I was perusing Chris Williams' blog over on GeekswithBlogs.Net. I met Chris many years ago through INETA and in person at an INETA User Group Leader event. Chris ran the user group in Charleston, South Carolina and has since moved to Minnesota where he has survived his first winter with all of his fingers and toes intact. He is a really nice, unique and memorable guy (okay the tat's definitely help him stand out).

While looking at his blog, I saw a post of photos from a funny ad that apparentlyly reminded Chris of D'Arcy Lussier, a a wild and crazy guy (also a GeekswithBlogs blogger) who lives in Winnipeg (where I think you need to be a little wild and crazy to survive), and probably laughs at Chris' mumblings about the cold weather in Minnesota. D'Arcy also is a user group leader and I see him frequently at the DevTeach events in Montreal and look forward to seeing him at DevTeach next week in Toronto where I plan to goad him into a his own Meatloaf imitation. (I didn't realize that the dad in the commercial really is Meatloaf!)

What struck me when I saw the photos and Chris' comments about them was that here are two guys who have a lot in common and are clearly good friends who may never have met if it weren't for INETA and the .NET blogging community. I know it may seem obvious that of course they would find each other, but it's not a given. These resources were only just starting up 6 years ago, so they are relatively new.

It really made me stop and think when I saw that blog post and made me happy and very proud of the community that we have all created.

I am thrilled to share this fabulous news ... INETA Noram has a new website. The reason for my jubilation is that for a variety of reasons, INETA has been trying to create a new website for about 4 years, so to see it actually happen is wonderful.

This may have just launched because I hadn't heard anything about it yet or maybe I overlooked it in the last newsletter.

Not only does it have a new look but it has some long awaited features such as an integrated map to find user groups. They have partnered with Component Source so you can buy .NET components right from the site.

I also found the live.ineta.org website that I didn't know about. It has videos (user group YouTube?), a blog that lists things like upcoming code camps and INETA related events and some other resources. 

Even though i am on the INETA speaker committee (responsible for the NORAM Speaker Bureau), I didn't really know this was public yet but I'm starting to get some emails and see some blog posts that people are announcing their addition to the speaker bureau, so I guess it's okay to blog about it now!

Must be that the email I got wasn't a "how does this look before we send it out to the world?" but it was the official email.

Fifteen, count 'em 15! new people were added to the speaker bureau.  They are all on the website already so you can start ordering them up!

Rod Paddock - Rod has spent his kid's college fund travelling on his own dime to speak to user groups all over the u.s. and canada. he's been to VTdotNET and he's a great presenter. Rod is also editor of CoDe Magazine.

Markus Egger -  Markus is the publisher of CoDe, so he keeps Rod in line! Markus presents at conferences all over the world. I am always amazed at the ease at which he explains some difficult concepts in a easily understandable way. Even with that Austrian accent!

Mark Miller - You may know Mark from his crazy fun on Mondays! with Carl Franklin, but Mark is also a friggin genious who is one of the driving technical forces behind Developer Express. Mark is another one of those guys who speaks at user groups on his own dime all the time.

Nick Landry - aka Active Nick. Nick is a crazy and smart as hell guy from Montreal (though he's now a New Yakah living in Joisey)who is a guru in mobile device programming. He has been presenting at conferences for years. Watch out for that Quebequois accent, shiny bald head, and most especially his super silly jokes that somehow make technology sound dirty.

John Papa - John writes the Data Points columns for MSDN magazine and speaks at VSLIve a lot and we've just snagged him to present at devconnections this fall (he's doing 2 talks in the Data Access track that I coordinated and 2 in the Mobile Connections conference that Nick Landry chairs). Maybe if we keep him really busy on the speaker bureau, he'll be lulled into slacking off on his MSDN Mag column and I can steal it away from him. Evil laugh.

Ambrose Little - Ambrose has written books for WROX on ADO.NET 2.0, ASp.NET 2.0 Hacks and has a book on silverlight coming out. He works at Infragistics  and is an ASPINsider - and a really nice guy who will be a pleasure to host at your user group!

Oh, John Papa's really nice too. You should all invite him to speak at your groups. Keep him really busy!

DonXML - oh, wait, Don actually has a last name! It's Demsak. But really, "Donxml", need I say more?

Wow - 7 down and 8 to go. This is a lot of work and I have work to do.

I'm going to have to just cut & paste the rest. I know, that's really boring. Sorry!

