Creating User Group or technical groups is not easy step. It requires lot of time and resources to find people who are interested in working with you as volunteers and successfully creating a trust in your group members minds. But once everything is up and running the result is great. So while answering the question I was able to note down the things and resources to get help from. It is given below.

• Name the User Group and define your scope, objectives and target audience.

• Get Volunteer/Community Geeks on board – You need to define a Board build a relationship between the volunteers who are interested to be part of such a group and designate positions and responsibilities.

• Distribute Roles according to Skills and availability

• Create Check Lists of Tasks

• Design Group Logo and Moto

• Try to find a Local Microsoft Community Lead or MVP to guide you and present you some contacts.

• Do board meeting in the early weeks to discuss user group topics and vision for 6 months at least.

• Create a Facebook/Online Group Site and publish your Group with basic introduction to get peoples interest and on-board.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gulf Developer Conference is the biggest developer event that takes place in Saudi Arabia. This is a 3-days conference that is expected to attract more than 2,400 attendees from Saudi Arabia and near-by Gulf countries. The current event dates are set on Dec 13-15, 2009. The conference will be held at Al-Yamamah University, on the same premise of the new Microsoft Innovation Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There will be 3 parallel tracks that would be delivered simultaneously for the duration of the event. The current speakers are:

Abdurrahman Al-Qahtani, Microsoft Architect
Abdurrahman Al-Qahtani is Architect Evangelist at Microsoft Saudi, working with the Developer and Platform Evangelism group. He works with communities to raise the awareness and adoption of new technologies and architectures from Microsoft. He also works with enterprises to show Microsoft platform value and drive adoption to address business needs.

Adel Zubair, Sr. Development Consultant
I was born in a family that love’s technology. My father is a Math teacher so i was born to think logically! wrote my first application using Quick BASIC at the age of 9 and won several awards Kingdom wise during high school in Computer Competitions. My love to Development made everyone around saying that i’ll get married to Visual Studio. I worked for different companies as Developer, Senior Consultant in dot Net and Currently working as a Project Manager. Started to have interest in Windows Mobile since i got my first Windows device and found that it is a real challenge to develop applications for these devices with limited resources, at the same time they are so fun to use, so i started the “Windows Phone Middle East” Community (Windows Mobile Power Group on Facebook) to spread out my knowledge

Amer Atiyah, Dynamics Ax Consultant
Amer has a bachelor degree in Computer science from the University of Jordan, MCSD on .NET, and MCTS for Dynamics AX development. Amer is a technical expert on many technologies; including .NET, BizTalk Server, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and most importantly on Dynamics AX. Amer has good experience in developing web application e-government solutions in Saudi using .NET technology. He has over three years of experience specifically in Dynamics AX development and has been involved in more than 15 projects in different verticals.

Read the rest of this entry »

Gulf Developers Conference 2009 (GDC ‘09) – the largest Microsoft developer event in the Gulf region. This is a 3-days conference that is expected to attract more than 2,500 attendees from Saudi Arabia and near-by Gulf countries starting from December 13 to December 15, 2009. The conference will be held at Al-Yamamah University on the same premise of the new Microsoft Innovation Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

With the intense anticipation for Win7, Office 2010 & VS2010, the event is expected to attract the attention of many developers in the region. The GDC’09 event will be geared towards generating developers’ excitement by providing early developer access to key platform technologies that have not been released yet (e.g. VS2010, Office/MOSS 2010) or that have recently been released (e.g. Expression3,SL3, Win7). Moreover, GDC’09 will offer a unique experience for IT and developer managers to learn about new technology directions from Microsoft and how such technologies can be used to maximime value for their businesses.

Read the rest of this entry »

GDC is back! Gulf Developer Conference is the biggest developer event that takes place in Saudi Arabia. This is a 3-days conference that is expected to attract more than 2,400 attendees from Saudi Arabia and near-by Gulf countries. The current event dates are set on Dec 13-15, 2009. The conference will be held at Al-Yamamah University, on the same premise of the new Microsoft Innovation Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There will be 3 parallel tracks that would be delivered simultaneously for the duration of the event. The current technology tracks include:

• Ux: Win7, Expression3, SL3
• Dev: VS2010, ALM
• Web Development: including next web, IE8
• Dynamics – Ax, CRM
• Application Platform
• Mobile 6.5 dev

With the intense anticipation for Win7, Office 2010 & VS2010, the event is expected to attract the attention of many developers in the region. All customers from different segments as well as partners will be invited. The GDC’09 event will be geared towards generating developers’ excitement by providing early developer access to key platform technologies that have not been released yet (e.g. VS2010, Office/MOSS 2010) or that have recently been released (e.g. Expression3,SL3, Win7).