The new INETA.org!

INETA Launches New Website
The International .NET Association unveiled a new web site, designed to offer enhanced services to .NET user group leaders and members throughout the world. This new site dramatically improves the usability of the organization’s site, streamlining design elements to make navigation simpler, and enabling user group leaders to access important resources more quickly than ever before.

The site was developed by INETA volunteers in conjunction with Smooth Fusion, a design firm selected for their ability to create a compelling user experience. The design of the site boasts simplified navigation with new branding elements. The INETA volunteers focused on migrating .NET code from the previous site, database integration and migration, and enhanced content repository and forums functionality. INETA volunteers also managed the overall project, integrating design elements with a new site architecture and underlying data model.

The INETA Infrastructure Committee, Web Task Force, and Content Managers worked in association with Smooth Fusion and other INETA committees to ensure the new web site was fully operational in a rapid time frame. Leveraging the many productivity enhancements in .NET, and with long hours of hard work and dedication, the new site is now available for all to enjoy.

If you have any questions or comments on the new site, please contact the INETA Infrastructure committee at infrastructure@ineta.org.

 

Newest INETA Members

14 New Groups joined INETA in June! They hail from  Columbia (3), Ecuador, Mexico (2), Peru, South Korea and Pakistan. In the U.S. California, New York. Florida, Michigan and Maryland. Welcome to all of our new members!
 

INETA Speaker Bureau holds 100th Event!

INETA Speaker Keith Pleas' June 10th presentation at Vermont .NET marked the 100th INETA Speaker Bureau event.

Less than one year ago, in this very newsletter, we were struggling to convince you that the Speaker Bureau was real.

Sept 2002 INETA Newsletter: Can INETA be for real? Is it too good to be true? We have been hearing from UG leaders who don’t really believe that INETA can help their User Groups. One person said "I had no idea INETA was so ... relevant! But now I am looking forward to taking advantage of what they have to offer."

It's true. Did you realize that when you request a speaker from the Speakers Bureau, we will fly them right to your door and pay their expenses?

Well, we have all come a long way. Check out the expanded speaker list as we added thirteen new speakers in June!

And keep those requests coming in because these speakers want to come to YOUR user group!

INETA Academic Committee is Going: Full Throttle!

The International .NET Association Academic Committee is a lot like the new Charlie's Angels movie…going FULL THROTTLE!

Ok, so we admit Jason Beres and his newly formed Academic Committee are not all that similar to the Charlie's Angels crew, but they are very committed to helping start, grow, support, and prosper academic .NET user groups throughout the world. More similarly, there is no question they are going full throttle in this effort!

In addition to the volunteer committee members, Linda Bookey has been a great help in launching and operating this new committee through her logistical support and connections with key Microsoft personnel.

Academic Committee members include:

The INETA Academic Committee is comprised of volunteers who have an affinity, focus, and association with various academic groups in need of support in evangelizing .NET technologies. Additionally, there are five Microsoft personnel who are assisting the efforts of this committee and who have proven invaluable to the creation of this focused INETA committee. That is exactly the mission of this new committee.

The Academic Committee of the International .NET Association is focused on helping evangelize .NET technologies in academia. We accomplish this by providing support and assistance to students and faculty who learn and educate on .NET related topics and by helping start, maintain, grow and promote student user groups and .NET education in academia. By leveraging the resources of INETA we provide a professional organization of .NET leaders and resources to assist in this mission.

To contact the INETA Academic Committee, you can e-mail academic@ineta.org.
 

Now serving over 100,000 user group members worldwide!

With the addition of the Mobile.NET from Seoul, South Korea, and it's membership of 800, INETA is now helping out over 100,000 .NET developers around the world. Congratulations to user group leader Jin Ho Seo for helping INETA to achieve this milestone!
 

User Group Relations Committee: Your personal contact to INETA

The User Group Relations committee is made up of a large (and growing) number of volunteers who are YOUR personal liaisons to INETA. We are trying to make sure that you have someone you know whenever you have a question for INETA.

Here are the U.S. and Canadian liaisons. Next month we will list those for other parts of the globe. Click on their location to see their user group web site.

We will keep expanding the committee to better personalize your relationship with INETA and also to ensure that the members do not get overwhelmed with user group contacts. This information will eventually be available to you on the INETA website. If you would like to join the User Group Relations committee let us know. Especially if you live in the MidWest! ugrelations@ineta.org

Next month we will introduce you to your liaisons in other parts of the world.

