ICT professionals in Malta who are interested in gaining and sharing knowledge in Microsoft technologies can join the Tech-Spark volunteer group.

The aim of the group is to contribute towards the growth of the local ICT industry through networking and education, and to foster an active community of technology professionals in Malta, providing our members unique opportunities to enhance their skills and value.

The group has evolved from a software development user group called Maltadev.

The need has been felt to also cater for the IT professional audience such as system administrators, network engineers and operations staff. Tech-Spark plans to have a number of events throughout the year, and the speakers will be selected from different local and foreign companies.

So far it had presentations on UX design, Windows 2008 R2, Hyper-V, Windows Azure, IIS7 and Developing for Windows 7, as well as a general chalk and talk session with domain experts.

Recently it organised a Speaker Idol competition, an exciting and challenging event where developers and IT pros speak on topics of interest to them. The purpose of the competition was to enable lesser-known members of the technical community to be recognised for their talents and speaking abilities. The goal was to find "diamonds in the rough" and future thought leaders and speakers that can enhance the local technical community.

Local developers wishing to join can visit the group's website or search for the Facebook group or subscribe to the Twitter feed 'techsparkug'.

www.tech-spark.com