The past weekend, from 12 to 14 of June, I assisted at the KulenDayz community conference, organized by the Croatian community, and Strongly supported by Microsoft, INETA Europe and Red Gate and being my first time there, I was gladly surprised of both the quality of the event and of the communities that there assisted.

What is KulenDayz?

the community country and nearby countries... it’s interesting that this is a yearly event that has evolved and refined in the time and now it is able to convoke people from a lot of countries, both Europe and outside Europe, which are, for citing some; USA, UK, Belgium, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary Macedonia and, this year, also Spain :).

Who did it?

The event was organized mainly by two INETA User Group Leaders Bernardin Katic (who is also INETA Country Leader for Croatia) and Dean Vitner, both MVP’s & great community guys! This year, Bernard Katic was elected as the Culminis regional representative for CEE on this event, which was publicly announced at the Keynote by Rane Johnson-Stempson, Technical Audience Marketing Lead for Microsoft CEE (Central & Eastern Europe). Congratulations Bernardin!!
Also, we had more organizers behind the curtains to which we have to thank, for mentioning some, Tomislav Bronzin (INETA VP Community Activities) and Dobrisa Adamec (INETA VP Membership), and a number of volunteers who helped at the event organization and set-up too.

Who supported it?

It is always good to thank who supported it, apart from the gret organization work, there is to thank Microsoft, INETA Europe and RedGate, the main event sponsors. Thank you for supporting this event and with it, the whole community. Here are the official links to the sponsors:

• Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.hr)
•  INETA Europe (http://europe.ineta.org)
•  RedGate (http://www.red-gate.com)

For whom this event is for?

To mention that this event is focused into two different kinds of audience, being them developer and IT community audience, so it had the best of both. Also there was a track about project management in ICT which is more and more important in today businesses. This also showed up that we have loads of thing in common, which helped getting a strong whole community support, too. So we're not all that different ;). Being a pretty international location and having a some of the audience and speakers from over Europe and USA, a lot of the sessions were done in English language, so that means anybody is free to join wherever his location is, having assured a good understanding of the sessions.

Where?

The KulenDayz conference was held at Hotel Patria which is situated in the heart of the beautiful region of Baranja, Beli Manastir, very near Osijek, Croatia. I can say this is a truly beautiful place with loads of vegetation – wherever you see is all green – and beautiful people.

Give me references!

Gladly!, you can go to the official event conferences website where you will get to know more about the event at the link: http://kulendayz.mscommunity.net/

Oh, yes, and the pictures... here are some:

The main organizer, Bernardin Katic, with two beautiful Croatian women that were helping out at the event organization. To mention that they are all holding up the main "logo" of the KulenDayz, a "Kulen" which is a famous local spicy food. Which you can see on the next image...

Here, you can see the official T-shirt, event evaluation and the free great give-away piece of Kulen:).
And you can check some more here http://www.flickr.com/photos/joslat/sets/72157619870531664/

Conclusions

Well, A great event, well organized and with great sessions, located at a beautiful country, with international speakers - and free!!. what to say that I'll do my best to be there again next year. I hope I can meet you there next year too and share a cold Pivo (beer in Croatian), that by the way, are very good in flavor.

Jose Luis Latorre
Vice President Events & Sponsorship INETA Europe
joseluis.latorre@ineta-europe.org

 

Good news! We have added again a new speakers to our INETA Europe Speakers Bureau. We have good news if you are interested in WPF, Silverlight etc. From now on you can request Laurent Bugnion.

Laurent works as a senior interactive developer for IdentityMine, one of the leading companies (and Gold Partner) for Microsoft technologies such as Windows Presentation Foundation, Silverlight, Surface, Windows 7 and generally User Experience.

He was IdentityMine's European branch's first employee, based in Zurich. In October 2008, the book "Silverlight 2 Unleashed" that he wrote was published at Sams. This book is a complete tutorial about Silverlight and filled with code samples and illustrations in full color.

Privately, he codes in ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and WPF. You can find his blog on http://blog.galasoft.ch. He earned a MCTS for WPF and is already three years on row a Microsoft MVP.

BTW... you can request him from here!

André Obelink
Vice President Speakers Bureau INETA Europe
Andre.Obelink@ineta-europe.org

 

 Macedonian  .NET User Group (Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia)

Hi everybody,

At the very beginning, I would like to introduce to you the Macedonian .NET User Group, which is new and young .NET community formed in March 2008. After one year of existence and a huge number of its supporters, it was time to organize the first official event, which was bigger and different from the regular monthly gatherings.

The main idea started by several enthusiasts, prepared to volunteer and to give a contribution in community idea expansion. So, Code Camp 2009 happened, on 13th of June, 2009. With a help of INETA, our community achieved to organize the event, with international speakers from INETA Speakers Bureau and regional and local MVPs. Our event had an opportunity to have INETA Europe Silverlight Challenge Winner as a speaker who, by the way, is also from Macedonia.

As beginners, we were uncertain about popularity of our first official event, particularly because it was a sunny Saturday day, perfect for a lazy coffee drink in a good bar or restaurant in the city park. But, 130 attendees at 9 AM broke our fears and obliged us to continue with the idea of knowledge exchange and collaboration. Our speakers have great presentations on latest Microsoft technologies and provoked long discussion, both in and out of the presentation room.

This event was a big success for us, and we hope that it will become a tradition, where either the professionals or ordinary people will meet each other and talk about their everyday jobs, lives and they will have a conjunction of knowledge and fun.

Event Quick Facts:

• Date: 13.06.2009
• Venue: Congress Center – Skopje Fair
• Attendees: 130+
• Sessions: 7
• Speakers: 6 (2 Official INETA Speakers, 5 MVPs)
• Event duration: 9h per day (Saturday)
• In photos

Darko Milevsky
Macedonian .NET User Group

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Happy Coding,

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User Group Relationship Manager, Microsoft