October has been very busy month for the Academy team. It is until now that I managed to catch up a little bit with my daily tasks so I decided to share with you what we’ve done.
DevReach is the first paid conference in Bulgaria that is focused on deep level technical content on Microsoft technologies. It is organized by the National Academy for Software Development (NASD). Unlike previous conferences in Bulgaria, the purpose of DevReach is not to promote new products from Microsoft. All sessions are targeted to the experienced developers and provide real world techniques how to work with the technology and what business value it brings to your company. The speakers at the conference are independent consultants and highly respected international speakers that community knows for a long time.
You can find all the slides and code on the Sessions page. The National Academy for Software Development decided to put all live recorded videos available online at no charge. Our intention is to show Bulgarian software community that the conference rocks and you should not miss it next year. In other words – see what you missed this year, dude. The videos will be available at no charge this year only as promotional material. Starting from next year, video materials will be provided only to registered attendees. Keep a look at the DevReach site, where the videos will be published in the next weeks.
We had a great feedback from the attendees. You can find some of comments on the Feedback page. There are many blog posts about DevReach and I have collected some of them here:
Martin Kulov – DevReach is live and awating you
.NET Rocks – Live from Bulgaria!
Sahil Malik – Blogging from Bulgaria – Devreach. Day 1
Sahil Malik – Blogging from Bulgaria – Devreach. Day 2
Ruslan Trifonov – DevReach conference just finished
Carl Franklin – Things I’ve Learned This Week
Julie Lerman – Some pics from Bulgaria (where I still am)
The two great prizes should also be mentioned here. One Xbox 360 and free trip to Microsoft Research go to two lucky people that registered for the conference and stayed until its end. Too bad that I can not participate in the draw – this Microsoft Research prize is awesome (I am not a gamer, do not blame me :)).
Thanks to our sponsors Microsoft and Telerik. Telerik supported us in many ways since they are also located in Sofia, Bulgaria. Without both of them DevReach could not be possible.
Thanks to all for the constructive feedback and you can be sure that planning of DevReach 2007 has already started. Looking forward to see you again in Fall 2007.
Thanks to all the speakers for their great sessions, time and commitment. Let’s hope they would speak at DevReach again.
If you have any comments, questions or/and ideas, please use DevReach forum for discussions.
Below I have attached some photos from the conference (the rest are available after signing NDA :)). Hope you like them.
Svetlin Nakov (on the left), Director Education at NASD , showing up NASD lounge
Svetlin Nakov (left), Stephen Forte (middle), Goksin Bakir (right)
Zarko (from Telerik) and Sahil Malik
Martin Kulov (me) presenting the conference
Teo Milev’s keynote, General Manager – Microsoft Bulgaria
It is me again – I just like this pic
Ms. Sasha Bezuhanova – co-chairman of Confederation of the Employers and Industrialists and Director of Hewlett Packard Bulgaria
Mr. Tosho Nedialkov – Deputy Chairman of State Agency for Information Technology and Communications
Mr. Boian Boichev – member of board of directors in Bulgarian Association of Information Technologies
Nikolay Rashev – representing Bulgarian Association of Software Companies
Svetlin Nakov and Sasha Bezuhanova discussing the importance of DevReach for Bulgaria
No, they are not going to shoot each other 🙂
Teo Milev, General Manager for Microsoft Bulgaria, and Iva Abadjieva, Director Business Development at National Academy for Software Development
Cathi Gero and Ted Neward speaking
Q&A session recorded on .NET Rocks
Birthday cake for 1
Lots of fun and dancing Bulgarian music during the dinner
Goksin Bakir just tried the rakia drink
Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell already tried the rakia 🙂
The second day – Julie Lerman speaking
Martin Kulov, me again, speaking
Carl Franklin, really good singer and guitar player
Some leasure time at Rila mountain
Sahil and Angus looking amazed of Rila monastery
Carl and Richard walking in Rila monastery
Stephen and Julie staring at Rila monastery