Ahmadz Village

What is the Microsoft® Students Club?

- Microsoft® forms groups of undergraduate students at universities all over the world in entities called the "Students Clubs". A Students Club does a lot of activities managed by the Microsoft® Student Partners at each university. The Student Partners along with the Club both represent Microsoft®.

- The Students Club’s activities include holding and organizing technological events, activities, seminars, student festivals, booths and competitions, as well as promoting the Microsoft® free products and services at university, and hence, providing support and help to all the club members as well as other students.

What is this Students Club like? What will be its main activities?

- The Club will be managed by Microsoft®, through the Microsoft® Student Partners. You first have to become a member, among the large group of students who will benefit from the club. In addition, there are also positions available for the club members who are willing to take part in managing its activities and be part of its organization. These positions will be as follows:

• Coordinators: The main responsibility of the Coordinator is to run and support one of the club processes.
  • Imagine Cup™ Board Coordinator: to update a wall-board or write e-newsletters about the latest Imagine Cup™ news and events.
  • MSDNAA Coordinator: to publicize, in cooperation with the university’s administration, the MSDNAA among students and make sure that everyone gets their free copies of the software they need.
  • Membership Coordinator: to manage the members’ lists and database.
  • Operations Support Coordinator: to keep track of the number of students who take part in any activity, and do some statistics and data collection about the clubs events.
  • Public Relations Coordinator: to help in publicizing the Imagine Cup™, and other club’s events, as well as motivate students to join the club and take part in its activities.
  • Advertisements Coordinator: to design attractive announcements and advertisements, using simple graphics, for the club’s advertisements, handouts and publications.
• Senior Members: A group of members who support the Coordinators.

If I join, what are the benefits?

- You will be part of the universal movement of Microsoft® Students Clubs.

- You will be connected with all the other Microsoft® Students Clubs all over the world.

- You will have a direct connection with Microsoft® Egypt through the Microsoft Student Partners at university.

- You will be part of the organizing team for the Imagine Cup™ competition, which is the world’s premiere, most prestigious and most famous student technology competition worldwide. Imagine Cup™ finals will be held this year in Egypt during July 2009.

www.imaginecup.com

- You will have a guaranteed place to attend any event held by Microsoft® all over Egypt, including a free invitation to the annual Egyptian Developers Conference (EDC).

- You will take part in organizing many of Microsoft® events held at university.

- You will have a chance to have a special tour at the Microsoft® Egypt premises.

- You will receive special promotional materials from Microsoft®: T-shirts, caps, etc.

- You can benefit from Microsoft® discounts over selective services or products.

- Most importantly, you will get to enjoy your time, explore a new community, join in many interesting and amazing activities, whether technological or social.

Who can join?

- If you’re a university student studying engineering or sciences, then you can certainly become a member!

- If you want to become one of the Coordinators or Senior Members, then we will hold a meeting and the available positions will be assigned to those who are willing to show dedication and creativity in what they want to do.

How can I join?

If you would like to join for the academic Year 2008-2009, send us your full name, email, academic year, department and telephone number at alex.club@student-partners.com

Don’t worry it’s totally FREE to join!

Microsoft Student Partners
Ahmad Fathy - ahmad.fathy@student-partners.com
Evronia Azer - evronia@student-partners.com

Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt.
Computer and Systems Engineering Department

http://www.student-partners.com

(Hesham Omran, and I) - click to view in original size

WHERE IS AHMAD ?

Many of my friends asked why don’t I blog since ages …
And why didn’t I write about some events like EDC, local Imagine Cup finals Day in Egypt,…

mmmm I will list some reasons:

1. I have many projects to be delivered in most of my courses.
2. I have to deliver sheets
3. I have to meet my team to maintain the project plan. (ahwa balady)
4. I have to attend lectures and sections (boring)
5. I traveled to Cairo to attend Imagine Cup | Egypt finals, and the Egyptian Developers Conference 2008.
6. I have to check my mail and reply many emails.
7. I have to sleep (which is a human right, but it is NOT considered like that in my college).

You: when will you be a normal human again?

Ahmad: Actually, I think after 1 month

You: Do I need to visit your blog during this month? I think I don’t need that :P

Ahmad: just to check that I am still alive (even if I am alien)

See you

[Microsoft Student Festival 2008 wave!]
By: Ahmed Bakr, 2nd Year, Computer and Systems Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University.
Email:  eagle_twiny@yahoo.com

On Saturday, 1^st of March 2008, I attended the “Effective CV writing” session in Microsoft Student Festival 2008 by Rana El-Deeb.

