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What I do at Microsoft.. and TechED 2004 India

Gaurav Khanna — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 23:02:00 GMT

As part of my role at Microsoft as a Developer Evangelist, I own the Microsoft developer events that are executed across the country to engage with the developers at a huge scale. These include the MSDN Sessions that are conducted across 6 cities every month, the MSDN Yatras that are done in 9 cities every quarter, and finally, DevDays and TechED. Basically:

1) I drive all the developer events of Microsoft India. So, if you want us to talk about something you want to hear, let me know :)

2) I own the technical content that goes into these events - primarily meaning that I am responsible for selecting the nature and depth of session that will be presented to the developers [yes, including demos!], to help the developers understand our technologies better, help them give an insight into where our developer technologies are headed in the future [which helps developers align their development strategies].

3) I am responsible for making developer feel excited and importantly, feel more productive, when they use the technologies - by digging inside the technologies.

Yes, my work expects me to remain abreast with where we are headed - technically. Cos if I dont understand the technology, how can I drive it better across this huge nation? And this is part of my role...

The upcoming TechED 2004 India is our next, and the biggest, technical event for developers, IT professionals, decision makers - to get dig inside of the technologies, tools and servers that are coming up and/or are recently released and understand them better! And this has been keeping me busy - The event is in the entire month of August 2004, where we are touching Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi!

Yes, we are finally coming to New Delhi!

Right from detailed technical sessions [the minimum is Level 200] to focused Chalk Talk sessions, we have got a lot to keep you hooked. Not to mention the product teams members are coming down to speak! Definitely, you wouldn't want to miss this event that goes on for 3 whole days across each city!

For details on sessions, speakers, and registration, visit http://www.techedindia.com/.

See you at TechED 2004 India :)

Amsterdam Trip Snaps

Gaurav Khanna — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 14:36:00 GMT

Snaps from my Amsterdam trip are here:

http://www.ofoto.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=58nq409.297jx6ep&Uy=-s0per4&Upost_signin=BrowsePhotos.jsp%3fshowSlide%3dtrue&Ux=0&UV=603557680015_957505404105

http://www.ofoto.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=58nq409.9f97jwa9&Uy=y4vzrk&Upost_signin=BrowsePhotos.jsp%3fshowSlide%3dtrue&Ux=0

Interesting Dinner... and Wine Education :)

Gaurav Khanna — Wed, 19 May 2004 04:00:00 GMT

Just came back from a dinner engagement with someone I met at Orkut. It turned out to be quite interesting. The person in question not only was smart (looks perspective) and exhibiting a good deal of confidence, but she also had a great deal of knowledge on Wines. Plus a very cute smile :)

And as I continued to ask more on the subject, the more I got to know, like:

How to identify a good wine from a bad one
What all acids go in which kind of wines..
Which wines are stored at what temperatures and why (Red at room and White at cold, if I recall correctly)...
Some bit on Vodka too..

Ofcourse, we talked about work (btw, she works with a major Internet org.!), hobbies, etc.. basically all the usual stuff, which did help in understanding each other perspectives better (or so I think!).

Finally, saw her off.. and walked back to office.. and am at work (Yes, she was generous enough to offer a lift back, but I preferred to walk...)...

Would I want to meet her again.. hmm... Yes. Would she? I doubt so! I doubt if our next meeting could be soon :) This one itself materialized after months of persual...

Where have I been...

Kumar Gaurav Khanna — Wed, 12 May 2004 18:25:00 GMT

Its over 3 weeks since I last blogged. Yes, I know I dont blog much but then, where have I been...

To start off, on the 20th of April 2004, I joined Microsoft India as a Developer Evangelist, where I am primarily responsible for working with unmanaged community in India alongwith owning MSDN events, TechED and DevDays in the country.

Secondly, DevDays 2004 was around the corner and I was totally hooked onto making it run good. We previewed Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 - Generics, Partial Types, Iterators, DataGridView, BackGroundWorker, Master Pages, Themes, just to name a few, along with preview Microsoft SQL Server 2005 [Yukon Beta 1] - Managed Stored Procs [yes, you can now write server side SQL procedures, functions without using T-SQL, but in C#, VB.NET, etc!], Asynchronous DB access, Paging [yes, now it takes just one line of code to implement paging in SQL Server Yukon], etc.

On the 3rd of May 2004 at Mumbai, and 5th of May 2004 at Bangalore, DevDays 2004 happened. B'lore, as a matter of fact was sold out way before the event. And we had a great time showcasing where we were headed in terms of DBMS and Developer Tools.

So, it had been quite a busy 3 weeks at work... and yet I have tons on my plate :)

BTW, for those interested, the PPTs, Demo Code, Lab Manuals for India DevDays 2004 can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/india/msdn/events/presentations.aspx