INETA Newsletter

In this issue: New Members, INETA Latam Speaker Bureau, Ohio Group Open Source Project, Presentation Tips INETA Website, User Group Relations Committee, Newsletter Info

18 New Groups joined INETA in March. They come from all over the world! In South America: Columbia, Equador (2 groups), Venezuela (3 groups) and Costa Rica. In Europe, U.K. (2 groups), Spain and Turkey. In Canada: Alberta, Winnipeg, Vancouver (2 groups) and New Bruswick, and in the U.S., 2 new groups in New Jersey.

Star Studded Cast hits South Beach in Miami!

On March 20th and 21st, two days of meetings and training were held in the beautiful Sheraton Bal Harbor in North Miami Beach. In attendance were the members of the Latam Speakers Bureau:

David Garza, Mexico
Juan Llibre, Dominican Republic
Mauro Sant'Anna, Brazil
Daniel Seara, Argentina
Guillermo Som Cerezo, Spain
Doug (Siete) Seven, USA
Ken Getz, USA
Keith Pleas, USA

The event was organized by the head of INETA Latam, Jose Berrios with sponsorship and help from Federico Raggi (Ft. Lauderdale) and Eric Ewing (Seattle) both from Microsoft.

Representing the INETA board of directors was Dave Noderer (User Group Relations) and Farhan Mohammed (Speakers Bureau).

The night before the meetings, Federico hosted a dinner for the group at the Sushi Samba on Lincoln Road in Miami beach.

During the day on Thursday, Jose, Keith, Ken and Doug gave organizational and technical presentations to the group.

A few weeks prior to the meeting, Florida .NET (www.fladotnet.net) heard that LatAm INETA was going to be in town for Speaker Training. At the time, Jason Beres, Sheri Nawrocki, Shervin Shakibi and Dave Noderer were trying to come up with a great idea for a big meeting, something huge! Voila - INETA comes through. When they heard the list of speakers who were going to be in town, they took the opportunity to turn it into a big meeting. Everyone agreed that this would be a great idea and give the trainee's more exposure as well as bring .NET awareness to the Latin American community.

One user group member, who is a www.dotnetjunkies.com devotee, was not shy about his delight in the opportunity to meet Doug Seven..

After the meeting, a Florida Atlantic University professor spoke with Juan Llibre. She was happy to meet Juan for a special reason. She explained the grueling process of finding a proper textbook to teach beginning ASP to her students. After reading and trying many different books, she had chosen Juan's WROX book as their course textbook.

After the meeting, we met at an Irish pub in North Miami Beach, there was a C# vs. VB.NET pool competition which was won by the VB.Net team.

The second day of meetings was formal a training event for the speakers with the big-time speaker trainer, Richard Klees. By the end of the day, a number of the Hispanic folks who did not speak English on their arrival, were presenting effectively in English! Jose Berrios (who speaks great English himself) said "The experience can't be described. Everyone that speaks and presents should go through his course!"

When asked to rate the whole event on a scale of one to five, the LatAm speakers summarized it with this sentence. "We thought that the UG event was a 5, but after going through Richard Klees the first day is a 4.5 and Richard's training day is a 5.0!"

The Northwest Ohio .NET User Group (NWNUG) has come up with an exciting way of having fun with .NET while still being educational. Their Open Source ASP.NET Interactive Quiz game is dubbed "Quizzard" and boasts a buzzard as mascot that heckles participants! There is a finished version (MC) and one under development (MU). Quizzard MC requires a quizmaster or MC to ask the questions and is played in front of an audience split into teams.

The inspiration for this initiative came about after Rajiv Menon (NWNUG's Vice President) attended the ASP.NET Connections in October where he heard about the sucess of the Florida .NET group with their Open Source project and married it to a quiz game that NWNUG members had played on their one year anniversary called Jeopardy.NET. Concurrently , Greg Huber (President of NWNUG) was looking for a fun way to present the web service behavior with ASP.NET. After a weekend of designing and development with the rest of the leadership team, Quizzard was born and presented at the next meeting. It was an instant success!

After posting to the Ineta forums on how Quizzard turned out, the "buzz"ard quickly spread. Julia Lerman (president of Vermont .NET Users Group) was excited about the Quizzard concept and really helped get the word out. Consequently, several other User Groups wanted to find out more about Quizzard and see what we'd come up with. The Central Ohio .NET Developers Group (Drew Robbins) was looking for speakers for the Feb. 2003 meeting and Greg and Rajiv were able to present the Quizzard to a crowd of about 60. Again- an instant success!

Building on the successes of Quizzard, NWNUG is embarking on a new initiative-- the "MU" (Multi-User) version. This version is currently in the design stage, and will allow for a complete multi-player solution using ASP.NET. This features a new methodology for dealing with statefulness in HTTP using .NET being dubbed QUIP (Quizzard User Internet Protocol)! Recent design meeting have also been seeing good turnouts from member volunteers. It's has been very positive for the group to get members more involved and connected. If you are interested in more information on Quizzard, NWNUG processes, etc., please feel free to contact Greg Huber (ghuber@bestcoding.com) or Rajiv Menon (rmenon@hcr-manorcare.com). Also, visit the NWNUG web site for the latest information and status on Quizzard.

From NYCdotnetDev co-leader, Bill Zack: "Despite the advent of war, and a torrential day-long downpour in New York, we still had over 80 people at the meeting. It was nearly 8:30 by the time we chased everyone out of the meeting room.I understand that the meeting did continue afterwards at a local watering hole, however."

On April 1st, Chris spoke in Boston at the C# User groups and the next day in Jacksonville, FL at the Jacksonville .NET User Group!

Check out the great list of presentation tips by Scott Hanselman (MSDN RD, Oregon) who does a lot of speaking for Microsoft around the world. We were pointed to this by one of the new LATAM speakers, Argentina MSDN Regional Director, Daniel Seara. Gracias Daniel!

Speakers Bureau Page There is a very helpful list of FAQs about the process of requesting a speaker from INETA.

Membership Page The User Group Relations committee has attempted to better explain the criteria for INETA membership, the application process and ideas for start up user groups. We would love to hear your feedback at ugrelations@ineta.org.

From Eric King of www.chadnug.org "Our group is using the Community Starter Kit. It's fantastic! When you don't have time to do the work yourself, it's a real lifesaver. The best part is the GUI administration of the site. It's quick and easy. I highly recommend it. You'll be glad you did."

Scott Lock of www.caparea.net reports that they are in the process of implementing the community starter kit for their user group as well. Look for an upcoming article in ASPNetPro Magazine about the Community Starter Kit featuring CapArea.Net's site!!

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

This month's newsletter contributors: Greg Huber, Bill Zack, Scott Lock, Jose Berrios, Dave Noderer, Sheri Nawrocki