Newest INETA Members

19 New Groups joined INETA in July! They hail from Austria, Canada, Germany, New Zealand (2), Pakistan  and Sweden. In LATAM, Brazil (2), Columbia (2), Peru (2) and Venezuela. And in the U.S.: Alabama, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Virginia. Welcome to all of our new members!
 

INETA Announces Reorganization


The board of directors has been working on a plan for INETA to keep pace with the dramatic growth of the organization.

The goals

- Allow the board to focus on international expansion now that North America is running quite well and there is a good start in Europe, Latin America and India.

- Provide a volunteer framework that can expand and include new people as our scope of operations grows.

- Make sure we can spread the work to be done over multiple volunteers so that no one person has to spend more than a few hours a week (some more, some less!).

- Allow volunteers to move into different roles for their own personal growth and to be involved in activities that interest them.

Current status:

1. Keith Pleas was appointed as head of the International operations and also made a member of the board of directors. More details on International operations and the interaction between different regions will be announced in coming months.

2. Julie Lerman and Ruth Walther have been named as co-chairs of the User Group Relations Committee for North America. They in turn have re-organized the UG committee to have two parts; a strategic committee that will make decisions and policy and a regional rep committee who will be responsible for monitoring groups in their assigned areas.

To facilitate personal knowledge and involvement with each group, we need to dramatically expand the number of people assigned. One person should not be covering more than 10 or 20 groups.

As in the past, the North American UG relations committee will work in a matrix organizational structure with UG relations committees from the various regions and continue to publish the main INETA Newsletter monthly.

3. Jason Beres and Rob Foster have been named co-chairs of the Academic Committee for North America.

One of their goals is to encourage interaction between professional and academic groups in a local area. As with the UG Relations committee, they will be working in a cross matrix organization with other academic committees around the world.

4. Sara Faatz has been named head of the Marketing committee. She has already been working with the UG Relations committee to help profile the groups and keep the information updated. She will also be working to expand the scope to include international sponsorships.

5. Devin Rader has been named chair of the Infrastructure committee with John Bristowe as the Infrastructure Architect. Devin has made excellent contributions to INETA in his role as web content manager and should help move our many web projects along and get more volunteers involved.

6. Scott Bellware has been named chair of the Speaker committee for North America. Even before making an official commitment, he has been working with the User Group Relations committee to define a process between the two groups so that a) to inform the ug relations of up coming speaker engagements and b) that the ug will promote and invite other groups in the area

All of these volunteers have done an excellent job as members of the various committees and we are honored to have them take on these new responsibilities. Keeping a volunteer organization moving ahead requires the dedication of many like them! Thanks!!!

These changes will allow the board members Bill Evjen, Brian Loesgen, Dave Noderer, Keith Franklin, Farhan Mohammad and Keith Pleas able to focus on international expansion and ensuring that the various committees work together.

We are actively looking for volunteers to help with the Speaker Committee to help Scott Bellware as Keith has moved on to International and Farhan is involved in setting up INETA committee's in Pakistan and Asia. Although roles are as yet undefined we will also need people in the international area to help organize (China and South Korea for example).

By the end of August we should have more information about International operations and the international committees. We are also in the process of planning an international leaders conference to help organize and coordinate the many activities going on around the INETA world!

Stay Tuned!

 

If you need to modify your user group information here is how to do that. You will need to be logged into the site. On the home page you will find a link that says More about becoming a member group. Follow this link to the "Becoming a Member Group" page. On the left you will see the link to Edit your user group information.

There were some server issues when we transitioned to the new site which created problems logging in. This should be cleared up. If you need to report any problems with the INETA Website, please contact infrastructure@ineta.org.
 

INTERNATIONAL User Group Relations Liaisons

Last month we listed the people on the User Group Relations committee that are the liaisons to U.S. and Canadian User Groups. This month we will introduce you to the rest of the globe. As the International scene in INETA heats up, there will be more and more liaison coverage. Here are your contacts currently.

Latin America

Jose Berrios: Caribbean User Groups
Co-founder of the Miami Florida Dot Net User Group and frequent speaker. Member of the User Group Relations Committee and Director of INETA Latin America. Jose is the Founder and CEO of Infosoft Inc.

William Chiquito: South America (except Peru)
William is the Coordinator of the MUG .NET Venezuela in Caracas.

Javier Sologorre - Mexico, Central America and Peru
Javier is the President and Co-founder  MUG - Peru

Marden Menezes Costa - Brazil
Marden is the Director of the SharpShooters .NET User Group in Brazil. He is also a Microsoft Student Ambassador.

