Last month, my friend, Michael John Pena, who’s a Microsoft MVP for Windows App Development asked me to talk about Xamarin and Bot Framework. I did not hesitate to accept it since it’s been a while since I last talk about Microsoft technologies. Plus, it’ll be the last time I’ll see my friend, coz he’s leaving our country for good. While I was at the meetup, I met new folks who also develops and talks about Xamarin stuff It was pretty awesome since we’ve talked about a lot of stuff not only about Xamarin, but .NET as a whole. We became really comfortable with each other, so we started a Facebook group chat.

Since then, I became really active in the Xamarin community in the Philippines. I share new and awesome Xamarin-related stuff to the community. The owner of the Mobile .NET Developers - Philippines, formerly Xamarin Mobile Developers - Philippines, user group (where I keep on sharing these awesome stuff) noticed that I’m really active, so he wanted me to be an admin to his user group. My friend also recommended me to be an admin of the user group, so I became the third admin of the user group.

As an admin, I suggest a lot of stuff to my fellow admins, since I feel like we can do more, because we really can. I’ve noticed that whenever we talk about Xamarin stuff and what it’s capable of, audiences (technical or not) are all shocked to see that it exist. I mean, seriously, they don’t know Xamarin exists. After every talk, most of them want to start developing cross-platform application using Xamarin.Forms. This made me think about proposing a monthly meetup about not only Xamarin, but the whole Mobile .NET. I feel like there’s a lack of exposure for both. Xamarin and the whole Mobile .NET is not getting the attention it deserves.

So, today, I sent Microsoft Philippines a formal proposal for Mobile .NET Developers - Philippines to have a monthly meetup every second tuesday of the month. This will be a great opportunity for Microsoft to spread the latest technologies and teach students and professionals how to develop applications using their Mobile .NET technologies, especially Xamarin. This will surely lead to the growth of developers who will be using Mobile .NET solutions in their projects.

Let’s just hope that Microsoft Philippines approves it. I mean, c’mon, let’s do this! It’ll be awesome! :)