Todd C. Bleeker, Ph.D., is regarded as an innovative, resourceful, and competitive technologist with an intense desire to excel. Todd is co-owner of Mindsharp (http://mindsharp.com/), a company that offers top-notch educational opportunities on the SharePoint platform.  Todd has architected many solutions for small and large corporations: P&G, Fingerhut, United Healthcare, itiliti (now PeopleClick), Air Canada, State of Minnesota and Bank of Montreal. Todd also presented on Web Services and MCMS at TechEd.  Todd loves to soak up whatever technology Microsoft is churning out and lives in Minnesota with his wife and six "high energy" children.

Mark Dunn has over 20 years of experience in the disciplines of software engineering, database administration, and project management. For the past four years, Mark has been awarded MVP status for his contributions to the Visual Studio .Net community and he serves as Microsoft's Regional Director covering the Southeast United States.  Mark also co-founded .Net Rocks, an Internet radio program for .Net developers recognized in over 80 countries and now hosted by Microsoft on the MSDN site. Mark is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Application Developer, Solution Developer for .Net, and Database Administrator.

 

Daniel Egan - MCT, MCSD, ASP.NET MVP, Daniel is the founder of Odyssey Consulting Group Inc. (http://www.ocgpros.com/), a Southern California software development company. In addition, Daniel teaches a .NET Certification course and serves on the .NET Advisory board at California State University, Fullerton. He is cofounder of the SoCalDotNet Developers Group and a frequent speaker and conference presenter including SDWest, and MIX07. He has written several articles for asp.netPRO magazine, and is the author of several books including an upcoming title on design patterns from WROX. [Daniel is also now heading up INETA Noram's Tech committee and working on getting a new website for us. But more importantly, he is going to win the "best dressed INETA Speaker award"]

 

Caleb Jenkins long time community leader, former Microsoft Developer Evangelist, training mentor and consultant with Improving Enterprises, Inc. Host, cameraman and editor for http://communitycast.tv/. Caleb lives in Dallas where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing candy land and Xbox 360 with their four incredible children. Occasionally he writes curriculum, speaks at conferences, and writes code for silly things like twitter applications. Eventually he'll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast or blog at http://www.calebjenkins.com/

 

Kevin McNeish is President and Chief Software Architect of Oak Leaf Enterprises, Inc, and a Microsoft .NET MVP.  He is a well-know speaker and trainer throughout North America and Europe including VSLive!, DevTeach (where he serves as one of the .NET chairs), SDC Netherlands, and Advisor DevCon. He is co-author of the book "Professional UML with Visual Studio .NET", author of the book ".NET for Visual FoxPro Developers". He authors articles for CoDe magazine and has been interviewed on the .NET Rocks! Internet Radio Show. He is the Chief Software Architect of the MM .NET Framework and spends about half his time on the road training and mentoring companies to build world-class .NET applications.

Mark Michaelis is the IDesign architect specializing in WCF and VSTS. Mark was recognized by Microsoft as a Microsoft MVP for Visual Studio Team System and C#. Mark holds a MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology and he serves on several Microsoft Software Design Review teams including WCF, C# and VSTS. Mark speaks at developer conferences both nationally and internationally and has written several articles and books, in addition to maintaining a blog. His most recent book is Essential C# 2.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2006). [Hey, there's nothing in this bio about riding roller coasters on top of tall buildings with Kathleen Dollard!]

Jeffrey Palermo makes his living making software teams twice and three times as productive by coaching executive managers all the way down to individual software engineers.   Jeffrey is also a master developer, MCSD.Net, Solutions Architect MVP, Austin .Net User Group leader, AgileAustin board member, INETA Membership Mentor, Eagle Scout, Aggie, and Iraq war veteran.

 

David Yack is the CTO of Colorado Technology Consultants, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Colorado.  David specializes in large system architecture, design and integration.  David is a Microsoft Regional Director and is also a Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET.    David is a frequent speaker at user group and industry events and is co-author of two NET 2.0 related books.  David founded and is on the leadership team for the South Colorado .NET User Group and lives in Colorado Springs with his wife and two kids. You can always track David down via his blog at http:/blog.davidyack.com where he writes about his .NET adventures.

I'll be in the Detroit area this week giving presentations on the ADO.NET ENtity Framework at GANG in Southfield (Wednesday night) and GLUG in Lansing (Thursday night). THe Lansing talk is sponsored by INETA. Read more here...

