Ahmadz Village

(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

 
By: Claude-Olivier Fontaine
[Hello from the World series]

First of all, I would like to thank my friend Ahmad Fathy who offered me the opportunity to write this article upon his blog, as a french Microsoft Student Partner

My name is Claude-Olivier Fontaine, I am graduated in Maths (3 years) and Information Systems (1 year), and I am currently following a Master’s in Management and Information Technologies (1 year) at the IAE Aix-en-Provence Graduate School of Management. Three years ago, I became Microsoft Student Partners both for my involvement around the .NET development platform and for my project of club in my former university.

Before, towards the age of thirteen years old, my only dream was to make a successful career of professional sportsman (cycling). But some problems of health stopped my evolution and I discovered about early 2001, by the merest chance, the world of the computers. I started to code in C, C++, Java, and I discovered the C# / NET Framework 1.1 about 2002. I carried out a lot of personal .NET projects (Windows Forms and ASP .NET), relatively simple but really formative, between 2002 and 2004. Then, I began to explore the wide field of the information systems architectures (Enterprise Architecture, SOA) with its business aspects (Business Processes, BPM, business needs analysis). These subjects are extremely fascinating since they give you an interesting general view on the computer world and you learn every day a lot of things.

Although I no longer develop a lot, the C# remains my favorite language because of its pleasant aspect and of the highly integrated applications with the Microsoft platform (.NET 3.5, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, etc.) that it allows to build.

France and Information Technologies

Still today, thanks to our excellent training courses, the french developers stay undoubtless among the best world software developers. The french university training in computing are strongly focalized on the following topics during the first three / four years : maths, algorithms, low-level programming languages, computing formal theories and other scientific theories. With such a program, the students have the possibility to acquire a very good fundamental technical skills. The last university year is dedicated to some technological projects (most of the time over Java EE, Web development, sometimes over .NET, etc.) and to very few business-oriented topics such as management, project management, communication, computer and business.

Despite our excellence in the fundamental skills, we suffer from important weaknesses in the new information technologies and business field. We have the potential but our universities and our schools (in France, we make the difference between a school and a university) are very anchored on their Cartesian values. I mean that most of computing curricula propose a lot of advanced mathematics subjects and theoretical concepts whereas the business-oriented subjects are almost non-existent or insufficient. In other words, the theory we learn is rarely linked to an industrial or technological application. Our computing curricula must keep their qualities but they should be able to adapt to the new market needs.

The consequences of this vision are far from to be negligible on the french market.

The direct consequence, it is worldwide trend, is the IT skills shortage. It concerns not only the technological skills but also the communication skills, the interpersonal skills (ability to work with people who don’t share the same experience), the ability to apply technical skills to business challenges and the ability to understand the customers’ needs.

A more local consequence is the importance that the french companies attach to the diploma. Firstly, as regards the young graduates, the first salary will depend on the diploma (of course, with a same given level) and not on the abilities. Secondly, the hierarchical progression of the experimented IT professionals will depend on the diploma’s level and not on the experience. I have the perfect example of a colleague who is currently following a Master’s degree because he would like to evolve. What is his profile ? He just has a graduate (four years after high school) of information systems, more than 15 years of significant experiences (with 10 years on the international stage) in a famous softwares company and he has very good management skills. This kind of situation is more than ridiculous but I think the things will change necessarily in the next years.

The french Microsoft Student Partners program

I would like to conclude this article simply by thanking some actors without whom I would not know Ahmad, Fabrizio, Omar and my other MSP colleagues crazy about new technologies :-) So, thank you to Jennifer Perret, the global manager of the MSP program. Thank you to Ségolène Hémar, our french Manager, for her dynamism and her great work !

@Omar : many congratulations for your presentation !

(The Eiffel Tower in Paris)