If you didn't know, they say Perth is the most isolated city in the world (although a nice place). We need to fly for about 3 hours to get to another city either in Australia or in Asia. Therefore the recent event that occurred here in Perth Western Australia on Wednesday was big news for the .NET community. We had two exciting speakers fly into Perth to present at the MSDN update session and then the .NET Community of Practice.
 

The actual user group meeting which followed the MDSN update was hosted by Power Business Systems and the Software Engineering Association of Western Australia. This user group allowed the Perth community to ask a number of questions of both experts, providing an excellent interaction for our members to these speakers.

One was Jeff Prosise, who came over to present from the USA and the other was one of our Australian speakers and .NET gurus (.NET) Dan Green. The two speakers were on a road show around Australia talking about ADO.NET, Security and PAG. It was exciting to have Jeff over in particular, with many of the community reading his book publications and magazine articles. This drew a crowd of 200 people for the all day event, and both speakers performed very well.

Feedback from the other user group leaders around Australia on this event has also had the same wonderful reviews.

A personal thanks to both Jeff and Dan, as well as a special thanks to Charles Sterling from Microsoft for organizing the speakers.
 

New in User Group Specials

Want great deals on stuff you really need?

eWEEK - The Enterprise Newsweekly offers 51 free issues
DotNetBuilders offers a 20% discount to INETA Members on their Constructor() tool
Silk Webware offers 20% discount to INETA Members on their web controls and components
SSW offers 15% discount on their Access Reporter .NET for IIS
Franklins.NET is offering a 15% off enrollments until September

Visit the Specials page at INETA.ORG for these and other great deals

Microsoft SQL Server Summer Academy in Europe - July 14-16

Microsoft Adriatics in co-operation with the local chapter of INETA - User Groups within Croatian Programmer Association (HUPRO), supported by PASS (Professional Association of SQL server Users) and Microsoft MVP Program is organizing first Microsoft SQL Server Summer Academy in Europe from July 14th to 16th in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

In-depth Microsoft SQL Server related technical trainings by recognized experts from Microsoft development team, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals - some of them were speakers invited on the INETA member chapter events.

Three-hour seminars are being prepared especially for this occasion to ensure a complete education in the targeted areas. The event includes both, detailed presentations and an opportunity to get actual hands-on experience with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and upcoming Yukon release of SQL Server through seminars and several lab sessions.

CEC (Continuing Education Credits) status has been approved for this event - until now, only TechEd and IT Forum had this status.

For more information go to: http://www.microsoft.com/croatia/sqlacademy

Hired by Microsoft, again!

We've been joking around lately about Microsoft plundering our speakers bureau by hiring the speakers as Microsoft employees. Well, it doesn't seem to stop there! Congratulations to MaineBytes leader Paul Stubbs, who will be moving with his family to Redmond this summer to become part of the Visual Studio Team. Tim Durgan will be taking over as user group leader. Welcome aboard Tim!

Keith Nicholson from the Oklahoma City .NET Developer's Group sent us some great pics to share in the newsletter.  A very happy user group member, Seven Williams, after winning some GREAT swag (copy of VS.NET Enterprise Edition donated by Microsoft) and Rocky Lhotka from the INETA Speaker Bureau explaining Business Objects to the crowd.

.NET News to share with your User Group members

FXCop v1.21 is now available on GotDotNet to analyze your .NET Framework 1.1 applications against the .NET Programming and Design Guidelines. This is a great way for you and your members to check your code and learn more about programming in .NET. FXCop is not meant to enforce guidelines, but to highlight and instruct.

Application Blocks Microsoft has released a slew of Application Blocks to encapsulate best practices and some great code for some of  your most often used functions. These are part of the fantastic Patterns and Practices website on MSDN. Since the application blocks are in various places on MSDN, the easiest way to see them all is by drilling into the MSDN library. Here is a snapshot of where to go and this link to the Data Access Application Block will open up the library to the right spot for you.

MICROSOFT OFFICE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT CONTEST

Enter this development contest to win a car lease or $11,000 CASH! Win other great prizes! You have to submit code that uses the new wave of Office 2003 products and developer technologies: InfoPath, Word, Excel, SharePoint products and technologies, Visio, Visual Studio Tools for Office, FrontPage and more. Send us your XML transforms for InfoPath or Word, your ASP.NET Web parts, your VB.NET or C# code-behind. Lots of "how-to" information is on MSDN and in the Office 2003 Beta 2 kit. The contest ends Aug. 15.

See this Web site for more details: http://www.officedevcontest.com 
 

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