Microsoft Dream Spark Yatra 10:06 AM

Microsoft DreamSpark Yatra is an initiative by Microsoft, to conduct large-scale technology-oriented events in various cities. This event focuses on spreading awareness among the masses, about new & innovative technologies. This event is one of its kind, with a motive to cover 100 cities in 10 weeks (mid-Feb to end-April). This event will be done in collaboration with one or more Microsoft Student
Partners and Microsoft Evangelists.
  We are CoimBatorE User Group supported by Microsoft, iNeta and Leadcap. It’s a User Group formed by Microsoft Student partners in 2007. Microsoft Students Partners are the selected and trained students by Microsoft from various institutions across the globe. Though Tamilnadu being one of the Educational hub in India,
students are not aware of the latest technology and happenings of it across the globe. In order to overcome this we conduct conferences and Hands-on-lab in various colleges in and around Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Sathyamangalam, Namakkal, Rasipuram, Thanjavur and various other districts of Tamilnadu. As a part of Microsoft Dreamspark Yatra we are conducting one day workshops in various institutions of Tamilnadu. So far we have conducted events in various institutions of Coimbatore, Erode, Rasipuram, Thanjavur, Sathyamangalam and Namakkal. We have covered more than 9200 students in these cities in just 1 month.
 

Please Visit!

http://www.cbeug.org
http://www.facebook.com/cbeug
http://www.youtube/cbeug

BootCamp V2.0 - Sprint 8:02 PM

Hi!
Its been a long time. I hope you are doing good! My joy knows no bounds right now. I am truly happy to inform you that the February Boot Camp was an amazing Success. We had a 2 Day Boot Camp at Coimbatore in Hotel Vijay Paradise. 24 MSPs from Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Thanjavur, Nammakal, Karur etc. Turned up for the Session. Again, it was a BIG HIT!!

We organized the Boot Camp with the help of a few newly recruited MSPs so that they get an experience into organizing events. Again it was a thrilling last-minute successful planning and lightning fast implementation.
The only problem we faced was that we didn't have even a single Rupee in the Usergroup Account.

Anyways, moving on to The Bootcamp. It begin with an introduction to the Usergroup where we explained what are the roles of an MSP and the responsibilities of the Executive Body. Notepads, Pens, Charts and CBEUG Stickers were distributed to all during this time. It was a pleasant surprise for the MSPs.
After the CBEUG Organization session was over, we conducted the SONA - State of National Affairs

This was an activity where the MSPs are jumbled and made to sit in groups. Then a couple of tasks would be given to each team which required interaction amongst each other and amazing Team Work. This was the perfect Ice Breaking Session. (I would suggest it for the best case practice)
After SONA we broke for lunch and we came back to Sathya Narayan's Session to help the Phase II selected MSPs, introducing them to the various sessions and tips on how to go about handling the various tasks being an MSP. It really helped the new recruits.

Next we had a Driver's Test. This test is a personality analysis Test. Test sheets were handed out to all the MSPs and all of them were made to complete the test. Then the analysis was based upon the responses of the MSPs. I was truly shocked to see that the Test made a 90% Perfect Analysis of the Individual. This was a real eye opener.
After the Driver's Test, Arumugham and I left the venue to the OCP get a little gift for the attendees. Meanwhile Jibin Varghese was taking care of the attendees by checking them into the rooms and making sure that everything was fine. I had planned a small party where we had another Ice Breaking session, but due to the immense participation of the MSPs during the whole day, most of them slept off.

The Next Day began with a Bang. EduSpark Analysis and planning was made full on. I was inspired by the team effort put by all the MSPs in planning the EduSpark. We finalized the entire list of colleges to visit, the total number of Developer Conferences and the number of Goodies to provide to the audience.
After we finalized the plans and had a nice lunch. We had the awards ceremony, where we distributed the little surprise to everyone. They were a set of Visiting Cards for all the attendees of the session. We also distributed resource DVDs. It was a pleasant surprise for them. Vice Presidents of the Usergroup was also announced.

