Archive for the ‘ MVP ’ Category

Balkan Olympiad in Informatics – 2011

This year, the 19th edition of the Balkan Olympiad in Informatics, along with the 5th edition of the Junior Balkan Olympiad in Informatics, were both held in my home town – Bistrița, Romania. On behalf of Microsoft Romania, I was asked to talk about some of the new technology trends (the Cloud, Windows Azure and the Microsoft Web Platform) to the students and teachers present there. We had the session this Friday and along with Răzvan Rusu, who is a Microsoft Student Partner and he talked about the MSP program, Imagine Cup and DreamSpark - the session was held in the very highschool where I graduated 8 years ago, so it was a great opportunity for me to be able to visit it again.

The discussion was a very interesting one, and the audience was very excited about opportunities they didn’t even know existed until then. I also promised all the students I’ll publish the slides – so, without further ado:

2011
07/09
CATEGORY
Events
Imagine Cup
Life
Microsoft
MVP
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Linux under Hyper-V R2 screencast (Romanian)

Even if it’s been done a couple of months back and only privately shared with some 3rd parties until today, I’m now making this screencast (in Romanian) on hosting Linux under Hyper-V R2 public. The screencast itself comes as a result of me being in close contact with some of the larger players in the Romanian hosting industry during the past year (while working with Todi and the rest of the great people in the local Microsoft subsidiary), so I did this as a way to provide some localized content on the topic at hand, as Linux clearly plays a major role in the local hosting market.

While some most of the companies I’ve talked with were only moderately interested in taking the next step and hosting their virtualized environments on top of Hyper-V, this was largely due to their lack in information on the subject. And I do know for a fact that the content covered in this screencast has changed many of these views. :)

I’m sorry for the quality of the audio, I’ll try and see if I can make it better for next time. Without further ado, you can find the screencast below (the HD version is available on Vimeo):

If you want, you can also download the slides here.

Part of the content was covered in Brent Shoemaker & John Kelbley’s WSV305 session at this year’s TechEd North America. I’ve also got some demos showing how to install the Linux Integration Services v2.1 (RTM) inside Linux VMs, and in the end I talk about some more tools that make your life easier when dealing with Linux and Hyper-V. Also, here are some useful links extending or better describing the topics addressed in the screencast:

Hope you enjoy it! ;)

2010
10/01
CATEGORY
Microsoft
MVP
Tips and tricks
Virtualization
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Windows Live Essentials 2011 is out

Yesterday marked the release of the 2011 version of the Windows Live Essentials suite. This release includes:

It also brings several other additions, like the Outlook Connector Pack, the Bing Bar or the Messenger Companion. When it comes to the Windows Live Essentials suite, I personally use Mesh and Movie Maker and (starting with this release) Live Writer and Live Messenger – they’re all great pieces of software that come to fill in the gaps in the software that comes included with Windows automatically.

All in all, it’s worth the download. :)

P.S. On a side note, I’ve also got my second year renewal as a Microsoft Virtual Machine MVP today. Yay! :D

2010
10/01
CATEGORY
Downloads
Free stuff
Life
Microsoft
MVP
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Finally, back home

Yeah, I know I haven’t been updating my blog lately, but I’ve been mostly away (travelling) for the past couple of months. Here’s what’s been keeping me busy:

  • a 3-week trip to the US, visiting Seattle/Bellevue/Redmond (MVP Summit), New Jersey/New York (SolarVPS HQ), Miami (Parallels Summit) and Las Vegas (Channel Partners Conference); had a great time with Ross (@solarvps), Jason (@dedicatednow) and Bogdan (@bogdanfetita)
  • a 4-week national launch tour for System Center Essentials 2010, along with Adrian Stoian (System Center MVP), covering 9 events in 5 cities around Romania (Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Iași and Brașov); we’ve had somewhere around 500 people attending the events
  • 15 airplane flights (that’s an average of one every four days) on 6 different airlines
  • 8 train rides (each with an average timespan of 7-8 hours)
  • 30.000+ km in total (flights, trains, etc)

All in all, even though it’s been very tiresome, I had a lot of fun! :)

Now that I’m back, besides the fact that I’m (hopefully) done travelling for a while, I’ll be spending some time catching up with some of the pending stuff, and I’ll also go back to work on a little project that I’ll be announcing soon.

On a side note, Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4 and Silverlight 4 are out, and Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 RTM-ed and will be coming out soon. :D

2010
04/19
CATEGORY
Life
Microsoft
MVP
Travelling
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The 2010 MVP Summit experience

I’ve just returned from this year’s MVP Summit, and it’s been quite an experience! Got the chance to talk with a few fellow MVPs, and most of all, got to spend a couple of amazing days with Ben, Mike and the rest of the Virtualization team in the Microsoft Campus over in Redmond (or the “NDA Campus”, as people ended up calling it on twitter, due to obvious reasons). We were among the few “privileged” MVPs that got a good load of “super duper secret special NDA” material. But all I can say right now (while still under NDA) is that really cool things are coming, and they’re well worth the wait! :)

The Sheraton in Bellevue was also a very nice location to stay in, and Bellevue in itself is quite a treat. The flight to New Jersey wasn’t as pleasant as I would have expected though, but hey – you win some, you lose some, I guess.

I’ll be staying in the US for another 2 weeks or so, getting to go to New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Should be fun!

2010
02/21
CATEGORY
Events
Life
Microsoft
MVP
Travelling
Virtualization
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