Group

We have reached 100: ASP.NET Developers, Bangladesh

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:21:16 GMT

We have reached 100 members recently in our user group ASP.NET Developers, Bangladesh. Its a good news really. Having our own user group help us to move forward with respect to the current technology trend in faster and professional manner. Hope we will grow faster. Cheers to all group members!

Few Words From A Fresh MVP

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:39:00 GMT

One of the famous quotes of Socrates that drives me all the time is: "Know Thyself". Around the world there are lots of things which might be in your interest on not. Knowing yourself doesn't only mean to find your choices, it also includes the facts, which don't belong to your choice as well as!

Knowing what I don't know

Well, so I need to know myself. As a technical guy, how do I know where I can be the best fit or where I can be comfortable to explore my ideas to create new but necessary things? One of our favorite poets, Rabindranath Thakur told "It's very natural to be ignorant about something. But it often happens that, we don't know what we don't know!". In this very dynamic era of technical world, it is very much true. Technology is changing very frequently, so as professionals, always we need to find out best fits among all of the changes. To knowing about "what I don't know" was my first step to go forward. Of course, community contents, such as forums, articles, blogs, newsgroups was a great resource for me in that case, by getting informed what the experts and professionals are thinking about the latest software releases and development practices. Going thru among those, I got the basic idea about what I don't really know!

Learning in-depth where I can be a best fit

After experimenting and picking my choices, the next phase starts! I need to learn those in more detail. One of my most favorite quote about IT professionals is "To fit with current tech trend, we need to know something about everything and we need to know everything about something!". In real tech world, the term "everything" can't be limited within a specific boundary. So it's better to consider the term, "everything" is "as much as possible".

Implementation

Now the third phase to explore as a good professional, appears. Use what you have learned in your projects/works. But apart from simply putting the learned things should not be the "only" concern for a developer. While implementing any external content that I just learned, I tried to keep my eyes open to examine it's affect in the production environment.

Turning to personal contribution over the contents

Either comparing with other alternative solutions or analyzing the solution with respect to other dependencies, I often got some new ideas, thoughts, techniques to modify the used solution for the current project or for the future project with different context. This process not only makes me intimate with the contents in more details, but also opens several doors to provide the best solution in appropriate context. Apart from my personal usage, these alternative or better solutions can also be a valuable resource to my community friends, along with providing them a way to think more about it!

The four phases, which I just mentioned are my usual way to expand my knowledge (and thus myself) in most comfortable scenario. Thanks God, technology is changing very frequently, and thus always I can discover myself in an infinite loop!

My MVP 2007 Award

Once upon a time, I was a freelance newspaper journalist. I first used PC when I was in the second semester in my Bachelor in Computer Science degree! As usually, I was a bit afraid, whether i will be able to fit in this "unknown" area. The continuous process to knowing me opened doors for me to find myself to be fitted here. Besides my reference books, my community friends were a great resource for me.

Passing previous 7 years was a great adventure for me! Getting matured with the community contents and tutorial stuffs, one day I found that, besides getting, I can put my contents to my community friends as well as. The most interesting thing I felt, that, besides getting contents from the community, there is a big "joy" to share own contents in return.

Microsoft awarded me first time as a MVP "Most Valuable Professional" in "Visual ASP.NET" category for 2007, with respect to my community contributions over the last year 2006. My MVP profile can be seen here.

Of course it was a big surprise for me to find myself in an expert community. Apart from other benefits, I feel the best thing, to get a broader scope to get in touch with the Tech gurus. Thanks to Microsoft to provide me a new path to go forward with more perfection!

Cheers!

40000+ Touches with My Community Friends

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 05:25:00 GMT

It's a great wonder for me my article titled Common UI Practices in ASP.NET Applications at codeproject has reached 30,418 hits so far! This article was published in March 2006, and was honored to be a recommended article by the official web site of ASP.NET. In this article, I discussed few tips and guidelines regarding the UI issues while developing an ASP.NET based web application, along with some useful resource links. It's great pleasure for me, around 30k+ developers read my article to find some outline to make their web applications better. I have also got some suggestions from the readers as well as, which helped me to make the article better (and thus improve my UI skills as well as).

My user samples, provided at gotdotnet have been downloaded 10,118 times, so far. There are 8 user samples, which include few of my coding samples, which I thought might be a bit useful for my community friends.

When I started my development life, .NET was very new at that time. None of my friends around me started to study on it! Some of them was wondered to hear this new name! So I had to start alone! By that time besides few hard copies, I got lots of resources in online, provided by the community developers, which helped me to quickly learn this new technology. As a developer, I am really grateful to my community friends, and wanted to do something in return for them. Might be, so far, I couldn't be able to do something great and awesome for my community friends, but I have a deep wish to do that!

Attached with 'Culminis'

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:57:00 GMT

Culminis is an international organization devoted to the development and growth of the IT community. After getting the membership from INETA, our group ASP.NET Developer, Bangladesh, got the membership of this organization. As the group leader, today I have accessed the resource site of this community and surprised with the resources and organization of it.

We really feel ourselves to find better and better ways to explore our experience with other professionals and communities, as well as have greater ways for resources to be better!

Being Placed in INETA Newsletter October 2006!

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 02:49:00 GMT

"INETA (International .NET Association) is the next evolution in user group communities" as it is told in the web site of this organization, I really found it true when I was first interested about INETA. This fast growing .NET based developer association expanding it's activities with a real driving force. The fact which made me more surprised that, it has been successful to put .NET developers the whole world in an umbrella, according with very useful resources, pure dedication of expert group leaders and members.

I love community work, that's why I wanted to involve my group with INETA. It was not so easy, INETA took few steps to make my group approved. Well I had no problem, as we are doing right things. We had improved our group activities, unlike before we organized our group with some official stuffs (group logo, group site, group meeting pictures etc).

After getting approval we really become encouraged to be a part of this prestigious association. Well the second wonder was waiting for us. In the INETA APAC Newletter Octobor 2006 issue, as a developer group in Bangladesh we had been welcomed by the editor and been mentioned in User Group Activities aroud APAC section with our recent activities and picture! Of course it was beyond our expectation!

Thanks Wee Hyong, Editor, INETA APAC, Newsletter Team to consider us in the newletter issue. INETA is really making it possible to expand our dedication, interest and thus expand our group activities very fast.

Me, My Groups and INETA

Mohammad Ashraful Alam — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 06:18:00 GMT

Rather being involved on core coding, this month I was pretty busy on project management, user requirements analysis and of course in developer community activities. For last few days I tried to get the membership of my own developer group, where me and my other mates shares their ideas and thoughts. As the group leader, finally I was able to get the recognition from INETA (International .NET Association). For verification purpose I was called from Microsoft, Bangladesh office, which was a good surprise to me. Me and my two close group mate Ehsan and Rabbi went to the office by 18th September 2006, passed few times with the developer evangelist Mr. Hamid. When we were getting back, he gave each of us a bag, which has T-shirt, cap, cd of Microsoft! We was really excited! Lolz!

Well, next day INETA confirmed me the membership of my group via email. Labeled as "ASP.NET Developers, Bangladesh", this group is basically a special interest group (SIG) of .net technology. To join or know more about it, hit to the group site here: http://groups.msn.com/ASP-NETDevelopersBangladesh/.

Just one week later, ".NET Developers, Bangladesh" which is the core developer community based on .NET technology was approved by INETA. Site: http://groups.msn.com/-NETDevelopersBangladesh.

Regardless being a .net developer or not, located at Bangladesh or not, all of you are welcome to join with us. Cheers!