Be_Lead Blog

It is the time, yes, to communicate the new MVP Awardees for the April cycle. As you may know, there are 3 different cycles and every 3 months I publish information about newly awarded Microsoft MVPs on my blog regarding the Region I represent: Central, Eastern Europe & Italy.

I know many people are anxious when it comes to re-awarding, especially on the 1st of April, where it may seems to be a joke (but it’s not! ), and it’s totally understandable. When you get the MVP Award, it means you dedicated a lot of time and efforts to help your peers, whether it was online or offline, and the meaning of this Award is a THANK YOU for what you did for the communities, for your peers, using your technical skills to make sure people understands how to use our product in a 1:many relationship. So I guess it’s natural to be a little bit nervous…

I’m truly honored to represent this prestigious Award and I’d like to CONGRATULATE the following new MVPs, sorted by Name:

(this list is related to the new MVPs in the Region I represent, which is CEE & Italy, excluding Russia and CIS Countries).

A BIG CONGRATS to you guys MVPs and of course to the ones that have been re-Awarded. And being re-Awarded is tough as well: don’t you think MVPs are taking it for granted. 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.

That said, I’ll be travelling abroad in the Region so I really hope we can meet in person!

I also wanted to spend a few words for the ones who haven’t been award so far or who have been declined on this cycle: as I’m really sorry for that, I’m sure you’ll get a chance to be nominated again so don’t lose faith!

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…

Feel free to follow @MVPAward and myself on Twitter: you may find a lot of real-life stories, covering different Microsoft products and technologies…

That said, Enjoy your Award and Congratulations Again !

@alead

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

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

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

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 …

Link to: Code Camp 2010 | Event from community to community

I’m always happy to see new Microsoft MVPs coming onboard. No matter what the Country is, what language is, what the activities are, there’s one thing in common and I’ll never stop saying this out loud: PASSION.

Together with other Microsoft MVPs, the local subsidiaries and Microsoft Corporation, we identified top community contributors, within many different areas of expertise, who really deserved the MVP Award !

Particularly for the Region I represent (CEE & Italy), I would like to announce the newly awarded MVPs as of the 1st of January, 2011:

(as soon as they’ll publish the news on their blogs and/or on their MVP Profiles, I will add the names so you’ll get to know them ).

Congratulations !! I think this is the best time of the year as you celebrated the New Year in the best possible way !!

And of course Congratulations to the re-awarded MVPs (and you know who you are !! )

BTW if you want to know more about the MVP Award Program, be sure to read our blog and follow me

I already blogged about this but I thought it was worth mentioning the great success this event was:

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 !

Link to: http://www.itprodevconnections.gr/?lang=2

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 !

This is the first event organized by the local WindowServer.it community on Small-Medium Businesses.

Together with OverNet Education, the community organized, from the 4th to the 6th of October, the first WindowServer.it PMI Conference 2010.

During the 3 days all the technical issues will be analyzed in details, from a business perspective, like which products to implement, which regulations and how to implement an infrastructure using Windows Small Business Server 2008.

Among the topics that will be covered, Exchange Server, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM will be covered too. The speakers will involve some of the most important IT professionals in the industry (together with local MVP Giorgio Garcia-Agreda).

For more information, please follow the link and follow S.NET !

Link to (ITA): …:::: WindowServer.it PMI Conference 2010 ::::…

On 13 – 14th October 2010, in Skopje (Former Yugoslavian Republic Of Macedonia).

I’m pleased to announce the Microsoft Vizija Conference (8th edition) which will include traditional IT Professionals, Developers and Managers everybody in one place.

“With the large number of lectures and the presence of eminent National and International people, the conference will give the opportunity to attendees to learn about new products and long term strategies of Microsoft, and to exchange views and knowledge about the latest technologies.”

From the list of the speakers, I can recognize a lot of Microsoft MVPs coming from the whole EMEA Region: Paula Januszkiewicz (Enterprise Security, from Poland), Dejan Foro (Exchange Server from Switzerland), Tomislav Bronzin – (SQL Server from Croatia), Damir Dizdarevic (Management Infrastructure from Bosnia-Herzegovina), Serge Luca (SharePoint Services from Belgium), Aleksandar Talev (SQL Server from F.Y.R.O.M.), Boban Stojanovski (Visual C# from F.Y.R.O.M.), Vladimir Meloski (Exchange Server from F.Y.R.O.M.) and Daniel Joskovski (SQL Server from F.Y.R.O.M.).

Microsoft Vizija continues to be the most important IT Event in the Country for those who wants to know more about Microsoft Products & Technologies and mostly to get involved in technical discussions with some of the key players in the field !

Link: http://www.msvizija.net/

On 27 and 28th of November, 2 of the the biggest local Communities and User Groups (Autoexec.gr and DotNetZone.gr) organized a 2 days event for both ITPros and Developers.

