DevCon 03 Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) The land of the Gods

DevCon 03 Trivandrum (Thiruvanthanam) The land of the Gods

I just didn’t realize the amount of time it would take me to get to Trivandrum. Each of the domestic carriers have just one flight per day and none were available all flights were full. But I had to get there, this was the first time in INDIA that a user group has organized a one day conference, rather than a Microsoft organizing a developer conference.

I had a long drawn route… it began at 5:15 in the morning, with my alarm waking me up. I caught an Indian Airline flight down to Chennai, Chennai I had to change to an international flight which would take me to Trivandrum. The flight attendant mentioned something about a place called Trichi, my sleep muddled brain didn’t quite register. I woke with the flight landing. This same flight was finally going to Sharjah. I promptly picked my bags, and got off the flight… the name written against the tarmac was Tirchipalli ( don’t know whether I got that right)… however I thought maybe Trivandrum is locally called such. I promptly walked out of the airport and a guy in the distance started screaming out… I turned it was an Indian Airline official running upto me. Now what did he want… sleep depravation was taking it’s toll on me, making me irritable. He walked up and asked in broken English… you want to go Trivandrum right… yes I answered… well this is Trichi. The flight stops here and Trivandrum is the next stop… oh! that was all I could utter.

I promptly proceeded to get back onto the flight, after passing thru security checks again… lucky me

Soon we were up in the air and on our way to Trivandrum, I was kind of red inside… what a screw up… but well I got out of waiting in the plane for an hour, atleast my legs had a little exercise

Trivandrum… Truly the land of the Gods… Trees coconut trees all over a few houses interspersed in the middle. So green so clean so refreshing, I loved the sight from the plane just before landing.

The airport was a surprise… suddenly it felt like being in America. There were more white skinned people than Indians. Tourists coming in to enjoy the sun and warmth of Gods own country. They were all queued up at customs while the few of us Indians walked out of the airport.

There were representatives from US Software the sponsors of the event waiting to pick me up. Venkat another Microsoft Regional Director like myself, got into the waiting car to be speeded up to our hotel.

We passed thru the lazy Sunday afternoon across the streets of Trivandrum… I loved this place, people obviously enjoying their afternoon siesta the sun shining down all over this coconut tree city. Beautiful is what I felt.
This was the most relaxed conference I have attended. The organizers had arranged a dinner for us that night at a nearby hotel.

I must say these are the most pleasant hosts, the top management of US software were present we had a rooftop dinner, watching the stars and enjoying the local food.

The next day morning was the conference…

We had a 100+ attendees we started off with a session by Deepak Gulati the local Microsoft community specialist, did a session on localization, followed by a session on Microsoft’s Java implementation. I was next with a session on the SmartPhone, followed by Praveen another Microsoft Regional Director, and then a session on the new features in ASP.Net 2.0 (Whidbey) by Venkat another RD. We also had a session by Nishant an MVP and the user group leader on new features in VC++ in the Whidbey time frame. Deepak gave a last brief overview of Longhorn to complete the day.

We then had a general chat with the audience regarding volunteering for the user group meeting, we had a surprise 15 volunteers in all who said they would help out. I guess that was the largest volunteer turnout I’ve seen in one session.

There were 2 things which left a lasting impression on me 1. the hospitability of the local people and 2 the beauty of this land of the Gods. This is one place I’m surely coming back…