think was fantastic !
In the evening, the organizers gathered speakers and Influencers for a dinner on a boat. We had a bus talking us from the hotel to the restaurant and the venue was really super ! We had the chance to talk about different topics but, fore and foremost, having all these Countries represented for me was a great experience (it’s always is).
There are several anecdotes I would like to share: on a personal note, I really appreciated the chat I had with MVP Bojan Jovicic about social skills (thank you for your advices !!)
And I’d also like to ad we had a great time talking about communities with Valdis Iljuconoks (nominated as the Official CEE MVP Photographer 
) and Maciej Pilecki !
There are several pieces of experiences I grab with myself after the event. One in particular, which is nothing new but worth to mention is:
“Strategies are important, but without relationships they are gonna fail”
See you soon !
about.me
Alessandro Teglia
EMEA Regional Manager @Microsoft
Social. Connected. Digital Enthusiast. Online & Offline Community Influencer & Follower. Avid audio book reader, rookie Photographer, History fan. Addicted to #WindowsPhone... #Branding is my Passion
World Map
My bookshelf
My PhotoStream
|
