Think India isn't becoming a big IT powerhouse? Check out the sizes of these .NET Users Groups:

Bangalore - http://groups.msn.com/BDOtNet - 1200 members. Been around only 7 months.

Mumbai - http://groups.msn.com/MumbaiUserGroup/ - 790 members. Been around 10 months.

The first usergroup in India, the Chennai .NET Usergroup (www.cnug.net) has just celebrated its first anniversary.

Highlights for the usergroup in the last year:

Crossed 1000 member mark

Spawned off a student chapter in the city www.msdnsig.com, with 300+ members in less than a month.

Driven jointly by 6 MVPs and 1 RD (part of the India Advocates Program best practice)

Held 15 sessions, each having an average of 45-50 members

Organized a special session hosted by Shawn Nandi, Product Manager from US-.Net Developer PMG

By the way, the guy who runs the Chennai group has a couple of weblogs.

http://manand.typepad.com/DotnetTruth

and

http://manand.typepad.com/ .

To give some sort of balance, the Silicon Valley Software Forum took quite a few years to pass 1000 members, and at typical meetings we'd only get something like 50 to 100 people to show up, even though we had famous members like Daniel Appleman, Alan Cooper, Deborah Kurata, etc.

Interesting weblog from an Oracle developer, Brian Duff. He follows his mom as she tries to learn how to use a computer (translation: is frustrated by trying to shut down Windows).

On the way back to Seattle, I sat next to a guy I won't name, cause I didn't tell him I was gonna put his comments on my weblog. He's Vice President of IT at one of the world's largest title insurance companies. Thousands of seats. Big deal, all over the world. Uses all Microsoft products.

He told me they are shipping all of their development work over to India. 50 developers affected. Many were from India to begin with.

Why are they doing that? He told me, it's all cost based. Moving developers over to India, saves tons of money.

Right now the company is preparing for a major business pullback. The mortgage refinance market has totally pulled back, he told me. Mortgage rates have gone up six weeks in a row, and already they are seeing business down by 30%. As rates go up more, that business pullback will get worse, he says.

He also expects home prices to start to pull back in a big way. He told me he watches the Silicon Valley market. Where a year ago, there was only two pages of "homes available" ads in the Mercury News, he said that last week there were 10 pages.

Simple supply and demand. As interest rates go up, buyers disappear, and more homes are on the market. Prices must fall, in such situations.

One reason I like being on planes is I meet such interesting people. This weekend was an extraordinary example of that.

On the way down to Oakland, I sat next to Howard Poe. He shot down, with just a Springfield 1903 rifle, the first plane in U.S. World War II action. He was based at Kane'ohe Naval Air Station and had a lucky shot. The Japanese hit the air base first, before moving onto Pearl Harbor.

The weird thing is, his name isn't on the Internet anywhere. There are some descriptions of someone shooting down a plane at the Kane'ohe Naval Air Station, but no names. I'd expect to have found something somewhere that would talk about Howard's role in the war somewhere, but couldn't find it.

I spent four hours tonight reading various Pearl Harbor accounts on the Internet. Then I found something that probably explains why: most survivors don't like talking about their part in the war because of the visions that it brings back for most of them.

I don't know if that's true or not, but Howard today is suffering from Parkinson's disease and is very slow moving. Most people wouldn't try to talk with him and generally avoid someone in his situation, but his mind is sharp. He was traveling with his son, who is now caring for him. I was honored to sit next to him.

His son told me that he had worked managing a grocery store and usually worked 16-hour days. He had built up a sizeable fortune because he never spent his money, he told me. Still wasn't, either. Flying coach. Fortunate for me, cause I got to be the first one to tell his story to Google.

Better flames than jail...

Pascale Soleil: "their high profile employees [example Scoble] are both arrogant and ignorant" ... "Check out Robert Scoble's error-encrusted post."

Doug: "Scoble is an arrogant, know-nothing, jerk off" ... "This guy has such complete tunnel-vision due to being immersed in the West Coast La-la-land."