Newest INETA Members

21 New Groups joined INETA in August! They hail from Bolivia, Brazil(6), Colombia, Ecuador(2), Mexico, New Zealand(2), Pakistan(2), Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Uruguay, USA(Indiana) and Venezuela. Welcome to all of our new members! There are now 359 User Groups representing nearly 109,000 user group members worldwide!

Is your User Group Information
Up to Date?

Is your User Group Record up to date o the INETA website? We are finding that a number of user group listings have bad URL's to their user group website. We are also getting some emails bouncing back when we send out mailings such as this newsletter. The saddest cases are if your mailing address is not correct because we cannot get the periodic INETA packages of goodies nor the MSDN Quarterly User Group packages to you.

Another very useful thing to do is to make sure your user group count is up to date. It affects the overall number of user group members that we can say we are assisting.

While you are thinking about all of this, you should look to see if you have the INETA Member graphic on your website.

If you need assistance with any of these things, contact your INETA Liaison or email ugrelations@ineta.org.
 

Denver User Group Coordinates Local, Affordable Visual Studio .NET Practical Skills Training

Chris Wallace, who is the leader of the Denver Microsoft Visual Studio .NET User Group sent us this great story about how the group has worked to help their members become stronger in the marketplace.

Early in 2002, a volunteer band of user group members from the Denver Microsoft Visual Studio .NET User Group determined that we needed .NET training - a .NET "Practical Skills" course and we needed it now! Little or no training was available and that which was available was too expensive. We decided to develop our own training, but we required high quality professional instruction.

After long weeks of careful research, proposals and bids, our Denver Microsoft Visual Studio .NET User Group Training Task Force coordinated professional training to be conducted by a local Microsoft Certified Partner and training center - a private especially arranged training course for our members only. Topics covered seven .NET application development areas emphasizing the use of C#. We planned all training to take place over six months of "weekends only" (with some breaks).

The cost, including Microsoft Press books, was so low and the quality so high that this course quickly became very popular. We arranged the flexibility to pay by check, credit card, or financing. College credit and tuition reimbursement were also available. In order to cut costs, weekend classes used the training facilities that otherwise were empty and helped accommodate our member's work schedules. Each member supplied their own laptop with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Professional (or above) for the integrated lab exercises. Task Force members provided hardware and software support.

After three "Practical Skills" six month sessions, we are now planning our fourth session. We also completed our first follow-up class geared toward .NET certification. We are about to begin an intensive .NET Boot Camp leading toward .NET certification - the fun never ends!

Our hard working volunteer user group members recognized a need for .NET training, originated the "Practical Skills" idea, developed a complete training course and coordinated the many details with our local training partner. This provided our members with a successful, valuable comprehensive and professional training package at a reasonable price.

 

INETA LATAM Newsletter

INETA LATAM (Latin America) is about to begin publishing a Newsletter that will be produced in a variety of languages spoken across Latin America. It will contain news of INETA and User Group related events in the region as well as sections like:  LATAM  Initiatives, Calendar INETA LATAM and other varied sections of interest.  Thanks to Manuel Carruitero Gonzalez, Willy Marroquin and William Chiquito. For more information, please send an email to manuel.carruitero@ineta.org.

by Jeff Prosise

Want to know a dirty little secret? INETA speakers aren't in it for the glory, for the frequent flyer miles, or even to curry favor with the Mother Ship (Microsoft, that is). They do it for the free food. My favorite moment at an INETA event is when the stack of pizza boxes arrives. The hard part, of course, is trying to look gracious by hanging at the back of the line. INETA speakers are graded on their ability to look as if they don't care while the pizza disappears faster than free T-shirts. 50% of the grade comes from the speaker evals; the remaining 50% reflects comportment in pizza line.

It has been truly awesome meeting and talking with the leaders of the user groups I've visited. Talk about a selfless group of people! These folks aren't in it for money; they're in it because they care. One user group president I met (I won't embarrass him by mentioning his name) expends incredible amounts of time and energy trying to find jobs for the unemployed members of his group. His members love him for it, too; I could see it in the way they addressed him and the way the room fell silent when he approached the podium. Too bad the rest of the world can't function a little more like .NET user groups. The world would be a better place to live if it did.

