It was 7 AM in the morning when I woke up. It was the third and the last day of PDC 2005 and I was quite anxious to get there as soon as I can. I left home at about 8 AM and went towards "Tower" to complete some pending work. The first session was about to start at 9:45 AM and INETA Pakistan Country Leader Mr. Saqib Ilyas was going to speak on Security in Indigo. So I hurried towards the hotel. Thank God I reached there on time and didn't miss anything. His session came out to be awesome. Got to learn some basics of english. Yes we learned ABC, hehe... Just kidding. I know he was having tough time installing the RC 1 release of Indigo, but the demos worked absolutely fine and showed no errors at all. There was another parallel session of Hammad bhai in the next hall on Web Pars in .NET Framework 1.1. I wish I could attend both sessions as I was really interested to see web parts in 1.1 version of .NET, but dont wanna miss the oppertunity to learn and see Indigo in action. After the session I went up the rostrum to talk to him but he was swamped with people. I found Faisal sitting at the back of the stage and we both are upto no good :).

Its the tea break. So I decided to get some tea and refreshments. The next session was of the great Mr. Clemes Vasters who would be talking about Avalon. This is something that I was anxiously waiting from the first day of PDC. So I finished my tea and hurried towards Ball Room A. The gate was flooded with delegates so I took another route, clever me ;). I was lucky enough to secure the front seat. After a short while, he started his talk on Avalon and the first few slides were just the introduction of this new technology that Longhorn promises to bring. I was anxiously waiting to see some hands on code on XAML which is a new language introduced with Longhorn to design the next generation of UI's for desktop and web applications. But I was surprised that he showed pre-made demo by Microsoft which used to search audios or videos over internet. I have already seen this demo on Channel 9 Forum.

On the next hall, Mr. Adnan Farooq was talking about Speech Server 2004. I was so mad at me when the presentation on Avalon was over. I thought I could've attended the session on Speech Server and have learned something new, rather then just sitting and watching something which I already know. Anyway after the session I headed toward the refreshments area. Took lunch and met Zubair bhai. He travelled all the way from Dubai to attend this event. We talked alot about .NET and about the things I missed in the last session. He was in the Speech Server session and I got to hear some good stuffs from him. After finishing our meals we both headed towards the community lounge. The lounge was full of people and I met a couple of new people there. This was the best addition to the PDC this year. I really like the idea of having the community lounge where people can come and ask their queries regarding the sessions and the .NET community or just hang around. The next session which I was going to attend was on Master Pages by INETA MEA Regional Manager Mr. Goksin Bakir. But me and Faisal Nasim had to miss this session as we were going to start capturing interviews from various speakers of PDC for Channel 9 Forums. How cool is that :).

We first approached Clemens who was there at the lounge and we didn't wanna miss this great oppertunity. Faisal was taking the interview and I was behind the camera shooting the video. I prepared the questions. After that we setdown together with our INETA Pakistan speakers and took their interviews. This was the most fun part of PDC. Adnan bhai and Hammad bhai kept on throwing jokes which made us laugh for ever. We spend an hour or so for capturing the video. We tried to catch Lara but she just disappeared. So we wrap up the video and headed towards the next session on Indigo from Clemens. I was confident this time that I would gonna hear something new as I had very little experience in woking on Indigo.

This session was good. This time he showed his own demos. After this session we went back to the lounge and then joined a never ending que for the ending ceremony. We were told that some acting president is coming for the ceremony so they tightened the security. After spending about half an hour in the que we finally managed to get inside the hall. The VIPs came about an hour late which is I guess their hobby. They like to waste others time which they might think increases their value. Well anyways it was fun applausing all the speakers especially INETA PK people who stepped into the hall, instead of the acting president. Mr. Rahat Kazmi is now back to host the ending ceremony. After the first speech Mr. Rahat Kazmi made a very nice comment to them which was send indirectly (encrypted) and they were intelligent enough to decode it... :) hehe.. I guess he was annoyed like all of us for their never ending speeches. We were getting bored so Faisal asked me my copy of Spider. He started solving a word puzzle which he ended before the ceremony concluded. I was also able to solve a few but he solved the major portion. The X-Boxes were given to the 7 people through lucky draw. I was hoping to get one as I blown up the lasor of my beloved PlayStation 2. But I wasn't that lucky. The ceremony concluded and I headed towards the community lounge. In the end I was able to catch Goksin for the interview. After returning the camcorder to Sir Saqib I said good bye to our INETA Speakers and left towards home.

So this was PDC 2005. I enjoyed the event and learned alot. Made some new friends. Community lounge was great, however things didn't come exactly as we planned. However will come with some improvements next year, insha Allah. I will be posting updates about our video for channel 9. I hope they will approve it.

I definately missed my brother Farhan Muhammad at this year's PDC. He spoke at all past PDCs. We had lots of fun together during past events. Wandering at Karachi streets whole day, going to Area 51, playing PS2 together and beating him on Need For Speed (NFS) races, our trip to Northern Areas, buying him lots of DVDs, watching video of our dept annual function together and pausing at some special moments ;) are just to name a few. The world just rocks when we are together. Opening up my picture gallery to refresh some memories.