VS 2005 Launch in Pakistan

Last week we had official VS 2005 Launches in Lahore and Karachi respectively. Microsoft Paksitan had invited Chad Hower and Aseel Mansour as presenters for MSDN and TechNet Tracks respectively. I had known Aseel Mansour last PDC in Karachi (June 2005) and he is a cool speaker. But meeting Chad Hower was really great. He is a Regional .NET Developer Advisor (DPE DE) for the Middle East and Africa region. I had a detailed discussion with him about how to proceed with user group activities in the region and what INETA and MVPs can do in this regard. We also talked about re-vamping the reporting structure for INETA based UGs and more effectively reaching out user groups with quarterly kits. There was also a discussion about holding day long technical workshops in Miscorosft Partner Universities. We are expecting him to be with us by Feb/March 2006.


Chad distributing goodies amongs participants after end note.

For the launch events, they went pretty good. According to Chad and other people, audience at Lahore were more appreciative and active in the events as compared to Karachiites. I believe Chad/Aseel did a great job in the launch events and got audience interested in what ever they presented. Venues were spaced out, a lot people were returned back due to shortage of space.

Zeeshan Muhammad helping out audience with understanding workings of INETA User Groups

Sarfaraz Soomro answeing particpants queries on MVP program

Closing note was cool. We were able to run Imagine Cup intro video as well. But the past part of the whole show was the video that Chad and Aseel played, it was titled Microsoft Sharing The Pain of Customers :) awesome and funny, i wont write down the details but i bet it is hilarious enought to get you rolling on the floor.