Microsoft Open Dev Conferences across Pakistan

On 11th & 14th Dec, we held the Microsoft Open Dev Conferences in cities of Lahore & Islamabad respectively. It was for the first time that we delivered events specifically around Microsoft offerings for Open Source community. We intended to break the notion amongst developers about Microsoft and invited the developer base we never had before. I idealized four speakers for the conference; myself, an MVP from Windows Platform, a DX intern and a professional from the Open Source world. Here’s a quick recap of the successful conferences as we’re heading for another one in Karachi on 23rd Dec.
Hosting ASP .net web app on Azure Linux container, Docker Hub & DNX – Demo by Myself
I delivered an hour long hands on code demo to build an ASP .NET 5.0 web app and host on Azure Ubuntu VM container using Dockers for Visual Studio extension. During the deployment and resource group creation process, I had an interactive session with the audience around .NET Core and DNX as these are fairly new concepts.
Python, Node.js & Java support in Visual Studio - Saad Mahmood [MVP Windows Platform]
Saad shares the tag of an MSP as well as MVP. He demonstrated support in Visual Studio for various popular languages from Open Source stack like Python, Node.js and Java with features like intellisence, bracket completion, debugging, watches, etc.
Apache Rippel with Visual Studio by Hamza Chaudhary [Industry Professional]
Hamza Chaudhary is a working professional and is an expert on Android platform. Hamza joined us to examine the capabilities of Apache Rippel operated from within Visual Studio. Debugging a .js script was something new for the audience and people showed great interest in cross platform applications using Apache CORDOVA.
Xamarin Forms using Visual Studio – Delivered by Usman Sheikh [DX Intern Technical]
Usman Sheikh has recently joined us in MIC, Lahore as a DX intern. Since the guy had previous experience of delivering trainings and was passionate enough, we assigned him the task to deliver a live demo of developing Xamarin forms using Visual Studio and the challenge was well taken by Usman. He practically demonstrated the usage and advantage of Xamarin forms by building a sample that he later executed on both Android & Windows emulators built into Visual Studio.
We had mugs and pens as giveaways with a Microsoft <3 Open Source branding for the audience. Overall the response from the audience was amazing and we’ve already been hit by ISVs seeking collaboration on joint events in future.