She talked about how your CV should be, however she talked about some important points that should be included at your CV such as:

1- CV contents:
Your CV should contain all important and basic information about you such that name, address, age, telephone number, e-mail address (is a must), graduated grade, projects that you joined, internships you have…etc.

Also your CV should have a part that describing you, your characteristics, what you like, what you doing in your spare time and it is so important to be honest about the details you write at your CV, it is not just words you write but that’s you.

2- CV format:
Rana strongly recommended CV simplicity. NO much colors just black and white. NO visual effectives that aims to nothing but view.

In short, my CV is a summary of important events in my life, and as we are professional our CV should be professional.

I liked what she said, I liked the great Smart Village and I hope go there many times .

[Microsoft Student Festival 2008 wave!]
By:Roaa Mohammed, 4^th year, FCIS, Ain Shams
Microsoft Student Partner
blog: http://jetbrain.blogspot.com
IM: roaa.mohammed@student-partners.com

About me
I am Roaa Mohammed, a student in 4^th year in the faculty of computer & information science, Ain Shams University. I’m currently an MSP & I was an intern at Microsoft last year.

About Microsoft Student Festival
I had the chance to participate in Microsoft Internship 2007 booth in the festival; there were 3 cabins each representing one of three projects done during the internship

Our Target was to introduce the students to MS Internship & answer their questions, in addition to showing them the projects we’ve done. The common sentence I heard was “Tell me about MS Internship”

About the Internship, It was divided into 2 parts each lasted for a month, The 1^st part was mainly sessions given by instructors from MS partners (OMS, Link, ITWorx.. etc). The 2^nd was for making a project.

From the very important points we wanted to clarify is “What’s so special about MS Internship??”

Actually, I had previous experience in other Internships but MS Internship was really different because::

1- Projects are done in a real-work simulated environment, we had weekly meetings, roles were divided among the team (TL, Testing officer, Architect, etc… and most of all, the great team spirit we worked with.

2- Community experience; After the internship you’ll have contact with lots of people from the top companies in Egypt either your supervisors, your instructors, people from MS & even your colleagues.

3- Improve your personal skills; Meeting people & dealing with them for the first time will help you develop your communication skills, also presenting your project in front of distinguished people will improve your presentations skills too.

Most booth visitors were 3^rd year students asking about details about the internship & from the FAQ was “How to apply?”, so please if you are interested, take a look here

Thanks Ahmad for letting me to contribute to this series.

Hello

A couple of weeks ago, I announced MS Student Festival in my Ahmadz Village … And now, I’m starting a new wave to document this event.

Share your festival experience NOW!

I will try to get students’ opinions from everywhere so if you attended the festival, and you are interested to write even one expressive comment about it, please contact me:

ahmad.fathy@student-partners.com

and it will be published as soon as possible!

(Ahmed Abd ElHamed, Waseem, and me inside MS Internship 2007 booth)

Some photos:
Thanks to: Evronia Azer

    (MS Student Festival flag)

 
    (Hall @ the festival)

  (The Smart Village where the festival was held)

 
 
  (with my colleagues, I’m the one at the leftmost-bottom)

Hello,

Many people don’t know how to download a video from YouTube. It’s really easy to do.

Service provider: http://www.savevideodownload.com

Steps:

1) Copy the URL of the desired video.

2) Go to the download page: http://www.savevideodownload.com/download.php

3) Press “Get Link” then the download link will appear.

4) Save the video with extension .flv

Now, How to play the video?

Easy… you need FLV Player. I use Applian FLV Player which is 100% free. Download here

 
(Click on the photo for original size view)

Helloz,

Today ..
I woke up late ..
drove slowly (tortoise speed) to the college ..
walked to my classroom sleepily ..

but, I can’t believe my eyes ..
A search engine in human clothes in my class…
No No It’s a human wearing a search engine :P

Nope nope he is my favorite googler TA. Mohamed Amir.
It was really amazing !! I was in "Microsoft Student Partners" labeled T-Shirt and Amir in a "Google" one.

Amir is the Digital Systems course TA this semester. He is fan of Google, he got internship in Google a year ago (not sure of the date). Check out Amir’s website

Amir joined Imagine Cup this year (2008) as a mentor for AleCrocs team which has already passed Round (1) in Embedded Development competition and marked as "Advanced".