As you can see from the agenda, there are 2 main tracks and 2 side tracks to accommodate both audiences, plus some time in which Microsoft MVPs, active community members and partners will interact with the attendees and reply to any technical questions they may have.

Looking at the speakers, I’m positively impressed by the quality and professionalism of these guys I had the pleasure to meet in person:

Chris Spanougakis, Andreas Tsouchlaris, Vangelis Kapsalakis, Antonios Chatzipavlis, George Capnias, Manos Kelaiditis, Kostas Pantos, Dimitris Papadimitriou, Dimitrios Gkanatsios, Panagiotis Kefalidis and many other speakers.

If you live in Greece, you probably know them and their technical skills so you definitely can’t miss this great event !

Link (in Greek): ITPro Dev Connections 2010

I’ve been very busy during the last couple of months and I was pushing myself trying to find some time to “revitalize” my blog.

So here we are, back on track, with some new information regarding the Forums.

I already talked about it on one of my previous posts and I would like to share with you some of the updates and new stuff already in place (mostly for the EMEA Region).

TechNet (basically for ITPROs and System Administrators)

MSDN (for Developers)

Microsoft Answers (for consumers: Windows, Microsoft Office & other related products)

You may want to know that you can access the forums not only through the web interface, but also using some of the tools available online. Basically all you need to have is an NNTP Bridge (links below) and a Newsreader (like Windows Live Mail for example):

Download the NNTP Bridge or download the Community Bridge (made by MVP Jochen Kalmbach: btw great job Jochen !)

And it’s very easy to get in there: all you need to have is a Windows Live ID and then you can start searching for the relevant forums you want to follow and start interacting with other users and Microsoft MVPs.

Happy Posting !

Around 3000 people expect including almost 600 people from the communities.

These are some of the numbers of the most important Microsoft Conference happening in Warsaw on September 29-30: the Microsoft Technology Summit 2009 !

MTS 2009 is Poland’s largest technology conference aimed at IT professionals, developers, and enthusiasts of new technologies.
Highlighting MVPs Kimberly Tripp, Grzegorz Tworek, Paweł Pławiak, Jacek Doktór, Sebastian Wilczewski, Bartosz Pampuch, Marlon Grech and many other International colleagues and IT professionals, the 2 days will be differentiated in 13 different areas:

Thus touching a lot of different Microsoft technologies and products: from Visual Studio 2010 to the System Center family, from Exchange 2010 to Windows 7 etc etc…

Even if my Polish is almost at a scholar level, I’ll definitely be there !!

Link to: Microsoft Technology Summit 2009 | 29-30 września 2009 | PKiN Warszawa

I’m very happy to announce that the very popular KulenDayz Community event will be taking place again!

From June 12 to June 14 (in Osijek, Croatia) the Conference has been organized in 4 different tracks to meet different audience needs:

♦ Advanced Development
♦ Databases
♦ System Infrastructure
♦ Project Management

“The sessions at the KulenDayz 2009 will be technically oriented, level 300/400, covering new Microsoft Products and Technologies (Visual Studio 2010, Azure, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V, ASP.NET MVC)…The idea around that is to have an informal event for IT specialists”

Speakers of the event comes from different area of the Region: from Croatia to Serbia to Bulgaria to Macedonia, just to name a few.

Highlighting MVPs Tomislav Bronzin, Vladan Strigo, Jerislav Bobić, Dean Vitner, Ivan Šaškor, Matija Lah and Bernard Katić, the one who made this great Conference happen !

You can find all the details around logistic, location and accomodation here, as well as the registration link !

Link to: KULENDAYZ – community event, Osijek 2009

And yet another great event is over..

We have been doing this event for about 4 years and, as the MVP Community evolved, we really made great steps. The steps I’m talking about are not only about us, doing the Ask The Expert and the MVP Interactive Panel with 13 MVPs as speakers and 8 as active participants, but I’m also talking about the event organization: the TechDays/WPC 2008

Around 400 participants had the opportunity to see many professional ITPros and Developers, on a 3 days event, covering 70 sessions over 14 tracks (from Architecture to Data Platform to Business Intelligence and so forth).

It was about meeting people: the talks and the discussions, mingling together with the same passion to share. Absolutely amazing !

The guest speakers made clearly a difference (David Chappell with his speech on Cloud Computing was simply brilliant!) but I can’t mention all the positive feedback I received from the attendees talking about all the other speeches.

Every time it’s a privilege for me to represent these exceptional community leaders, as we are not talking about mere skills, we are talking about dealing with people that really has a great passion to share, open minded and available to participate to meet other people hungry for knowledge.

I recall a guy telling me: “For me, solving a technical problem for which an IT department/a developer is stuck for days/months with just a face-to-face chat, really pays my day”. And this is exactly what fosters these people (as I said) I have the honor to represent…

I have a lot of special thanks but please let me do just one to Giorgio Garcia-Agreda and Anna Cometti who made the “MVP Experience” so special… !