INETA Newsletter

In this issue: 2002 Statistics, INETA Europe, INETA Academic Committee, Speakers Bureau, INETA Repository, New INETA Website, In the Forums, Scenes from a User Group Meeting, .NET News, Newsletter Info

220 User Groups joined INETA in it's first year, representing 70,152 members! The break down is: 139 in the U.S., 20 in South America, 8 in Canada, 36 in Europe and 17 in Asia, Australia and other parts of the world! There are 10 student user groups. In December alone there were 20 new user groups!

This is great publicity for INETA and for letting developers find us and find other user groups. Check it out! www.gotdotnet.com

INETA Europe is growing - the newest members listed are .NET User Groups in Norway and Belgium. Now we can count 36 user groups in 14 countries.

With the recent INETA actions, Microsoft has been and is sending some cool gadgets for distribution to user group members joining the December and January meetings.
INETA Europe's Speakers Bureau launched in December and now user groups can request speakers for their meetings. Included in the European Speakers Bureau are the well-known speakers Alex Homer, Dave Sussmann, Richard Grimes, Dino Esposito, Clemens Vasters, Fernando Guerrero and Ingo Rammert. The first requests have come in already.

For information about INETA Europe you can contact Christian Nagel at Christian.Nagel@globalknowledge.at.

There is a growing population of student .NET user groups popping up wherever there are students with a love of technology, and an interest in learning more than just what is taught in classes.

Through the Student Ambassador program, more than 80 colleges and universities throughout the United States are building communities of students and faculty which have an interest in .NET technologies. Elsewhere students are coming together and forming groups to explore the possibilities which .NET embodies.

It is the mission of the INETA Academic Relations Committee to reach out to these student groups and provide them channel to connect to the professional user group community represented by INETA. This specially targeted committee is designed to meet the unique needs of student user groups related to establishing a presence on university campuses and also to ensure that they incorporate into the community as a whole.

There are already ten Student User Groups that are members of INETA and success stories have been filing in from around the country. At the University of Wyoming .NET User group attendance is growing, and they have received mention in the campus newspaper. At California State – Northridge CSUN dot NET has a growing membership. At Colorado State, the Ram.NET student group is working more closely with the local professional community to enrich the .NET experience for both groups.

It’s going to be exciting years on the student front of .NET as these groups continue to grow, and to push .NET into the curriculum of their schools, either officially or through extracurricular meetings. Get ready for the new wave of .NET programmers!

Requests for INETA speakers continued to grow in the month of November with 15 new requests submitted. The committee has worked hard to fill and schedule those requests, and existing ones, successfully confirming 31 requests. We are continuing to improve our process for filling and scheduling requests, and have worked hard to improve the speed of this process in order to serve our members for effectively. We look forward to working closely with the newly hired management firm in order that we might offload some of the administrative work in order to concentrate more on policy and direction.

The bureau also continues to reach more groups. As of the end of November, the Speakers Bureau has visited 13 User Groups and has managed a total of 58 requests from North American member groups out of a possible 135. This translates to approximately 300 attendees touched by the Speakers Bureau in the month of November and approximately 600 attendees since inception.

The committee would also like to recognize the hard work of our speakers, who have worked hard to bring INETA and .NET to User Groups around the country. We have some outstanding stars in the bureau that have been extremely helpful and willing to participate.

To request a speaker for your user group, visit the Speakers Bureau tab on www.ineta.org.

It was just a few short weeks ago that a call went out to leaders of INETA user groups
for content and content suggestions. Already, many of you have started sending recommendations, uploading presentations and whitepapers to the Content Repository and truly answered our call for content. Thank you all.

The Content Repository is a recent addition to the INETA web site, created by the Infrastructure Committee to provide a place for UG leaders to share presentations, whitepapers, source code, and video of UG meetings with other UG leaders. As the home page states, “INETA’s mission is to offer assistance and resources to community groups that promote and educate their membership in Microsoft’s .NET technologies.” The Content Repository is a great vehicle for this mission to be realized and it is off to a very successful start, thanks to each of you. If you have not yet seen the Content Repository, simply go to our home page at www.ineta.org and click on the “Repository” tab. While you’re there, why not upload a recent presentation from your user group?

With the recently created Content Manager positions in existence for less than a month, Devin Rader and Brian Tinkler are both finding themselves in a great spot. “One of our initial concerns was whether UG leaders would answer our call to help provide us content”, said Devin, “now, it is clear that all the UG leaders are excited to volunteer their ideas and have enthusiastically supported our content efforts.” Stay tuned for more announcements in the near future and please keep sending your suggestions to content@ineta.org and uploading your content to the Content Repository.

So much new content is being generated and requested, that the INETA Board of Directors determined it was time to move to the next step. The Web Task Force (WTF) was recently initiated, including the entire Infrastructure Committee, the Content Managers, and Executive Director, Bill Evjen. The WTF is working closely with all of the INETA committees to ensure efforts are aligned with the overall needs and desires of the user groups we are all working hard to support. The WTF is taking on a very important project that impacts all UG leaders and their members, by evaluating the usability, functionality, and overall look and feel of the INETA web site.

Plans currently underway include an exhaustive review of the www.ineta.org site’s usability, with particular focus on making information that is most often requested, more easily available. Other near term plans include working with design agencies to create a more professional, useful, and appealing web site while improving the efficiency of the web applications used by the committees to conduct the operational duties of INETA. All of these efforts are focused on making INETA more helpful, more relevant, and more valuable to each of you. With this effort underway, we are now looking for feedback from each of you on what you like about the web site, what you wish were different, how you feel about the look of the site, and any suggestions for improving our site. Please send your ideas and feedback to content@ineta.org for immediate consideration.

INETA Speaker Jeff Prosise looks on as Montreal-based GUVSM User Group Leader, Guy Barrette, (www.guvsm.com), warms up the audience at their December meeting.

Over 100 people attended (including folks from the U.S.) and Microsoft provided an awesome meeting space in a local museum.

Most attendees were in agreement that Jeff's unique style of all code and no PowerPoint was fantastique!

Anyone can sign up to receive this newsletter on the home page of www.ineta.org.

Please send news (and pictures) from your user group so we can include it in a future newsletter! Contact us at: ugrelations@ineta.org

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