I have to hand it to Microsoft. Just when I get pissed off at them for Office Service Pack 2 (don’t ask) they remind me why I am in their camp.

I am in Cairo, Egypt at the moment with the anti-suck gang (the four founders are all here: me, Goksin, Malek, and Clemens) preparing for the 2006 Middle East Developers Conference. What is amazing is that we have 5,000 developers turn out for this event.

Why I give Microsoft so much kudos for putting on this event is that the developing world needs to build a rock solid technology based economy and Microsoft is right there leading the way. The charge for this conference is very low (about $8.75 USD) and the entire amount of money collected won’t even cover Clemens’ mini-bar bill. Microsoft has made such a commitment to the developing world, it is quite impressive.

I’ll be giving 4 talks:

XML in SQL Server 2005: The XML Data Type

Ranking and Windowing Functions in SQL Server 2005

Building Enterprise Applications with SQL Server Mobile 2005

Writing Secure ASP .NET Code