2008 Community Excellence Award Winner Profile: Dave Noderer

Dave Noderer helped lay the foundation for the Florida .NET User Groups. The first official Florida .NET meeting was in Boca Raton on December 4 1002. Prior to that, he was involved as treasurer with another local Access/VB user group for almost seven years. The first “user group” he participated in was RAMS – Rochester Area Microcomputer Society, founded ~ 1975 in Rochester, NY. Dave and his roommate had built a TV Typewriter and Altair 8800 and purchased Visual Basic on paper tape from Microsoft.

Dave first heard of INETA in September 2001. Excited, he went to PDC 2001 to find Bill Evjen and get involved. He joined the INETA Board of Directors in the summer of 2002, leading the User Group Relations Committee. New user groups were starting worldwide, and Dave was very excited to be exposed to a wide variety of languages, customs, and people from all over. During these first years of INETA, Dave took on a variety of tasks from membership to treasurer, and was the first Birds of a Feather coordinator for PDC2003 and TechED 2004. His most rewarding event he has been involved with is the South Florida CodeCamp, which he helped organize and run for the last four years. Since retiring from INETA, Dave still is active in the local South Florida user groups, as well as, user groups within the state. Dave is proud of his continual involvement in keeping the user groups running and strengthening the relationship with community leaders. While, Dave has no problem speaking in front of a crowd of any size, he prefers to spend most of his time organizing and facilitating. He finds it’s always a thrill to be able to point someone t the correct resources and get them going on .NET.

Dave offers the following advice for those who want to get involved in their local community.

• Just step up and do something. At your local group and at groups like INETA, it can be hard sometimes because so many people say “I’d like to help” but then when asked they don’t or don’t follow through. So be persistent!!
• If you can identify something that you would like to see your use group do, just do it!! For example, volunteer to write an article in the newsletter (best to write it and send it). Or arrive early and help setup the meeting or volunteer to order the pizza, whatever. If you follow through and actually accomplish something there will not be a problem getting involved.
• Another path is to become a speaker. This is a common way for future MVP’s to get started. Create material based on subjects you are passionate about. Volunteer to speak at your local group or CodeCamp.