Hyderabad – MSP BootCamp

I had the opportunity to witness the largest Boot camp in India and possibly the largest in the world!! Bootcamp – Hyderabad was everything but boring – What i meant to say was fun with a wonderful sense of fulfillment ! Buzz was that we’d get to witness some real core technology and sessions on the most happening stuff from Microsoft… True enough that was exactly what we got – plus getting to know a lotta people from allover India and Microsoft employees who spent their private weekend time with us..

Day 0 : March 5

 

Day 1 : March 6

 

The journey with the madurai MSP’s (Microsoft Student Partners) was fun filled.We reached our destination on time and made our first taste of Hyderabad : Hottt !*watever that was* hottt hott !!!.Wiping off those lachrymal secretions,we made our hotel Check in, on March 6th – 3 pm (right on time)! Ella Suites was one heck of  a place!We were alloted suites, and our roomies were people from parts of the country other than where we were from.Mine was a local Hyderabad girl,Bhavana – a seemingly placid but a chatterbox nonetheless 😛 ..She was good company and was our GPS (with a little help from other Hyd msps) and helped us make sight seeing plans around town.After the check in everybody had a quick wash (except for me o’course – late as always,left behind by fellow madurai user group people => me boarding the next shuttle,meeting other interesting people) and scurried into the Microsoft Shuttle to make a dash to the Microsoft IDC (developer center) a few kms away.btw, That part of town was called Gachibowli(weird name huh)There was an internship exam for prefinal year people, while the rest of us engaged in an activity – Madads.Our team came up with a totally whacky,funky,weird,cool – u name it – that was how our ad for ‘Cloud computing’ was..and what was more – We got Best new idea Award.Whooho! 😛 After a really sumptuous buffet dinner,we were dropped in the Hotel.

Day 2 : March 7

 

We had an early day – so that the academic team could squish in many of the tech sessions,without compromising on the time.There was the keynote by Pratima Amonkar(Director Academia,MS),then a not very interesting SQL Server 2008 session by the MSIT,BI-COE team(It helped me gain an insight that helped me a bit with my project – for the report generation module)After a short break,(whence we raided the MS Cafeteria for free drinks and beverages of some 15 + kinds) we had the MOST amazing session of them all – “Windows Mobile App Development” by Abhinav Gujjar (MGSI) – Man, is this guy cool…. He definitely knows how to handle a young crowd…In less then 10 minutes,he showed us how to develop a twitter app for Windows Mobile.The audience loved him!After a quick photoshoot,we had Lunch(as good as it can be) and then 2 final tech sessions – app security and cloud computing – both by the best in the field.Break again and we had Mark D’Souza ,Reza,Sid handle a cool session called “Win7,IE8,9 lives of students – The three musketeers” 🙂 Then was a feedback session and as promised earlier that day : sight seeing / some kind of fun was in stack.It turned out to be a Disco – Geeks and nerdies @ Disco – funny huh (even i thought so) – In reality was quite okay – geeks or not they are student community too.. 😛 Hyd norms allowed partying till 11.30. We had a poolside dinner and boy was it grand! We returned to our suites and then had a private party too 🙂

Day 3 : March 8

 

Packed up our bags and left them so that we could pick ’em l8r..checked out and left for the IDC once again.Post breakfast we had an interaction session with the MS academic team and MSPs.After those sessions,We got out baggage and the shuttle dropped us at Koti (if I remember right) and we went sight seeing – I only wish we had more time to do that – however we manged to make the most of the time left and saw a few places – Charminar ,Hamid Sagar and also managed a lil shopping.All in all this was one memorable trip – the first time I had been to AP- and I had many firsts : first disco,first running train jump with a 3 inch stiletto(thank goodness I wasn’t sucked into the track),the rest of the firsts is n’t worth pinning up in public!The travel was glorious,owing to the excellent weather!

My very last bootcamp 😦 In that way – we felt a bit sad.But this had been the best ever.Thanks to everybody involved !! Special Thanks to the academic team !