|
|
In this issue: Speakers Bureau Update, Shop INETA!, NET News, Community Building, User Group News, In the Forums, Tips for your UG Meeting, Tips for your UG Website, INETA in Australia, UG Relations Committee Update, Newsletter Info
ASP Connections is the Place to Be for INETA Members! INETA will be hosting a full day of meetings for User Group Leaders and INETA volunteers on October 27th, immediately prior to the conference kickoff. We’ll be talking about INETA benefits and how to provide even more services to user groups, hear reports from each of the working committees and brainstorm future directions. We will also be holding presentations and workshops on some of the hot issues about running a user group. We have User Group leaders attending from over 30 US cities, Europe, Australia and Canada. As a thank you for their time, their conference registration and travel to attend the ASP Connections event is being paid by INETA. If you would like to attend ASP Connections or the associated conferences, register through the INETA web site and receive 50% off the conference fees, thanks to a special discount for INETA members. To check out the conference, be sure to click on the banner at the INETA web site: www.ineta.org We will be sending out a super special INETA at ASP Connections Newsletter in the middle of October with a full list of detailed events. Stay tuned! To contact INETA: Be sure to check the appropriate tab on the www.ineta.org site to see who is the correct contact for your areas of interest. Forums are open to all, but to post, you must sign in with your User Group’s login and password From the Speakers Bureau Committee New and live on the www.ineta.org web site is a posting of where INETA Speakers Bureau members will be presenting. We are pleased to see an increasing number of requests from user groups and are working on logistics of filling them. If you’ll be attending various conferences like ASP Connections, MEC or others, be sure to look for our INETA Speakers Bureau members as they travel frequently to present on .NET. INETA Speakers have a new job: Pizza Delivery! Shop INETA for .Net Tools Did you know that there’s a Component Store at the INETA site? Just click on the Component Store tab and you’ll be browsing through one of the largest collections of components available for .NET. Keep up with the latest exciting product releases, and see what the hottest sellers are, at the INETA Component Store.
.NET News to share with your members The Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 Beta extends the .NET Framework version 1.0 with new features, improvements to existing features, and enhancements to the documentation. The major feature areas of this new release are outlined in this overview document. Learn more at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/productinfo/next/overview.asp Microsoft has some new .Net related Office XP development
offerings including the Office XP Web Services Toolkit 2.0, the Web
Service References Tool 2.0, the Fabrikam Office Web Services
Integration (OWSI) Solution Sample, and the Office XP Primary
Interop Assemblies (PIAs). Read more at
Ruth Walther, the user group leader
for
DotNetUsers.org in Redmond, WA
and a member of the INETA User Group Relations Committee, has a
fantastic perspective of having seen her user group evolve from
being a small group solely run by one person, to a large, active
user group with an enormous amount of participation. Ruth is
going to talk to us in this newsletter periodically about this
very important topic.
Ruth will be leading a discussion on Engaging User Group members to help Run your User Group at the October ASP Connections meeting. News from Member User Groups Malaysia.NET has a very strong student developer community. The group has evolved out of a Digital Generation-X competition that is run each year which challenges students to build software projects for submission.
Please send news (and pictures) from your user group so we can include it in a future newsletter! Contact us at: ugrelations@ineta.org
In the Forums (of www.ineta.org)
"Finding Other Local Leaders" There are also threads going on about establishing membership, becoming a non-profit, how to deal with finances and more. Also, see the U.G. Community Building column above! Tips for your User Group Meeting Philly.Net holds one or two hands on workshops during the month in addition to their regular meeting. A local training company provides them with space. According to Bill Wolff, the ug leader, "The training center usually builds the machine using one of their Ghost images. They also offer snacks in the hope that members will come back as billable students. We use books that most users got free at one of our meetings. One of our members leads the class" Have a unique idea that has enhanced your meetings? Share it with INETA members in the next newsletter. Contact us at: ugrelations@ineta.org Tips for your User Group Website Presentation Resources Many of you have a page for listing past meetings. You may continually come upon resources that relate to the presentations in those past meetings. Why not continue to add those newly discovered resources to the page even though the meetings were in the past. Here is an example: www.vtdotnet.org/pastmeetings.aspx Remember: Your UG website is the perfect playground for learning ASP.Net and impressing friends, relatives and your fellow UG members! Article by Mark Bogos, .Net Community of Practice in Perth Western Australia I am the Development Manager for Power Business Systems and also the User Group Leader for the .Net Community of Practice in Perth Western Australia. We recently had an interesting meeting. We had a debate between the .Net and JAVA technologies.
A professor from University of Western Australia summarized both sides of the argument and finally the audience voted, which tried to avoid. The JAVA team won the popular vote, however the feeling was that the .Net team presented better technical summaries of the .Net product. The JAVA side seemed to highlight the weaker points of the Microsoft .Net product more then they highlighted the strong points of JAVA. I also feel that .Net did a better job of highlighting to people why they should use .Net and the advantages of .Net. All in all, it was an excellent night and audience response was excellent. I had e-mails from various people following the event who wish to attend future user groups, which is encouraging! From the User Group Relations Committee The User Group Relations committee meets bi-weekly or more frequently as needed via conference call and we have been busy with:
Please let us know ways we can help your User Group be successful in its activities. We’re always interested in hearing new ideas, requests, etc. You may either post questions and comments in the forum section at www.ineta.org or contact us via e-mail at ugrelations@ineta.org. The INETA newsletter is emailed to the contact person of User Groups that are members of INETA. Soon we will enable additional people to receive this as well. Archived newsletters will soon be available on the INETA website on the Repository page. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter. Please contact ugrelations@ineta.org.
|
 | ||||||||||
| | ||||||||||||
We
used a debate style with two teams of three people: one supporting .NET and
the other JAVA. Teams debated the advantages, best features and other facets
of the technology that would encourage a developer to select that
technology. Second and third speakers would rebut, with the third speaker
given an additional few minutes with which to conclude the arguments
presented by the team.
The
meeting went very well. We had an attendance of approximately 60 people
(close to 70 with the speakers etc) which was the best turn out for some
time. The speakers all did very well. Although we tried to keep it a
technological debate, they sometimes presented light humour about the
opposition team. It all added to the night though!