I think, we both have many common points, the most important one of them is trying to make a good & valuable thing for our college.

Have a nice day ..

Hello,

Egyptian students are invited for the first time to attend the new event Microsoft Student Festival. You should be 2nd, 3rd or 4th year CE/CS/EE student to attend.

Hany Helal, the Egyptian Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Ali Faramawy,Microsoft vice-president, will attend

It will be on March 1st at the Smart Village, Egypt.
Meet you there

(Click on the invitation for original size)

More information:
visit now!
Agenda
Microsoft Student Festival event on Facebook

Hello ..

First, Let’s say “Welcome back” to me as I didn’t blog for a long time.

Many of us know the CES (Customer Electronics Show) that is a trade show held every year in Las Vegas. Many amazing products and technologies were introduced at CSE (i.e. DVD in 1996, Microsoft XBOX in 2001).

The most important thing, as I think, happened at CES 2008 was Bill Gates keynote speech in which he retired from his day-to-day duties at Microsoft.

This comedy video was presented during Bill Gates announcement of retirement, it’s about how the last day with MS would be like.

Now, what do you think of Bill ?

By: Bruno Silva
[Hello from the World series]

My name is Bruno Silva. I am from Portugal and I was glad to accept the Ahmad’s challenge to talk about my country and my experience as a college student and Microsoft Student Partner. I’m 21 years old, I live in Sintra (you can see a local monument in the photograph) near Lisbon (the Portuguese capital city).

I’m in the first year of the Information Systems and Computer Engineering Master. I am passionate about technology, and love to watch TV series (doing weekend marathons where I see an entire season! ). I like summer holidays to put my reading up-to-date and almost forget that college exists. Because a student’s life isn’t easy (or cheap) I’m also a part-time PHP programmer.

About Portugal

Portugal is a nice country to live. Tourism is a rising industry and there is people coming from all over the world to visit places like Algarve, Madeira and Azores well known about the landscape and night life.

Our culture is pretty well known all over the world. Names like Amália and Mariza made our traditional music genre Fado very popular. Our football players have a good reputation too, but I must admit that I am not a football fan. Shame on me :-)

Portugal has played a major role in the European context during the last semester of 2007. Portugal hold the Presidency of the European Union Council, during which was signed The Treaty of Lisbon, which is a huge step in the European project. Some Microsoft Student Partners helped the meetings related to the presidency with IT-infrastructure and Help Desk tasks :-)

About my University (and others)

I study in Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). The IST, created in 1911, is one of the largest and most reputed schools of engineering, science and technology in Portugal. With two conveniently located campuses, (Alameda in Lisbon and Taguspark in Oeiras), IST consists of ten Departments and one Autonomous Section that are responsible for teaching Undergraduate and Postgraduate programs.

I think that life in my university is pretty similar with life in other universities. We work a lot! But we manage to have some spare time too. There are a lot of gamers that love to take a break from work to play (Pro Evolution Soccer is a hit). We in technology universities are not geeks disconnected from the world. Cultural and sportive activities are part of our interests. As you can see in the photograph, people love to join and spend time together.

Even the academic curricular plan reflects this concern. I have 4 courses called Personal Portfolio (I,II,III and IV) where students are supposed to do extra-curricular activities that improve their soft skills and think seriously about the learning by writing a report. (e.g. of activities: volunteering, internships, academic activities, Erasmus, etc.)

About Microsoft Student Partners

I’m a Microsoft Student Partner since October of last year. In Portugal a Microsoft Student Partner stays at most for 2 years in the programme, but the majority of us stays just for one year. This way more Portuguese college students get a chance to learn and improve them in this Microsoft’s initiative.

In Portugal MSP’s activities are not only technical events organized for students in different colleges, we are also active in social causes. This Christmas, the program, for initiative of a fellow MSP gave an X-Box 360 to an orphanage, as a starting step of the interaction with this institution, which next step will be to give a chance for these children to learn how to use a computer (including some basic tools) and the Internet with us. We hope to give them some computers, to give continuity to this initiative.

Take a look at a automated translated page of my blog where I talk about some MSP-related activities. (I usually blog in English, but Portuguese related stuff I write in Portuguese, now I regret it ) You can also take a look at some senior MSP’s blogs of my country like Gonçalo Chaves.

Bruno Silva
Portuguese Microsoft Student Partner
http://www.brunosilva.net