[A New DevLife Post]

INETA Noram's new board began this month. Thinking about INETA and about what a tiny percentage of .NET developers take advantage of their local user groups, I wrote a little elevator pitch over on my other blog...

[A New DevLife Post]

Once again, INETA is coordinating and leading a full day meeting of .NET User Group Leaders at TechEd. While budget no longer allows INETA to fund bringing many leaders from across the US and Canada to the event (as they have done in the past), TechEd is an event attended by many u.g. leaders, so it remains the best opportunity for congregating.

Over the years. my best source of information and inspiration for leading Vermont.NET has come from talking to other user group leaders and learning from their experiences.

If you are planning to go to TechEd and you are a user group leader or interested in learning more about helping your local user group (or just interested), the summit will be on Saturday, June 2nd in Orlando.

You can register and find more information at summit.ineta.org.

Thanks so much to INETA , Andy Robinson (leader of Bellingham.NET) and Paul Mehner and Camey Combs from South Sound .NET for getting me out to the Seattle area to present at their user groups.

I did a session on LINQ to SQL in Web Apps in Bellingham on Wednesday night after spending 17 hours trying to get there. (Snowstorm in Chicago - more details about that crazy flight here…)  I was amazed that people stuck around to wait for me since I didn't arrive until about 7:45! I did my session from 8 - 10pm and then drove down to Olympia with Paul Mehner who had filled in and did a full workflow session while I was trying to make my way up to Bellingham (what  a gorgeous flight!). I was up for 23 straight hours that day and between the adrenaline and my love for presenting, I think I surprised these guys that I was doing this session from what my body clock defined as 11pm - 1am!

The next night I presented at the user group in Olympia.  This is the first time I recall a user group meeting that served something other than pizza! Camey had gone to Costco and we had sandwiches, chips, soda and chocolate chip cookies. Mmmmm.

This is the 4th time I've taught this session on what's coming up in ADO.NET in the next Visual studio which translates to Entity Framework and the data access integration with LINQ. It's all so new to most people and there is so much to show. From explaining the concept and purpose behind the entity model, to inspecting the schema files, laying out the various uses and of course, looking at Object Services, Entity client, Entity SQL and LINQ to Entities. Not to mention LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Datasets. It really is just way too much for one session and frustrating to figure out what to show without leaving out key information. In this session, there was a lot of interest in the actual schema files (and it is really important to take the time to understanding them if you want to really leverage Efs potential) so we spent a good amount of time in that space.

All in all, I think I whetted the appetites and curiosity of most of the folks at the meeting and that is really the best I can hope for in such a short amount of time.

On Friday I drove up to Microsoft (1 hour up, 3 hours back in rush hour traffic!) with my bag filled with Vermont Maple Syrup and goodies from Lake Champlain Chocolates and had some great meetings with some of my buddies on the ADO.NET team as well as the Mobility team (that's TabletPC and more).

After this, I was actually on a mini vacation! And now I'm in a plane flying east in to what promises to be some pretty nasty storms. We'll see how that goes….

Update - not quite home yet. When I do get home, I will post the links to the demos and powerpoints.

Tomorrow I am flying to Seattle then speaking tomorrow night at the Bellingham.NET User Group (which is even closer to the Canadian border than where I live) and then Thursday night at South Sound.NET in Olympia.

Thanks to my pal Camey Combs for suggesting the trip and to INETA and user group leaders Paul Mehner and Andy Robinson for making it all happen. Apparently, Camey and Paul have been promoting the heck out of this.

At Bellingham, I'll be presenting on LINQ to SQL and all the fun ASP.NET databinding you can do with it. In Olympia I'll be doing a 6 hour overview of ADO.NET Orcas. Just kidding. I wish I had all that time to talk about ADO.NET! Alright, so I will try to keep it under 4 hours. No? Nobody wants to stay at a user group until 10pm. How about 2 hours? Heck, I've done it in 75 minutes and 90 minutes in the past (and 2 hours and 15 minutes also). We'll see how it goes... [evil laugh].

LOCK THE DOORS!

If you are not on the email list to receive the monthly newsletter for INETA NORAM  you can always find them at www.ineta.org/newsletters.

Scott Spradlin does a great job putting this together as editor. I do the speaker interviews each month, something I started when I was the editor. This month I got the dirt (that's dirt bike dirt) on Chris Kinsman. Check it out.