Europe

Christian Nagel
Christian is the Microsoft MSDN Regional Director for Austria. He leads the .NET User Group Austria. He is also the author of a number of development books.

Asia and Pacific

Mitch Denny
Mitch is the founder of the Melbourne .NET Users Group  in Austrialia and a Microsoft MSDN Regional Director. Mitch is in charge of expanding INETA's presence in Australia and Asia.

Pakistan

Farhan Muhammed
Farhan is the founder of Twin Cities .NET User Group in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. He is an INETA board member and an author of .NET books.

India

Anand M.
Anand is the president of the .NET User Group - Chennai , the oldest .NET User Group in India (featured in an article below) with over 1,000 members. Anand is a Microsoft MVP for .NET.

Other Countries

Dave Noderer
The rest of the world is handled by INETA Board Member, Dave Noderer. Dave is a founder of FloridaDotNet .NET. and runs a software consulting company, Computer Ways, Inc. in South Florida. As committees in various countries get organized, he is passing the ug relations responsibilities to people around the world. In the mean time this has been a good way to help identify leaders in the different regions of the world and to get them involved with INETA.

INETA Europe Newsletter

Beginning in September INETA Europe will start distributing on a monthly basis a European newsletter.

The contents of this newsletter will mainly consist of information about User Group leader meetings, newly founded user groups in Europe, upcoming User Group meetings and Microsoft events.

The newsletter will first be distributed to all European INETA User Groups. We will also offer the possibility for individuals to register to receive the European INETA newsletter.

To make this newsletter a success we ask participation of all User Group leaders.

Please mail your information relating to the topics as discussed above BEFORE AUGUST 31st to Guy Dillen (guy.dillen@ineta.org)

Of course any ideas and suggestions that could contribute to the success of the newsletter are more than welcome.

News from INETA Europe will continue to be published in the main INETA newsletter as well.

Infrastructure Committee is Growing...Two new positions available!

Wanted: 2 energetic, committed and enthusiastic User Group leaders to be Infrastructure committee volunteers. Volunteers would be responsible for documenting and developing architectural schemas and development guidelines for the various INETA websites. Mostly lots of writing and documenting, but some actual development. Time commitment will probably be a minimum of 5 hours a week.

Please send bio and brief description of qualifications to infrastructure@ineta.org.
 

Chennai .NET User Group - Students Chapter

	The Chennai .NET User Group - Students Chapter is a part of the Chennai .NET User Group (CNUG) which focuses on college students around the city of Chennai, India. The Students Chapter was created after a few student member who were part of the wider group, felt the topics were too complex/in-depth and they wanted to start from the basics. The chapter will have sessions in the campus of some of the cities colleges and will have speakers from the Chennai .NET User Group coming in to help them along. This chapter also has an online forum to support students doing research and projects based on .NET technologies, with experts from the parent group volunteering time for this.
This chapter was kicked off on 19th of July 2003. 338 students representing 47 colleges attended the inauguration. Dr. (Mrs.) Rani Siromoney, Head of Department, Madras Christian College gave the inaugural speech. This was followed by a session ".NET for Students" by TNC Venkatarangan, RD from Chennai. Anand M, President, Chennai .NET User Group gave the attendees an overview of the plans for the chapter thru a session titled "Learning Thru Communities". The event closed with Kevin D'Souza, the convener of the chapter doing a session on "Starting off with .NET".
	Kevin D'Souza, Convener of the  students’ chapter doing a session on "Starting off with .NET"
Checking out the swag

MSDN Events For Developers - Kicking off August 12 in cities near you

MSDN Events are free events for developers, packed with intense, how-to technical information on developing solutions with Microsoft tools and technologies. Come to an MSDN event and learn working solutions to real-world issues facing developers, see live code demos, share ideas with your peers, and get answers to your tough questions from Microsoft Developer Experts. Register for an MSDN Event today: www.msdnevents.com


Mobile.NET - South Korea

Jinho Seo wrote us to thank us for making his group Mobile.NET one of new INETA members.
Here is a photo of the group after an evening studying Windows CE.NET. Jinho is on the right with the big smile in the black t-shirt.

Free Day of XML & Web Services Training In Boston Aug 13th - Yasser Shohoud, Don Box and more!

Microsoft would like to invite you to attend the .NET Web Services Developer Day August 13th in Boston, MA, co-located with the XML Web Services One Conference. Attendance to this event is FREE. A full day of technical sessions will be provided by Microsoft’s top engineers on building Web services on the Microsoft platform. Learn about exciting new tools that Microsoft will be releasing and understand how to incorporate security and other advanced capabilities into your Web services applications today. For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.xmlconference.com/boston/special.aspBoston
 

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