According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “The work involved in getting the venue ready was substantial. The ground was uneven – it had to be leveled. Then the infrastructure – we have 63 generator trucks standing by. We had to put in place 4,000 power connections. I think there’s around 60,000 feet of cabling that had to be laid. Then there was Internet access to be provided – 2 GB of bandwidth. We have something like 500 people working as crew.” The session lasted 18 hours with certain rules set for participants, who were developers, designers, and programmers. Paul O’Neill, Vice President, the Guinness Book of World Records monitored the participants and said, “Participants cannot step out of the premises for more than 60 minutes. They need to have a background in computer science or computer engineering or the sciences. The final number will be the number of developers present at the site at 8:00 am on Saturday.” A video message was sent out by Steven Sinofsky, the president of Windows and Windows Live at Microsoft, wishing all participants luck. Microsoft initiated this fest to create excitement among developers and users prior the launch of Windows 8 on October 26. The event saw participants from all over India, who clumped together all laptops running Windows 8 RTM and Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2012. Guinness’s Paul O’Neill reviewed random participants for credentials. He said, “We have screened around a 100 participants so far. They have been extremely enthusiastic about the event. We are optimistic that a record will be made today.” Joseph Landes, General Manager of developer and platform evangelism, Microsoft India says, “The biggest thing about India is the scale of things. He added, “Abroad, we get 100-200 developers at these events, here we have thousands participating.” The event saw developers with lot of enthusiasm and zest. The first app – a Web Radio app – was finished in about less than 6 hours following the launch of the event. The AppFest was launched by Jon DeVaan, Corporate Vice President, Windows Development.