I will be speaking in Albany NY at TechValley.NET on March 12th about ADO.NET Orcas.

In April I will be doing a two city tour speaking at Bellingham.NET (a group led by Andrew Robinson, that is a brand new member of INETA) and then at South Sound .NET in Olympia, Washington run by my old INETA pal, Paul Mehner (with help from another pal, Camey Combs.)

In between these two trips, I'll be at DevConnections in Orlando and Code Camp 7 in Waltham, Mass. I guess "travel season" is starting!

I'm looking forward to all of these trips! Now back to that new CTP release.

From the INETA NORAM Feb 2007 Newsletter:

Elections are being held for the INETA NorAm Board of Directors in mid-March. From now through February 15, 2007 any user group leader of an INETA registered user group in the United States and Canada can nominate an individual for a Board position. The nominee can be any member of the developer community and does not have to be a user group leader. Experience and familiarity with the operation and needs of the user group community is beneficial. You cannot nominate yourself, but any other user group leader may, so get someone to nominate you.

Read  more here...

I seem to be "just a girl who can't say no".

• Sept 6th CNY.NET (Syracuse NY - INETA) Advanced Data Access with ADO.NET 2.0
• Sept 11th Vermont.NET (Burlington, VT home sweet home) Asynchronous ASP.NET 2.0
• Sept 12th Cleveland .NET SIG (OH - INETA) Asynchronous ASP.NET 2.0
• Sept 13th Findlay .NET (OH - INETA) 5 (Supposedly) Scary Things about .NET
• Sept 14th Dayton.NET (OH - INETA) Web Services Security for Humans: Security Fundamentals

What was I thinking?! Of course, it will be a blast!

 

I'm psyched to be hopping down to NYC tomorrow do an INETA sponsored presentation at NYCdotNETDev. I lived in New York from 1983 to 1991 (as you can imagine, my impressionable 20's), so it's fun to go back once in a while. I plan to spend Friday at the MOMA and eating great food with friends before taking a late night flight back to Burlington. It's only a one hour flight, so it's a nice and easy trip.

I'll be presenting on Query Notifications, a topic near and dear to my heart. Most user groups find this a little narrow no matter how fascinating I find it! So I'm happy that these guys were interested in this talk.

http://www.sadeveloper.net/The SA Developer Gauteng team (Gauteng is a province in South Africa that includes Johannesburg) all met in the Microsoft offices in Jo'burg to attend the most recent INETA Live Webcast. Andre Odendaal wrtes about doing this and how valuable he thinks these webcasts are to u.g. leaders.

Scott Spradlin has cranked out the INETA NORAM July Newsletter. In it, I interview fellow INETA Speaker, Brian Noyes, who has had a path into a development career that is more unusual than most! Check it out along with all of the other NORAM news.

(from the INETA NORAM website:)

On June 1st INETA North America launched an extensive new Sponsorship Program aimed at raising funds to expand and improve services for our members. Over the past six months the INETA NorAm Sponsorship Team, led by Sponsorship Director Pat Tormey, has designed a great program with many options for sponsorship at a variety of levels. In the four years since our founding, INETA has grown tremendously and to deliver programs and services to our members requires substantial funding and volunteer time. During the past year the INETA NorAm Board of Directors has targeted key areas for expansion and growth to better serve our members. As part of that strategic analysis it became evident we needed to establish a substantial and diverse sponsor base.

The new Sponsorship Program consists of four main levels of sponsorship (Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze) and a wide range of services from which a custom sponsorship program is designed for each sponsor. The services available to sponsors focus on INETA's key strength of providing the opportunity to reach a targeted audience of software developers focused on Microsoft technologies. 

If you are interested in learning more about INETA sponsorship programs, please email marketing@ineta.org.

 

 

 

Best Practices for Running a User Group
June 28th, 2006 - 3:30PM EST

Running a user group is not an easy task. However luckily by being part of INETA you are connected to network of peers that have experienced all aspects of user group leadership from start-up to success. This webcast will be a panel based discussion featuring experts such as Chris Williams, INETA Membership Manager NC, SC and D'Arcy Lussier, INETA Membership Manager, Central Canada.

Come and join the conversation on important user group topics such as:

• Building a Leadership Team
• Picking a Location
• Running a Successful Event
• Working with Sponsors

To register for this webcast, please visit http://live.ineta.org.

