Microsoft invited all its MSPs to its India Development Center, Hyderabad .We were waiting for the boot camp for 4 months after becoming a MSP.
A total of 165 MSPs from whole of India assembled to make this the largest boot camp in the world
5th March 2009
At last the anticipated day came and we boarded the FALAKNAMA express on 5th March, 2009.I was very excited because it s my first trip without my parents. We were 6 MSPs from Kolkata, and we boarded the train together. We had to spend around 26 hours in the train, so we spent that by gossiping, playing cards and eating J .Everybody had something from their home so we were always munching chips or eating aloo ke paratha s .We reached Hyderabad around 10:am,the train was right on time.
6th March 2009
After reaching Hyderabad we freshened up in a local near Hyderabad station. Had HYDERABADI BIRIYANI at the famous PARADISE .The Biriyani tasted great a lot different from the one's in Kolkata. I was particularly surprised by the HOTEL's system of taking Orders.
The MANAGER has a WI-FI enabled PDA, he types in the order in the PDA and the order gets printed from a computer in the Kitchen (which was visible from outside), so there is less of chaos and noise .That is called Tech-Savvy city, no wonder Hyderabad is also called as Cyberabad. We reached Ella Suites (The 4 star Hotel in Hi-Tech city in which Microsoft arranged our stay) in an auto at around 2:30.We checked in the hotel. My room was a deluxe suite on the third floor. I was simply awed by the hotel and the room. The room had Microwave, Fridge and a Bath Tub too J .
Finally we reached the Microsoft Office on 5pm. (It was very close to Ella Suites)
We had some introductory notes by the Campus Recruitment team. Then a Internship Test was held for the pre final year MSPs.
Those not in pre final year (like me) were told to assemble in an amphitheatre where the MSPs were divide into 4 groups. We were told that each group must do a creative Skit which must be related to technology. We performed a creative Skit on CLOUDSPACE (a wacky futuristic technology….)
After that we had dinner… (The food was excellent….)
We returned to the Hotel…Even though we had a hectic journey we were not tired…we stayed up till late in the night...busy gossiping and making new friends.
7th March 2009
We reported at the MS office at 7:00 am. Had breakfast and coffee and got ready for a long day of technical sessions.
The sessions started with the Keynote by Pratima Amonkar.
The first session was on "SQL Server 2008" by the Business Intelligence Team. They explained about its advantages and its new features and showed us some codes (Personally ..I have no idea about RDBMS so.. cudnt understand anything apart from the large SQL Burger they showed during the presentation.)
This session was followed by Windows Mobile App Dev. by Abhinav Gujjar (MGSI).This was a very informative session and he showed us how we can code and make programs for the Windows mobile platform very easily using the Win Mobile SDK. He made a Twitter application in minutes. After the session we had a photo shoot of the 165 MSPs in the amphitheatre. This was followed by a lunch (do I need to say again that the food was great!!! J ) This was followed by lunch which included the networking session where we got to interact with employees from various sections of Microsoft. They gave an insight into the life@ Microsoft.
The Lunch was followed by Application Security by Varun Sharma (ACE team).He showed us security bugs including cross scripting and everything else…The session was very informative one. The next session was on "Cloud computing" by Archis Gore (Windows Live Core Team).he showed us the windows azure development and how we can write about Cloud applications. He also showed us live mesh and its features.
The heavy tech sessions followed by some lighter sessions on Windows 7 by Siddarth Prakash , IE 8 by Mohammed Reza and a WPF presentation by Mark D Souza.
After that we received our goodies. We got Tshirts,Visiting cards,pens..etc. There were special goodies for those who deployed Live @ Edu.
We know that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy and MS does not want us to be dull.So they arranged a DJ night at the Disco jasmine and a poolside dinner at our Hotel. The night rocked and we danced as if there was no tomorrow. We enjoyed and stayed up till 2: am.
8th March 2009
We checked out of the Hotel and went to the MS office.MSP s presented us with cool demos on MSRS and POPFLY.At 3 pm it was parting time..we bade goodbye to and finally we left the boot camp.
Thus the boot camp ends…I learnt a new way of representing our experience in the boot camp….. ITS AWE…AWE…AWE…AWESOME…….
For the boot camp picture you can visit my orkut album
http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Album.aspx?uid=15032008301012431065&aid=1236721187
or else you can also visit my face book public album
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=95867&id=712226583&l=1fab3
