Microsoft Momentum 2009 - The New Efficiency Community Launch!

Date: 26/11/2009, Nicosia
Attendees at the event: 400
Attendees at the Developers Track: 100
Track: Developers
Host: Microsoft Cyprus

On November 26^th Microsoft launched Momentum 2009; a New Efficiency Community Launch event.

The event took place in Nicosia, Cyprus, Europe, and had at around 400 attendees. Two tracks were featured: one for Developers, and another one for IT-Pros.

Cyprus .NET User Group (CDNUG), actively participated to the event with three of its speakers delivering some really interesting sessions on the Developer’s track. Also, CDNUG arranged for a special CDNUG area at the event where developers could sign-up with the User Group. Here is a photo of our speakers at the CDNUG area:

(From the left to the right: Phanis, Artemakis and Bojan)

Our first member on stage was Bojan Mijuskovic (Blog, Twitter), founding member of CDNUG and great .NET Developer. Bojan’s session topic was “Developing Windows 7 Applications with .NET”.

Bojan presented on how Developers can use the technologies brought by Windows 7 for building powerful applications for Windows 7. Though the demos, he showed how we can develop cool applications for Windows 7 (i.e. taskbar improvements,  jump lists, progress bars, and much more) by using unmanaged and .NET managed code. Attendees were amazed by these new capabilities! Here are some pictures of Bojan in action!

Our next member on stage was Artemakis Artemiou (Blog, Twitter), our User Group Lead, INETA Country Leader for Cyprus and Microsoft SQL Server MVP. Artemakis’s session topic was “Self-Service Business Intelligence with SQL Server 2008 R2”.

Artemakis provided a short introduction to the great SQL Server 2008 R2 features and a “Bonus Demo” showcasing these features. Some of these features are: Connectivity to SQL Azure, Data-tier Application Upgrade, SQL Server Utility, Master Data Services, StreamInsight, and a large amount of enhancements on Reporting Services. Then, Artemakis focused on the Analysis Services set of features in SQL Server 2008 R2 which include PowerPivot for Excel and PowerPivot for SharePoint.

Artemakis's presentation focused on PowerPivot for Excel 2010. PowerPivot (formerly known as “Gemini”) is an Add-on for Excel 2010 / SharePoint 2010 which brings the full power of SQL Server Analysis Services right into Excel. Its engine called “Vertipaq” uses in-memory column based compression allowing millions of rows of data to be stored, sorted and aggregated. PowerPivot supports a wide variety of sources and provides the Business User with a rich set of mathematical functionally featuring the existing functions already in Excel and the powerful Data Analysis eXpressions (DAX). Artemakis performed many live demos including the importing of 5 millions of rows from SQL Server directly into Excel 2010 along with aggregating this data for answering business queries. In the last demo, Artemakis performed a mashing-up of data from various sources and after importing the data into Excel using PowerPivot, he performed aggregations. The attendees found the functionality of PowerPivot very interesting and a long discussion took place. Here are some pictures of Artemakis in action!

After Artemakis’s session, the last CDNUG presenter got on stage; Phanis Parpas. Phanis, member of CDNUG delivered a talk on SharePoint 2010 for Developers with topic: “Overview of the SharePoint 2010 Developer Platform”.

Phanis presented the new features in SharePoint 2010 that enable developers to be more productive and have a richer experience when developing with SharePoint 2010 and Visual Studio 2010. Also, Phanis performed many live demos showing how these features can be used and do more with less. Here are some pictures of Phanis in action!

Karl Davies-Barrett (Blog, Twitter), Developer Platform Evangelist for Microsoft Cyprus and Malta and great friend of CDNUG, delivered the other three sessions on the Developers track. The sessions Karl delivered had the following topics: “Extend Your Web Server: What's New in IIS and the Microsoft Web Platform”, “IE8 Tips & Tricks for Developers” and “Microsoft Azure Cloud application platform”. Karl did an amazing job delivering these sessions and we learned many new things which can be extremely useful when working with the latest Microsoft Technologies. Here are some pictures of Karl presenting:

The event was a huge success! We all enjoyed it as it featured a rich variety of interesting sessions!

Of course, we could not end up this review without mentioning a few more words about CDNUG. Our User Group, by participating to this well-organized Microsoft local event, delivered rich content for the Developer audience. Our presence at the event was strong; the three sessions delivered by our members, the special CDNUG area, and the discussions we had with the local Community indicated only one thing: CDNUG is more powerful and active than ever!

See you at our next Community Night event at the Microsoft-Cyprus office on January 2010 (more details to be announced soon). Make sure you check out our website frequently for event announcements!