Yesterday Rich and I drove from New Brunswick, where I had spoken at the local .NET User Group, to Halifax Nova Scotia, about a 2 1/2 hour drive. Before heading into the city, we drove out the coast a bit to an absolutely-not-to-be-missed treasure of Nova Scotia called Peggy's Cove. Peggy's Cove is a very historic fishing village that provided respite from the wind but easy access to great fishing. It is a beautiful rocky place with a famous lighthouse that also houses the local post office.

   

You can see why this is the most photographed location in Nova Scotia. Even I can take a calendar worthy photo in this town!

The  (INETA sponsored!) user group talk was in Halifax that night at .NET Nova Scotia. Derek Hatchard, who runs both the Moncton group and this group, drives the 2.5 hours to Halifax (and back home) for the meetings. He picked me up at the hotel after Rich and I had a quick dinner (it was Rich's birthday, so I couldn't totally abandon him for pizza with the geeks). The meeting was at a local college and not only were there students attending, but a professor, with a long history that included working at Bell Labs (who the students are really lucky to have) from the college. I had a blast, as always, talking about ADO.NET and as always, most of the questions were around the query notification. It is such a cool feature and I have to be careful not to use up the entire session time talking about it.

Today Rich and I had a pure vacation day and have driven out to the Eastern Shore. I am now at a magnificent inn in a very remote location on the ocean. Too bad we can't stay here for a month or two.There is so much history here and no time to absorb a good portion of it. We stopped at a living history museum  (Fisherman's Life Museum) which is the homestead of a fishing family through the 18th and 19th century. That was really fascinating and I was amazed at the rugs and quilts in the house as well.. Oh and if anyone is in the market for kittens, it was all I could do not to take them with me, but they are looking for some homes!

The other big thing we did today was a glorious hike along the wild and windy Nova Scotia coast at Taylor's Head.

Tonight is the last game of the Stanley Cup. Edmonton and Raleigh have both won three games so this is it. I was really surprised that the attendees of the New Brunswick .NET user group stayed for the whole meeting. Even my husband is at the local pub cheering on the Edmonton Oilers!

Posted from BLInk!

The June 2006 INETA newsletter came out last week. Althought there's alot of very interesting news in there, I was excited to see the interview of INETA Speaker Bureau member Phil Weber get out in the wild. I had fun asking questions but was astonished at some of his answers. Rather than spoil the fun, I'll point to the newsletter!

Also in the newsletter: a new logo,  new tag line and a new fleshed out Sponsorship program!

There's lots of INETA stuff going on at TechEd. A regional User Group Leader meeting (all are invited) on Sunday, June 11th and of course the Birds of a Feather sessions! This will be the first TechEd/PDC that I am not leading a BOF as I wasn't sure of my travel schedule, but there are a ton of awesome BOFs scheduled.

So if you didn't get the June Newsletter in your email, you can go right to the website to read all the news (that's fit to print)!

The second INETA Live! session was held on Wednesday: Starting a User Group. This was presented by Dave Noderer, Jason Beres and myself. Unfortunately a nasty thunder and lightning storm that started just as the webcast began forced me to bail. Even during the first few minutes while I was explaining what a user group is, I was a wee bit distracted watching some b-i-g lightning bolts in the sky. My house got struck by lightning last summer, so I take no chances. I had to power down and unplug everything. I got back online and on the webcast aout 15 minutes before the end. Of course Dave, Jason, Amanda, Theresa and Chris had done an amazing job.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Dave Noderer, Jason Beres and I will be doing an INETA Live webcast this Wednesday, May 31st at 3:30 EST, about Starting a User Group.

Dave started and runs one of the larger groups (a consortium of groups, actually) in the U.S., Florida .NET, which Jason helped start. I started and run Vermont.NET, one of the smaller groups in the U.S. With our involvement in INETA oer the years, Dave and I have talked with many many user group leaders and done lots of hand holding to groups that were just getting going. So we bring a lot to the table

You can register for the Live Meeting at live.ineta.org.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

The May 2006 INETA NORAM Newsletter is out and there is a wonderful article in there by INETA Speaker Kathleen Dollard on a recent 3-user group tour to the Gulf Coast region. Kathleen also donated all of her honorariums for the user group events to local organizations and makes some suggestions how we can continue to help this still devasted area.

Also in the newsletter is information about the success of Deeper in .NET which was a full day event put on by the Wiscosin .NET user group. Scott Isaacs is eager to share with other user group leaders his secret to success!

