MS NETWORK strikes back with the help of CEE MVPs!

The beautiful city of Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, held the Microsoft Network 2.0 event
April 4^th and 5^th. The conference presented a great opportunity for all local IT-orientated people
to get together, connect with each other and also attend many interesting technical quality
sessions. Although this conference is pretty young (this is the second year), it is very well
organized and it has much to offer.

In the Country Manager Layla Zukic-Krivdic’s own words:

“Like last year, Microsoft Network 2.0 gathered a respectable representation of the BiH private
and public sectors, as well as local and International IT professionals with the aim of presenting
the latest Microsoft and Partner solutions and their use for business efficiency. With a large
number of presentations and case studies for IT professionals, developers and managers in
the field of business productivity, infrastructure and security, and application development
platform, Microsoft Network 2.0 is the conference not be missed. It is a unique event where you
get to know the current Microsoft and partner solutions and IT trends, be able to exchange
experiences, enhance knowledge and create new business contacts.

With 40 speakers (of which 13 are MVPs!), 50 technical sessions, 4 different tracks (including
a Community one for community peers only), Microsoft Network 2.0 is the biggest annual event
ever held in Bosnia and will probably have 25% more attendees compared to last year.

Here are some pictures and quotes from the local MVPs attending as speakers:

	Jasmin Azerovic
	Bahrudin Hrnjica
	Damir Dizdarevic “I’m an MVP for Management Infrastructure, and I usually deliver presentations on all conferences in the region. Since I live in Bosnia, it was a special pleasure to me to deliver some very interesting sessions about Windows Server 8 and System Center 2012 during the MS Network Conference this year.  As well as the year before, we had a whole track of sessions devoted to lectures delivered by the MSCommunity Bosnia members. I’m very happy to see that this year we had a large number of MVPs from the whole region presenting on this conference.”
	Adis Jugo “The first Microsoft NetWork conference, which was held the last year in Banja Luka, was the first Microsoft technology, business and community conference in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Impressions and outcome of NetWork 1.0 were actually much higher than anyone has expected, and the praise was coming from all sides. Awareness about Microsoft technologies, Microsoft partners and Microsoft Community has strongly increased in Bosnia and Herzegovina after that conference.

I expect from Microsoft NetWork 2.0 to continue to impact the awareness growth, this year especially with
Community Track being equally positioned as the other three tracks (Business, Development, IT Pro). 
Since six MVPs had their sessions in this year’s community track, we have good chances to meet that goal:
to present Microsoft Community as a pool of talented, enthusiastic people, who are creating some great
things on Microsoft technologies, sharing knowledge, having fun and enjoying being a part of the community.

For me, personally, this conference has a special importance. One year ago, on Microsoft NetWork 1.0, we
have created SharePoint User Group Bosnia and Herzegovina. This year, 12 months, 6 meetings and 10
tech-sessions later, we have an established group of people, meeting on regular basis on premise and
online. Microsoft NetWork 2.0 is SharePoint User Group’s anniversary, but also an opportunity to look back
at 12 months which lay behind us, and especially to look forward into the future. My session at the
community track (“Why is SharePoint community such a cool thing?”) served also as a SharePoint User
Group meeting, where we discussed the group activities, lessons learned from the last year, and set some
expectations for the coming year. We wanted to give an opportunity to the group members to tell what
kind of SharePoint user group they would like to have, what kind of sessions they want to hear, and where
we should go in the future. 

All four Microsoft MVPs from Bosnia and Herzegovina presented their sessions on Microsoft NetWork,
as well as numerous MVPs from the region (Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Slovenia, Germany). First of all,
it was great to see the support of local and regional MVPs to such a conference, and of course, it
guaranteed high quality. This definitively was a “who-is-who,” top-level conference in our region.”

And have a look here to see which other Microsoft MVPs attended the Conference as speakers this year:
it was a memorable event!

About the Author:

Alessandro Teglia is a Community Program Manager responsible for the MVP Award for Central, Eastern Europe & Italy for Microsoft.  You can find him on Twitter at @alead or his blog at http://belead.me