For last couple of days, only one event was trending over the Microsoft developer community and that was global //Publish/Satellite event happening all over the world on the same day May 16th – May 17th, 2014. Like other cities in India, we also had the opportunity to organize this event in Kolkata.

 

Great community, great devs and great apps. Let’s have a small recap of the entire Kolkata event for those who missed to join us.

 

We, the Kolkata developer community organized this event on 17th May 2014. Though we got a very good response from the community but the only drawback was, we had a very limited no. of seats and also a main criteria of having at least one Windows Phone and/or Windows 8 Store app ready or almost ready to publish. As this was a hackathon type event, no entry was permitted without app and/or app idea. We are really very sorry to those guys who were unable to join us in this event due to this strict rule.

 

It was a sunny day and we were almost wet due to heavy sweating when we reached the venue (Microsoft India office, Kolkata). Devs started coming up one by one and in groups, but we had a small delay due to some approval at the beginning but then we got the complete support from the local Microsoft office boys for the entire day.

 

 

Myself and Abhishek started reviewing the apps built by the developers and providing suggestions to improve them. Nitesh also joined us in validating and providing his great inputs. All were so busy with their apps that none of them had time other than completing their apps. Few heads but lots of apps and games. Everyone was enjoying the tea/coffee and building their apps/games.

 

 

Pizza, Coke and Code! What feels better than this!

Then the time came for lunch “Pizza and Coke for everyone”. What’s better than this when you code! You won’t believe it, but that’s the true fact that the boxes were kept unopened even after those were served 10 mints back. All of the developers were really working hard to finish their apps on time.

 

Not only the developers but me, Abhishek and Nitesh also were late having our lunch and when we had the time to eat (almost after an hour), by that time that delicious pizzas were no longer hot and soft.

 

 

Work! Work! and only Work! Design, development and testing the apps. All busy with their apps and games to submit them on time. Few of them were working on multiple apps/games and submitting them one by one. Most of them had two apps/games to submit where as a group of two developers had 10 games to submit in this //Publish/Kolkata event. And yes, they submitted those 10 apps completely at the end of the day. What feels better than this!!!

 

 

When I was capturing few snaps of the event, I noticed that, few of them were really busy to give a better look to the UI. One of them was in a deep thinking stage to improve the application UI, few of them were busy in testing their apps and games to make it sure that those are completely bug free before submit to the store.

 

 

Presentations and Judgements

Finally time came for the presentations. Each of them was bound to complete the presentation of their apps within 5 mints and face the questions in front of the juries (me, Abhishek and Nitesh) when it comes for judgements.

 

 

After the judgement of the apps and games were over independently by me, Abhishek and Nitesh, we had to choose the winners from the votes. We didn’t face any difficulties in selecting the winners as all of our votes in terms of all the different categories were near about same and the total points easily identified the persons.

 

First Prize

The first prize goes to “Ankit Mohanty” for his awesome app for kids. This was not only voted by juries for the first prize but the rest of the peer developers too who participated in this event.

 

 

Second Prize

The second prize goes to “Shahnawaz Alam” and “Ms. Hassan” for their lovely game. They both worked together for this game. As the prize is only one device, now they have to chose how this can be utilized.

 

 

Third Prize

The third prize was given to “Abhishek Nandy” and “Sumantro Rijndael Mukherjee” for their game development. They will receive a Nokia Developer Token and Syncfusion Essential Studio (Enterprise Edition) license in their inbox very soon.

 

 

Fourth Prize

Fourth prize goes to “Kumar Subham” for his app. He will soon get a Nokia Developer Token from us in his inbox.

 

 

Additional Prizes

Not only these four prizes. We didn’t want to let other developers go home in empty hand. They also gave a great effort in this //Publish/Kolkata event. So, we decided to provide the following prizes:

    • Ten (10) top app/game developers will get Syncfusion Windows Phone license *
    • Eight (8) top app/game developers will get Nokia Developer Tokens *
    • All the developers participated in this event will get Telerik Windows 8 Toolkit licenses *
    • All of them will receive 100 bonus XP points in their DVLUP account *
    • What else? //Publish T-Shirt, Windows Azure stickers, Visual Studio stickers, bag, Windows 8 charts for all

Congratulations to everyone who brought their time to come and join us in this event; spent their entire day with us in developing, presenting and publishing their apps and games. We will share the URL of the top apps once they comes in the store. Till then, stay tuned.

 

* Terms and Conditions:

The above mentioned prizes are applicable only to those who successfully published their apps to the store. Please send us the link of your app at: events@kolkatageeks.com. Please follow the mail that you received already in your inbox.

 

Snaps! Snaps! Snaps!

At the end of the event, it’s time for a group photo but looks like we missed few of them as they left early. We really missed them here in this group shot.

 

 

And finally, three of us got the time to capture a photo (from left): myself (Kunal Chowdhury), Abhishek Sur and Nitesh Luharuka:

 

 

A successful event ends with another discussion. Same happened here too. We have planned up for the next events yesterday itself. Stay tuned with us for the announcements.

 

You can find the complete photo album of the //Publish/Kolkata/2014 event here: http://1drv.ms/1o2Mh73. I really loved capturing the moments with my Lumia 1020 and it’s camera grip.

 

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