The 2nd Alabama Code Camp was held recently also and there is an article written by Huntsvillian (had to becareful ont to type Huntsvillain) Dan Wygant about that event as well. The article is accidentally anonymous. I'll update this post when I get the name of the person who wrote it. Maybe we can get the online editionof the newsletter updated, too.

If you are not on the list  to receive the newsletter you can read it here.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I just happened to be looking at the INETA "Upcoming Speaking Engagements" page and was struck by the fact that there are SIX events tonight!

Bill Evjen	San Diego .NET User Group	3/28/2006
Bill Vaughn	KC .NET User Group	3/28/2006
Chris Menegay	Aggieland (Texas A&M Univeristy) .NET Developers	3/28/2006
Jeff Prosise	East TN .NET User group	3/28/2006
Kathleen Dollard	Lower Alabama .NET User Group	3/28/2006
Mike Amundsen	Cincinnati .NET User Group	3/28/2006

It's also amazing to see events scheduled all the way through to the end of 2006. It's definitely hard to plan that far ahead, though I do have some INETA talks already scheduled in September!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I am astonished that INETA has had to go so far as to have a prize drawing to encourage user group leaders to report on the health of .NET user groups (thereby also helping INETA to show it's sponsors what type of reach they are getting which is a VERY reasonable thing for a sponsor to ask).

Once a month, it is a tiny itty bitty task. All they ask is that you identify yourself, your user group, the date of your meeting and the # of attendees. Additionally, they ask what your current membership count is and if you are so inclined, you can even leave comments.

One minute? Two?

So why is it hard to get u.g. leaders to do this? Do you find it invasive? That's the only thing I can come up with because certainly it's not much of an imposition. Even if INETA did nothing more than provde the speaker bureau - that's huge. And this is just about the only thing they ask in return other than eval forms when they send a speaker (and pizza) to your group three times a year. So what if they ask every month - not just months that you have INETA speakers. And even with that, you cannot imagine the time and energy that the INETA volunteers put in to running this organization. And for what? For you - for your user groups. So a little survey each month is not much to ask as far as I'm concerned. I'm very happy to share that info with them.

Really, I am very curious why bribery is necessary? Not that I would turn down a $100 gift card for my user group (though I wish I could use it at the local pizza joint)!

Feel free to leave comments or link back to this post if you want to blog a reply.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Well, I'm quoting Scott Watermasysk on that, but since he and I talked about this frequently over the years while I was heavily involved with INETA, I'm happy to see this finally happen! Looks like newlywed Jason Beres has a hand in this, too. Excellent!

Hopefully, everyone gets the little joke in the upper right hand corner of the home page.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

D'Arcy Lussier writes:

Flash back a few years to when .NET was an emerging technology. Microsoft put their marketing muscle behind the promotion and creation of user group communities: groups of geeks getting together to talk about CLR goodness. Their plan worked to perfection, and user groups sprung up all over the world! An organization (which I'm a membership manager for), INETA - The International .NET Association, was created and helped bolster the user groups by providing guidance, speakers, and support.

I see it very differently.

Flash back a few years to when .NET was an emerging technology. INETA - The International .NET Association, was created by a handful of user group leaders (led by Bill Evjen) in an effort to bolster the user groups by providing guidance, speakers, and support. When INETA (with help from Microsoft's Eric Ewing) demonstrated to Microsoft how important the user group community was, Microsoft put their marketing muscle behind the promotion and creation of user group communities: groups of geeks getting together to talk about CLR goodness.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I am ready to give up.

We have our 5 dvds worth of content to share with our user group members but have still, after two months of begging favors, not found a way to get the copies made efficiently.

I know Lori Mckinney burned all 700+ dvds herself on two normal home dvd burners.

First we have to get someone to pay for 250 blank dvds. Then we have to find a way to copy that many.

I can't find anyone to do it for us for free or cheaply. The best offer I had was still going to cost us $750.

How have you solved this dilemma?

