We are all experiencing the results of the economic “reset”. Companies and consumers are scaling back spending to lower levels despite modest signs of growth. However, we are all recognizing that you cannot simply save your way to success. Costs savings are critical but not enough. In response to this, businesses are emphasizing efficiency which includes trimming costs but also involves increasing productivity and innovation for sustained growth. Microsoft is calling this the New Efficiency.

As mentioned last week by Stephen Rose, Microsoft is hosting a special VIP Business Leadership Roundtable event on September 29, 2009 in San Francisco from 9 to 10:30am Pacific to discuss the New Efficiency and other relevant trends.

Attendees are encouraged to join in on the conversation with our CEO Steve Ballmer and co-host Robert Youngjohns as they discuss major trends in the workplace and the role of technology in driving growth and competitive advantage during this economic reset. Steve and Robert will be joined by a panel of early adopter customers representing key industries like automotive, hospitality, transportation and IT. Attendees will get a close look at how real companies are justifying IT investments across the desktop, server, and network and beyond. The event will be broadcast live over the web and listeners will be able to submit questions to Steve Ballmer and the rest of the panel.

Add the event to your calendar and watch it live here at www.TheNewEfficiency.com.

Things are heating up as we ramp up for Windows 7’s launch on October 22nd!

The leaders have put together for the very first time, topics that were heavily requested by our communities. If this is successful, you can look forward to more of such ‘Technology Updates’ in the upcoming months. So, make a date with us! We hope to meet and get to know you on 27th June 2009.

As a treasured member of Microsoft’s technical communities, you are invited to join us in this first ever held round of major gathering, Community Technology Update in Kuching, Malaysia. The event is about sharing and bringing together like minded folks like you together and helping to drive community awareness and event.

The brainchild and initiative of 4 Musketeers (Chan Ming Man, Patrick Yong; Jabez Gan and Walter Wong) and run by the Kuching community and for the community, this half day ‘devInTown‘ affair will uncover the cool and latest technologies surrounding , Windows Presentation Foundation, LINQ and Windows 7 - delivered by our very own Microsoft MVPs. Each session will last for 45mins and will include a community sharing session whereby we will bring you up close and personal with the MVPs and hear them share their community experiences. We will wrap things up with an interactive Q&A session to answer all your burning technical queries.

For more information regarding this event, please take a look at this link.

After 3 years of absence in Kuala Lumpur, TechNET MSDN Technology Summit is back! This event will be taking place in Kuala Lumpur Convention Center (Malaysia) on the 15th January 2009.

For the very first time, we’ll showing a 2 hour Microsoft client and server platform demo-relay and *drum roll* a sneak preview of Windows 7!

Go to www.microsoft.com/malaysia/events/technetmsdn/ to reserve a seat. Please note that agenda(especially keynote) in the website is not updated, we’ll have the website updated with finalized topics by end of this week.