The Joel world tour continues to Asia from Africa. Teched Africa was a blast. I hope you enjoyed the pictures. There’s a lot of energy and passion as seen from Teched Africa in Durban to the SharePoint Saturday in Capetown, to our shark diving experience with Zlatan Dzinic SharePoint MVP. I hear he had a great time at the recent best practices conference in DC. It’s great to see many of the SharePoint people able to get out of their local region and connect with others.
Here’s my whirl wind tour:
JAPAN
Sep 14: I’ll spend a day in Japan in the heart of Tokyo meeting with Microsoft and partners on “Preparing Today for Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 as well as 10 Steps to a Successful Deployment.” My decks are currently being translated into Japanese.
SINGAPORE
Sep 16: Then I’ll head over to Singapore, spend some time with Singapore Quest customers and partners at a lunch event at Marina Mandarin Hotel on 10 Steps of Successful SharePoint Deployment and spend the evening with the Singapore SharePoint Users Group
6:45 – 9:00 PM SINGAPORE SharePoint USER GROUP
Looking forward to seeing the SharePoint MVPs Steve Sofian, Patrick Yong, Sarbjit Singh Gill, Kit Kai and new ones I haven’t met... Those I don’t see at the user group I’ll hope to see at Tech Insights, in Penang Malaysia more info below. Among a bunch of other SharePoint friends in the region from past Teched South East Asias.
Unfortunately Teched South East Asia was cancelled this year, but Patrick and others have put together an MVP speaker event called Tech Insights. Great venue for a technical conference and awesome speaker lineup.
MALAYSIA
Tech Insights – Penang, Malaysia
Quoted from the site “As a treasured member of Microsoft's technical communities, you are invited to join us in this unique 2-day intensive conference, Tech Insights 2009 Penang. The event is a dedicated platform for like minded folks in the IT and technology industry to come together and help to drive community awareness and event and as a social media portal for all technology inspiring lovers to network, collaborate and build personal connections with Microsoft experts and peers.”
“First time in Penang! Take your technical knowledge to the next level.
You are invited to join us in this 2-day technical education & networking conference, Tech Insights 2009 Penang. Here's what you will get.
1. More than 20 in-depth breakout sessions for both software developers and IT professionals
2. Opportunities to interact one-on-one with Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs)
3. Networking with hundreds of technology inspiring lovers from various communities
4. Delivered by field experts, there are sessions from Intermediate to Expert (200-300) Level.”
I’ll be speaking with Sarbjit Singh Gill (MVP: Sharepoint Server), Patrick Yong (MVP: Sharepoint Server) and another 17 or so, MVP and expert speakers.
Sponsored by the Malaysia SharePoint User Group, join the group for a discount. (User Group members use SPUGPromo for discount) Also connect with the group on Facebook 
Then I head off to India where I’ll meet up with Michael Noel @michaeltnoel the famed SharePoint Author of SharePoint Server 2007 Unleashed and a slew of other books. He’s one of the foremost on SharePoint Virtualization, as well as Security including SharePoint, ISA and IAG. We’ll also be meeting up with the CEO of SharePoint Solutions of Persia – Neo Farvashan. He’s the one of took head on creating a new language pack without the support of Microsoft, but not without asking them a ton of times if they were interested. His Farsi language pack is used on hundreds of environments in the middle east, Persia region including some large deployments in Dubai. I was hoping to make it to Persia, but the current climate isn’t conducive. Sorry Tehran SPUG, I did get this close.
INDIA
Our first stop is Pune for the Pune SharePoint Users Group "PUG" - “A great place to start learning, Pune User Group (aka PUG) is a Pune (India) based not-for-profit organization, an association of professionals and students interested in Microsoft technology”
Announcing PUG SharePoint Day 2009 on 19th September,2009
Here’s the agenda: Keynote “SharePoint: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow”,Michael Noel and Joel Oleson
Session 1: “Building the Perfect SharePoint Farm” By Michael Noel 10:30 AM
Session 2: “Preparing for Upgrade to SharePoint 2010 Today" By Joel Oleson 11:45 AM and Q&A 12:45 PM
19th September, 2009 – Pune
20th September, 2009 – Chennai
We will be in Delhi and Udaipur and that Rajathan region, I really want to see the Rat temple and Taj Mahal so if there’s any SharePoint experts that wants to be our guide, please reach out… :)
NEPAL
Couldn’t find a user group, so I spend a personal vacation day or 2. If there are any SharePoint people that want to meet us in Kathmandu… click the contact me or send me a message on twitter.
I’ll be flying out, but Michael Noel will continue on to:
26th September, 2009 – Bangalore and maybe day before or after, Sri Lanka