Update: Here is how we are doing it! Our D.E., Thom Robbins, hooked us up with 250 blank DVDs and I have now gotten a number of user group members who have committed to burning anywhere from 4 to 10 sets. So I will burn about 10 sets myself and then mail those with a bunch of blanks to these people who will bring their burned sets to the next meeting! Yay!!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

More than 100,000 species of sea life are getting ready for their new starring role at the world's largest indoor aquarium.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

There's nothing like planning ahead! I will be visiting 3 user groups in late June (yes that's 2006) in Canada's Atlantic provinces. Places I have wanted to go for a long time so I am thrilled to be able to visit the groups and see these beautiful provinces at the same time. I will be going to INETA groups in Moncton New Brunswick, Halifax Nova Scotia and St. John's Newfoundland. Thanks to Amanda Murphy and Derek Hatchard for having me and also accommodating a schedule that allowed me to spread the talks out so that I can explore these magical places.

Posted from BLInk!

From the INETA website

INETA Announces New Board Members, Sheri Nawrocki, Matt Ranlett & Brendon Schwarz.

INETA ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF SHERI NAWROCKI AS VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING Redmond, WA – October 4, 2005 – The International .NET Association (INETA), an organization that provides resources, services, and support for .NET user groups around the globe, today announced the appointment of Sheri Nawrocki as Vice President of Marketing for INETA North America. “Sheri has been a valuable member of our team over the past few years and will do an excellent job leading our marketing efforts.” says Chris Pels, President of the North American Board of Directors. “Sheri brings a unique perspective to our team with her background in software development, marketing, and graphic design that will be invaluable.” “INETA has done a great job strengthening the .NET development community with its efforts over the past several years and I am excited to have the opportunity to help the organization.” says Nawrocki. “This is a great group of volunteers and I look forward to working with them.” INETA ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF MATT RANLETT AND BRENDON SCHWARTZ TO INETA BOARD OF DIRECTORS Redmond, WA – October 6, 2005 – The International .NET Association (INETA), an organization that provides resources, services, and support for .NET user groups around the globe, today announced the appointment of Matt Ranlett and Brendon Schwartz as Co-Vice Presidents of Technology for INETA North America. “Matt and Brendon, or The Atlanta Regular Guys as many know them, have done exciting work in the Atlanta area with local INETA User Groups and have contributed to the success of the Community Activities Division of INETA” says Chris Pels, President of the North American Board of Directors. “We are excited about the energy and ideas the guys will bring to the Technology Division.” “Matt and I are very excited about our new positions on the Board.” says Schwartz. “We are really looking forward to having a big impact on how INETA works with technology now and in the future” added Ranlett.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I'm so happy to already have two INETA gigs lined up.

I'll be speaking at WeProgram.net in Virginia Beach on December 6th.

Next will be Tech Valley.NET, in Albany NY on January 25th. I'll hope for now blizzards!

In addition to that, I will be speaking next month at the new group in Syracuse, NY  - CNY .NET Developer Group. Although they are now an INETA group, I am going there on my own because I grew up in the area and my parents still live about an hour away. I was really exicted when I heard that Andy was starting up this group so am very happy to be going there. So are my parents since I'll get to go see them, too!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I know - it sounds awfully formal, but INETA is getting all organized and grown up.

When I began as a volunteer in the User Group Management committee almost 3 1/2 years ago, I was the liaison for all of Canada and all of the northeast and a handful of other states as well. Slowly that has shrunk. Bill Zack came on board and I gave him NY and CT. Chris Pels came on board and I gave up RI and MA. Ohio and Pennsylvania eventually found more local liaisons and now there are 5 liaisons covering Canada. For the past year or two I had responsibility for communicating with the 5 groups (including my own) in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.  Now with INETA's overhaul including a major restructuring that board member, Chris Wallace, has orchestrated in the Membership Division, I was happy to pass on these groups, and my buddies Pat Tormey, Joe Sarna, Tim Durgan and Phil Denencourt, to such good hands.

But those NH and Maine groups aren't rid of me yet. Now I get to go visit them as an INETA speaker. That will be great fun and I look forward to it.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Right now the INETA stats are:

799 Groups (worldwide)

422,090 members (of those groups)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Here are the timeslots allocated by the PDC organizers for the BOFs.

Monday (pre-con day)
7:00, 8:15, 9:30

Tuesday
9:00pm
10:15 pm  (Tablet PC Developer BOF is here)

Thursday
9:00pm  (Going Solo BOF is here)
10:15pm

Stuart Celarier, who is leading up the INETA charge to coordinate all of the BOFs reports that there are 7 rooms during each session and the BOFs really filled up!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

INETA has added 9 new members to the speaker bureau. Although it's "official", it is not yet posted anywhere so I thought I would. Unfortunately, their budget limited the number of new people that they could bring on board. I know that they had a lot of wonderful people to choose from and had a difficult task. Hopefully, there will be more opportunities at some point to bring some of these people on as well and share them with user groups around North America.