Dancing skills depicted by Arumugham

Then we "promised" an award for the Best Performing MSP and the MSP to initiate Maximum number of MSDN AA and Live@edu, (We didn't have any goodies left to award them something nice too :( )

This was the long 2 Day amazingly "AWESOME" Boot Camp that we had ever Conducted. It was a nice experience. Please do support our UG .

Thanks for reading!

24th October 2009 - A Milestone in CBEUG - The First ever BootCamp @ Coimbatore 10:19 AM

The day began with Arumugham, two fellow usergroup members (Fazulul & Vivek) and myself receiving the MSPs who came for the BootCamp. The venue of the BootCamp was Zoom Consultancy. My sincere thanks to Mr. Anil Nair for providing us the venue. The MSPs who came for the BootCamp were

Indhuja Pillai - Narasu's Sarathy Institute of Technology , Salem
Saarang - Tamil Nadu College of Engineering , Coimbatore
Jibin Varghese - Tamil Nadu College of Engineering, Coimbatore
Bharath Wajan Prabhu - M. Kumarasamy College of Engineering , Coimbatore
Gopinantham - Nandha College of Engineering, Erode
Gowtham - Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore
Venkat - Velalar College of Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore
Animesh Jain - Shaasthra University, Thanjavur
Kusumakar Dwivedi - Shaasthra University, Thanjavur
Raja Ram - PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore
Sathyanarayanan - Krishna College of Arts and Science , Coimbatore
Krsna Rajan - Maha College of Engineering,
Siddharth - Bannari Amman College of Technology, Coimbatore

There were a couple of more MSPs who happen to miss the session due to various reasons, but we will make it a point that their role transitions happen to them also.


The Agenda for the day was

Introduction 9 30 AM - 10 00 AM
Ice Breaking Session 10 00 AM - 11 00 PM
MSP Program 11 00 PM - 12 00 PM
Lunch 12 00 PM - 1 30 PM
CBEUG Structure 1 30 PM - 2 30 PM
Exclusive Session for New
MSPs on how to achieve targets 2 30 PM - 3 30 PM
Feedback and Interaction 3 30 PM - 4 00 PM

Arumugham and Myself began the introductory session and we started off explaining our past experiences and how we were recruited into the program and so on. The Ice Breaking session was effective, we made the new recruits make 10 statements about themselves out of which 5 statements should be stated false, and the rest of them should guess which were the false statements made by the speaker. We explained the roles and benefits of an MSP, the Do's and Don'ts etc. Then comes the most interesting part , Lunch!

But.. for us..
Lunch: 4 of us ate Pizza and we had to empty our wallets. 1000 Bucks!!! :'(

So, after a sumptuous lunch the CBEUG structure was explained to them. I would be proud to say that even a heavy meal didn't make the MSPs feel sleepy for any of the session. Then the method of uploading and the opportunities available for the new recruits to gain points very easily was clearly described. I was very glad that the MSPs were already in the process of planning to reach their targets. One of the MSPs (Sathya) already has secured 160 points which was truly amazing!


After the sessions and lots of coffee, we celebrated the launch of Windows 7! It was a small party where we ate some Junk food and used the Windows 7 Tissue Papers :). Overall it was a memorable event, a niche in the history of CBEUG. Hoping to make wonders in the coming days.

The New Recruits were amazing to be with. They truly deserve the role of an MSP. They were highly responsive and interactive.

We are truly glad that we were able to motivate and guide our junior MSPs, personally It really feels good within meeting them :)


@ the New Recs: NOW ITS (Y)OUR TIME TO SHINE ;)


Gee! Im Friggin' excited about the next meeting already. aksj;klsadj;flkadwm;f;jew''wefjsljka <-- Statement of Excitement

Session at Karunya! 1100+ Students! Speaker: Siddharth Prakash! 12:58 PM

Mr. Siddarth Prakash, Program manager, Microsoft along with CBEUG - Coimbatore User Group conducted a seminar on Introduction to .net, Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft Academic Initiatives and a lot of cool demos in the premises of Karunya University on 20th March 2009.


