MS Platforma 2011 is the biggest yearly IT event in Russia – kind of Russian TechEd for IT managers, admins, and enterprise Microsoft software users. This time it coincided with Lync 2010 launch. People come to this event from all around Russia and former USSR republics. In general the questions were quite advanced and showed that that the Lync predecessor, OCS, is well known there. And I took part in it! But only as a spectator, not presenter. Some words and photos about Microsoft Platforma 2011…

Thanks to Vassili Kaplan, who asked and helped me to translate my Russian text about Platforma 2011. This is not exact translation my Russian text, but similar one.

It was a second day of MS Platforma 2011. I arrived a bit early and this place wasn’t overcrowded. Then I was able to take some photos.

Nice girl from Intel showing a pillow with Intel logo

Two robots have been walking around the hallway the whole day.  But now they are waiting to be powered on.

Girls from IBM are sad for some reason

Heaps of Windows Embedded devices

XBox 360 waiting for gamers

And two first players

Let’s get to the lectures. I spent the whole day listening about just released Lync 2010. Very different sessions, starting from architecture and finishing programming. First lecture was by Michael Trommsdorff and Vassili Kaplan, who was helping him. They had a very interesting session. I liked a lot the way Michael was presenting. He delivered several lectures and each one was a masterpiece. Very vivid, interesting and a lot of material. He gave a lot of information in a short period of time but it was not boring at all. Vassili was helping him and complimenting him with examples. As I understood they are working together, therefore Vassili was talking in English as well. But in order to understand all technical stuff, one could get a special device which was transmitting translation of everything to Russian on the fly.

 
Michael Trommsdorff is walking around during the presentation
Vassili Kaplan is showing the possibilities of the program

Guys from Krok tried to talk about their projects. Even though Lync 2010 was just released on November 17, they already did 4 projects with Lync RC. It is a pity they could not deliver much content to the audience. Participated Alexander Donin, a well-known specialist in OCS, who even took a part in developing certified examinations and his project manager Stanislav Chirkov. It is obvious that they know a lot about the topic but do not have good presentation skills. In comparison to other presenters they looked frankly speaking weak, not in terms of the content, but the way it was presented. I think they were too nervous.

Alex Donin (left) and Stanislav Cherkov (project manager) from Croc talking about their Lync 2010 project
Quite interesting was a lecture from Vlad Eminovici. He is the one who can literally set the fire on the audience. The talk should have been about programming API for Lync. But with his spontaneous jokes Vlad not only talked about programming but also wrote a few programs illustrating capacities of the SDK during the presentation.

Vlad Eminovici talks about possibilities of programming for Lync

A guest invited from the audience is helping to write a program

The program illustrated that using the SDK one can easily insert a .Net application telling you presence, receiving and sending IM. Interesting, what about voice? I used to program a bit for OCS and making a call there was a piece of cake, but to accept one was more of a challenge.

He also showed an interesting example of programming of a bot which is run on the server and then it tracks IMs. From a key phrase of the IM from a particular user the bot then schedules automatically a conference in Outlook.

You can see the videos of them here:
http://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/events/platforma/materials/default.aspx?id=UC_202
(Lync Architecture – mostly Michael, Vassili with some demos)

http://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/events/platforma/materials/default.aspx?id=UC_205
(Lync Web Conferencing – Michael, Dial-in: Vassili)

http://www.microsoft.com/ru-ru/events/platforma/materials/default.aspx?id=UC_207
(Programming with Lync UCMA – Vlad)

(Set it to Windows Media Player mode instead of the default Silverlight mode – the latter does not work well).Yes, the lectures were doubled in Russian – unfortunately looks like the original recording in English has been lost.

The audience was ca. 100 people (around 70-80% were using synchronous translation to Russian) and a few thousands were watching us online.

After all presentations there was a lottery. It was very funny. Two Russian animators joked and tricked. Audience roared with laughter. The first prize was a real tambourine from Microsoft. Also there were mice, notebooks and Xbox 360(three!). In spite of  I didn’t get a prize, I had a good time.