• Bill Vaughn
• Ted Pattison
• Bill Evjen
• Miguel Castro
• Josh Holmes
• John Alexander
• Chris Menegay
• Les Pinter
• & me

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

The BOF sessions that are being organized by INETA at PDC will be set up like this:

In total, there will be 7 time slots spread out over a few nights for sessions. My guess is maybe 3 on one night and 4 on another, but I truly have no idea.

During each time slot there will be 6 rooms available.

Therefore, there will be a potential of 42 BOF sessions at PDC.

Right now I see 30 sessions on the PDC BOF site for voting. I know that there are at least two more that I just submitted, so there may be more submissions waiting in the wings for the BOF committee to deal with. But surely, there will be room for more.

Remember when coming up with a BOF idea that the purpose of a BOF is to be a discussion among all of the BOF attendees with one or a few people leading the discussion. It is not a presentation and there is no presentation equipment available (eg projector).

So go submit a proposal or vote. You can vote for up to 7 sessions, so if you want to vote for my Tablet PC or Going Solo sessions, you'll have to wait until they are on the list.

www.acehaid.org

The developer community in Latin America is astounding and much larger than most people outside of LATAM might imagine. INETA LATAM makes up over 25% of all of the INETA member groups worldwide. Their latest newsletter is out and is full of so much information about events, their speaker bureau, new MVPs in Latin America and so much that is going on ni the community. INETA NORAM has been looking to LATAM for a long time for their incredible formula for building this community. Here is a link to the newsletter in English and in Spanish.

www.acehaid.org

When INETA began, Christian Nagel was our man in Europe. When INETA was divided up into the five regions (North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East Africa and Europe) he took the lead of Europe. Now that region is very organized. Christian did a fantastic job and also brought a lot of great people on board to help him out all across Europe. As with the recent evolution with INETA NORAM, Christian decided it was time to let someone else step up to the plate and the obvious choice was Damir Tomicic who was already on the INETA Europe board. Damir lives in Bavaria where he runs a .net user group and is an MSDN Regional Director. He blogs at www.tomicic.de and you can read his bio here.

I know he's already doing a great job!

www.acehaid.org

Jim Holmes is in the process of starting a .net group in Dayton, Ohio (Dayton .NET Developers Group). He has written down a list of things he is doing as tips for others starting user groups. The tips are great. It is important to remember that every group is different and everyone's approach is different, but there are definitely a lot of things that many groups can share with each other. As Jim points out, it's a lot of work and you better know what you are committing yourself to! I know that when I started VTdotNET, I wasn't nearly as organized as Jim is in starting up this group in Dayton. Somehow I've made it work, but I do believe that (outside of the phone call thing - just not for me, but may work for others) it is all great. One of the great resources Jim has in his area is Drew Robbins who went from User Group Leader to Regional Director to MSDN Developer Evangelist! And it was through Drew that I found his post.

www.acehaid.org

This morning I see not one, but two posts from user group leaders who are reassessing how their user group is working and what they need to do for the future of the group.

Sam Gentile leads Beantown.NET, in downtown Boston. The other long-established and very large Boston.NET group is actually in Waltham, which is some 20-30 miles outside of Boston, so having meetings downtown definitely satisfies the needs of some developers. But after a year, Sam was ready for the group to be more than a one-off every month: get more organized, have some direction. Here is his description of the meeting his group had about this and the outcome. (Also in this post is some great news for Sam, a new fun job doing something he is really excited about!)

Joey Brenn, from Wichita Developers.NET had similar things on his mind when he attended the INETA User Group Leader summit in Orlando last month. He wants his group to be more organized and really think into the future. He knew that to do that he needed to have some corporate sponsorship, but without non-profit status, there are barriers to that. I definitely know about this. For VTdotNET, I try to keep financial transactions at a minimum and anything anyone gives the group, they do out of the goodness of their heart since we aren't a non-profit. We don't even have a bank account. Any extra cash we have (like oh, $40 maybe - when we get pizza ourselves and the members contributions exceed the cost of the pizza) is in a little jewlery box in my dresser! So Joey came home from the summit and knew that the next step for his group was to become a non-profit.