Dev4Devs event in South Africa

Sometimes we forget what MSDN really stands for. And for sure “MS” is not the most important part of the acronym. MS Developers Network. The Devs4Devs event in South Africa that I had a pleasure to participate today – was an amazing proof that networking of technical community is the key to success (and not only to it).

What I liked about the event – is that the majority of questions to presenters were answered by people from the auditorium (not only presenters!). Implication #1 The local experts are here. They are available to share their knowledge. Thank you guys!

What I didn’t like about the event – I felt bad that we as Microsoft do not provide any platform for local community to collaborate except these offline events. Offline events are great, but we need to find something that local community can rely on anytime.

We have MSDN and TechNet Forums in South Africa. But let’s make sure people know about these resources!

Another great example that I will be retelling in other biz trips… People were complaining on broadband access and speed required to get the bits of betas/trials of MS products. The only one thing I could offer to them was.. to share the bits – if you’ve download the bits why not to share with others? And one of the attendees stood  up asking “Can anyone share bits of Visual Studio 2010 right now?” – I was super glad to see few people ready to pass the USB sticks to copy VS2010 beta bits :) This is how it’s supposed to be! Local community (IT Pros or Developers) should be able to ask questions and get help from their neighbors.

Thanks once again for the chance to have the first hand experience meeting with the ZA community!