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The latest Belarus .NET User Group meeting, which was held on September 11, garnered the attendance of more people than ever before in the two-year history of the user group. Almost one hundred applications were received and 64 developers took part in the conference. Sergiy Baydachnyy of Microsoft Ukraine delivered a technical review of the latest additions to Internet Explorer 8, after which Andrei Varanovich (Microsoft MVP) spoke on the key capacities of SharePoint 2007. The event was supported by the Minsk Institute of Management and Altoros Systems, a global software delivery acceleration specialist that provides focused outsourced software product engineering, independent Quality Assurance, and testing services to software organizations and information-driven enterprises.
Brief summary of the event
The event kicked off at 6.45 pm. with Sergiy Baydachnyy covering the new functionality in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and the opportunities it provides for .NET developers. Mr. Baydachnyy also elaborated on the compatibility of IE8 with the latest standards and spoke about the Accelerator feature, which allows users to perform various activities with text extracts (e.g., translate, search, or mail them) without leaving the current page. To wrap up the event, Sergiy Baydachnyy answered a number of questions about Microsoft, developer certification, and the future plans the company has regarding Belarus.
Andrei Varanovich, who was scheduled to speak about the new capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), quickly discovered that his listeners were particularly interested in Microsoft Team Foundation Server. When his talk touched on this topic, the audience flooded him with questions and the conversation moved on to this product entirely (making it one of the possible topics for future conferences). Mr. Varanovich was able to direct the discussion back to MOSS 2007 and its new features, such as Enterprise Content Management and Enterprise Search, and the benefits of the latter for ASP.NET developers.
Each presentation lasted for roughly an hour and a half, with a fifteen-minute break in between, during which Sergiy Baydachnyy and Andrei Varanovich answered numerous questions, while sipping tea and coffee. The meeting finished at 10 pm., after Sergiy Baydachnyy reminded the audience that he was about to be late for his plane.
A detailed photo report is available on the community website:
Links to presentations and audio recordings
1. “Internet Explorer 8 for .NET developers” - Speaker: Sergiy Baydachnyy, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Ukraine, Kyiv
2. “New Features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007” - Speaker: Andrei Varanovich, Leader of Belarus .NET User Group, Minsk
3. “Q&A Session and Plans Discussion” (Andrei Varanovich and Sergiy Baydachnyy)
Featured quotes: “Themed meetings involving leading software development companies make it possible not only to learn the news of the IT industry, but also to get a glimpse of what the industry will be like tomorrow, as well as to make a contribution to forming it,” noted Dr. Nikolay Susha, Rector of the Minsk Institute of Management. “I hope that the past meeting of Belarus .NET User Group was our first, but not last, step in this direction.”
“It was great to hear positive reviews of the meeting,” said Alex Khizhnyak, press coordinator of the event. “We are glad that a lot of participants were able to get their questions answered and found communication with the speakers so useful. We would like to thank the Minsk Institute of Management for the excellent organization and to personally thank Alexander Gedranovich, Deputy Holder of the Chair of IT and Higher Mathematics, for his active involvement.”
About the sponsors and organizers
The Minsk Institute of Management, founded in 1991, is one of the leading institutes of higher education in the Republic of Belarus. It provides all facilities for training highly competent specialists in economics, law, psychology, foreign languages, and information technologies. Today, the resource base and the fully qualified faculty ensure teaching on a highly qualified level with the use of the latest achievements in science and technology. Please visit miu.by for more information.
Altoros Systems, Inc. (altoros.com) is a global software delivery acceleration specialist that provides focused outsourced software product engineering, independent Quality Assurance, and testing services to software organizations and information-driven enterprises. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Western Massachusetts, Altoros has representative offices in Tampa, Florida. It manages a software development center in Eastern Europe out of its offices in Minsk, Belarus.
About Microsoft Ukraine
In 2003, Microsoft (microsoft.com/ukraine) opened a regional office in Ukraine aimed at developing the software market, promoting Microsoft products, and providing partner and customer support, as well as introducing and localizing the newest technologies and implementing social initiatives in Ukraine and Belarus.
About the Belarus .NET User Group
The Belarus .NET User Group (belarusdotnet.org) strives to unite developers, IT companies, and everyone else interested in .NET technologies. The community plans regular meetings where the participants are able to communicate, attend presentations from the leading specialists, and swap notes. During the two years of its existence, the community has gathered more than a hundred Belarusian .NET specialists.
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info[.]belarusdotnet.org 