There were more than 1100+ attendees from 1st, 2nd, 3rd years of IT and CSE Department. It was organized by the .net club of Karunya University. The students were really very enthusiastic and interactive.

The session went on for a period of one hour, and the enthusiastic crowd required more time to shoot questions at Siddharth, who also was dynamically answering them. The Director of the Engineering Block, Mr. Blessing was very instrumental in making this event a grand success. The students of the college also spent some quality time with Siddharth and the Microsoft Student Partners to learn more about their ideas and future plans.

Link to Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6kYib3YVBQ

COIMBATORE STUDENT SUMMIT '09 - Developing Interest in Student Community 12:52 PM

Its an technical gyan event conducted by CBEUG - Coimbatore User Group, were all the Microsoft Student Partners, Mozilla Campus Representatives join together and conduct a one day conference in Coimbatore. This time the CSS '09 was hosted by INFOSCIENCE, a campus club of Tamilnadu Engineering College. The college is situated in picturesque surroundings, abutting NH 47 (Salem-Cochin) in Karumathampatti, 30km for the industrial city of Coimbatore, 20km from the textile center of Tirupur and 10km from the temple town of Avinashi.(tats wat they have put in their website :D) INFOSCIENCE is a highly enthusiastic and well organized campus club.Special thanks to Pradeesh, Shiva Shankar, Vipin and INFOSCIENCE members(the people behind the scene) of III yr CSE .Their management skills was truly admirable.


There were more than 1400 attendees from more than 20 different colleges in and around Coimbatore. We started with Microsoft Academic Initiative which included Microsoft Student Partner Program, CBEUG - Coimbatore User Group Channel 8, MSDN AA, Live@Edu, Dreamspark, Ineta, Imagine Cup 09, Faculty Connection and Student2Business.


Immediately after that Windows 7 was taken, students were very keen throughout this session and were amazed by the cool features. Then we explained them how to create a Virtual hard disc in windows 7 which is an inbuilt feature in it with a demo and also on VS 2008 with intro to .net. After 1 hour of lunch we started with a session on Mozilla Firefox add - ons and all about blogging. Then we took few more technical sessions with a lot of demos like creating a silverlight & WPF applications, then Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Photosynth and all about User Experience. We also played a small skit to make the students understand the problems faced by company on the issue "wide gap between developer and designer". That made them understand more easily.


And then we had an amazing Quiz session which prevented from all the attendees to go for a break. Then at last the most awaiting session Microsoft Robotics Studio was taken. All the students were thrilled and excited. They were really amazed when we showed them how easy it is to write a program in Visual Programming Language and also run the Robot in Simulated Environment.


Then once again we did our usual thing of askin the same old question "Which operating system does Rajinikanth use?" because we believe that it makes the crowd happy. :D CSS '09 was a grand and successful event and we are sure that it had Developed Interest in Student Community

Workshop - Mahendra Engineering College on 2nd & 3rd March 2009 12:33 PM

Mahendra College of Engineering is situated on Salem - Tiruchengode main road 27 KMs from Salem and 33 KMs from Erode which are main Railway Junction connecting all important cities of India.
After our successful Developer Conference in their campus last year, they invited us again for conducting a Workshop .
This time we planned for 2 days workshop with 1 day completely dedicated for Hands on Lab.
@1st day:
There were 200 attendees on the 1st day.The attendees for the 1st day were from:
• 2nd & 3rd ECE
• 2nd & 3rd IT
• 2nd & 3rd CSE

We started with Microsoft Academic Initiative which included Microsoft Student Partner Program, CBEUG - Coimbatore User Group Channel 8, MSDN AA, Live@Edu, Dreamspark, Ineta,Imagine Cup 09, Faculty Connection and Student2Business.
Immediately after that the most eagerly awaited session, Windows 7 was taken. Where the students were amazed by the cool features. Then we explained them how to install and run different operating system virtually using Virtual PC 2007.We were provided with Internet facilities which helped us in showing demos.
After a 1 hr break, we started with technical sessions which included VS2008 with demos for explaining collaboration and productivity feature in VS 2008, Live Mesh with a demo synchronizing 2 laps and then popfly with a Demo on Mash Up. At last we ended day one with explaining about Mozilla and Blogging.
@2nd day:
For the 2nd day Hands on Lab, only 90 of the 200 students were selected as we could arrange only two labs with 45 computers each. So in LAB 1 we installed SQL SERVER 2008 (Trial), VS 2008 Express Edition and in LAB 2 we installed Small Basics, Expression Blend & VS 2008 Express Edition.
The attendees for the 2nd day were also from:
• 2nd & 3rd ECE
• 2nd & 3rd IT
• 2nd & 3rd CSE
As it was hands on lab we started of early, 8:30 AM itself. For the 1st 45 students we helped them in having a live working experience on creating a website with zero code using asp.net in VS 2008. They learnt how useful it is to create a master page and develop a website. They also learnt how easy to create a database in SQLSERVER 2008 and connect it to the website.
Simultaneously the other set of 45 students learnt how easy it is to write a program in Small Basics when compared to that of writing program in TURBO C++. They also learnt to design a media player using Silverlight Technology in Expression Blend and then easily code in VS 2008.
After the break in the second half it was vice versa.
The students really had a lot of fun, learning by actually working on them.

Skipping time, Some Bombastic Events! 11:03 AM

I just skipped a lot of events that had happened, I would definitely love to blog about them in my future posts. But as of now I am highly excited to disclose the fact that I have spoken to ATLEAST 4000 people in the past few weeks! I was really a thrilling experience! I had a great time! And it was an amazing Experience

Developer Conference - Vellalar Engineering College, Salem on 28th Feb 09

The visit to this college was memorable. We had an amazing stay and the hospitality offered by the college members were Awesome. Vellalar College of Engineering is Located at 7 km from Erode Railway Junction & Bus Stand, TamilNadu. We had been invited by the students for conducting a Microsoft student Conference on 28th of February 2009. A special thanks to Ganesh and Jemima of III rd year IT department.

As in every function we had a inaugural starting with lighting a lamp (“Kuttu Vilakku").
We were really embarrassed and also a bit nervous when we sat on the Dias with the Principal, Administrative Director, and Head of the Department of IT Dept. We were really proud when the Administrative Director said "It’s really nice to see 4 boys from their 3rd yrs and that too from a new college sitting next to me in the Dias". We had audiences around 500+ which included
• 2nd & 3rd year CSE
• 2nd & 3rd IT
• 1st &2nd MCA
As usual we started with the introductory session about our User Group, Microsoft Student Partner program, Microsoft Academic Initiatives. Meanwhile we were also conducting Group Discussion and selecting Students for AIESEC interview.
Then technical sessions that included Into to .NET, VS2008, Expression Studio, Demo on Expression blend and Linq, Virtual PC 2007.


We also spoke on Microsoft Research which included Microsoft Surface, Photosynth, Boku, Live Mesh and Windows 7.
After that while getting the feedback we put up a question "convince us what operating system Rajinikanth uses".
The following students were the participants
1. Bala Shankar III yr IT
2. Selva Prabhu II yr IT
3. Rajkumar III yr CSE – A
4. Aravindhan II yr CSE
5. Rangaraju II yr CSE
And many more (sorry guyz I forgot all ur names)
We had many funny and interesting answers from the students, Selva Prabhu II yr IT who got the maximum vote, won a GENUINE VISTA BUSINESS.

After the conference everyone appreciated us and from the heart thanked us. The HOD of IT department attended the whole session and was extremely happy about the success of the event. He said he had done a mistake of not calling us long back itself, to his college.
After the conference we took Interview for AIESEC and winded up.