Twice I've brought my children--age 9 and 12 at the time--with me to address .NET user groups. Both children had wondered what their dad did for a living. Both had begged to accompany me on business trips before. And both sat patiently through an hour and a half of their dad blathering about ASP.NET and actually managed to look interested at times. The telling point, however, is that this summer I visited a group that was just a two-hour drive from home. I invited the kids to come with me, but they suddenly developed a findness for housework and declared that they'd better stay home to help mom. I even invited my 5-year-old daughter to come. Evidently the other kids got to her first, because it was a non-starter.
 

INETA Europe Speaker Bureau Very Active

Here are upcoming  plans for speakers:
Hannes Preishuber, 5-Oct-2003 .NET Developers Group Berlin, Brandenburg, Germany
Alex Homer,  DotNet Developers Group, UK
Goksin Bakir, 20-Sep-2003  ASPNedir?com, Turkey .NET: Remoting and Reflection and ASP.NET Mobile Controls
Christian Weyer, Sep-2003 .NET User Group Styria, Austria
Christian Weyer Sep 2003 .NET Meeting Klagenfurt, Austria
Michiel van Otegem, TBD Belgian .NET User Group, Belgium: ASP.NET v2
Dino Esposito, TBD  Stitching dotNed, Netherlands
Dave Sussman, Jan-2004 London .NET User Group, UK : ASP.NET 2.0

And these speakers already had talks with user groups:
Christian Weyer, 12-Aug-2003 The Irish Developer Network, Ireland : GXA, WSE and Interoperability with Java
Christian Nagel, 23-July-2003 .NET Meeting Klagenfurt, Austria : Building International Apps with the .NET Framework
Ingo Rammer, 20-May-2003 Belgian .NET User Group, Belgium  :Remoting vs. Web Services
Richard Grimes, 3-April-2003 DotNet Developers Group, UK : DLL Hell
 

ASK THE INETA EXPERTS

INETA will be running "Ask The Experts" sessions at the following industry events. You’ll be able to chat one-on-one with some of the most respected names in the industry: members of the INETA Speakers Bureau.

Microsoft ASP.NET Connections & Visual Studio Connections
Oct 12-15, 2003, La Quinta Resort & Club, Palm Springs, CA
User group members save $200.
Microsoft ASP.NET Connections, now the largest ASP.NET event in the industry, co-locates with Visual Studio Connections for the unique opportunity to learn, network and party with over 70 Microsoft and World Renowned gurus delivering 160 in-depth sessions. Use registration code UG202 for $200 off. Want to learn more?


Microsoft Professional Developers Conference
Los Angeles, CA, October 26-30
Look into the future of Microsoft platform software with the developers responsible for building it. Register before 9/10 and save $300 off the standard price.
This event will fill quickly. Register today.

VSLive!
Orlando,FL September 8-12
Get $100 off your registration for VSLive! Orlando with this special offer for INETA UGs -- PLUS save another $100 on your hotel bill when you book your stay at the brand new JW Marriott Resort at the same time.
With 145 hours of technical sessions, plus 6 full-day workshops, VSLive! delivers practical information on how to build with Visual Studio 2003 today. Register for individual conferences focused on ASP.NET, SQL Server, C# or VB. Or, for your best value, get the all-access Gold Passport. You'll save $100 courtesy of Microsoft, plus another $100 when you book four nights at the JW Marriott Resort at the same time. This special offer is only available when you call 800-848-5523 and mention priority code "GATOR". Register today.

INETA Takes off in Pakistan

Following Microsoft's highly successful Professional Developers Conference (PDC) held in June 2003, INETA has seen a rapid growth in user group communities throughout the country. Karachi has so far been the more active city having five user groups span in just the last three months. Leading Universities including NU-FAST, NED, SZABIST and KIIT have also taken the lead in establishing user groups within the educational community.

Co-operation among various user groups
INETA in Pakistan has seen an unprecedented level of co-operation among the professional and educational user groups. Professional user groups have stepped up efforts by providing content and speakers services to educational groups. Universities are returning the favor by providing facilities and equipment to the professional user groups.

Weekly user group leaders meeting
INETA has been actively involved in getting all user groups together in a weekly online meeting. This meeting has already shown great result by creating an atmosphere of co-operation and camaraderie. Current occurrences of this meting have been focused on getting the Marketing committee established with funding for nationwide INETA events to be held within the next calendar year. Judging from the support, dedication and efforts of the current UG leaders, INETA will have a deep and profound impact on the developer community of Pakistan.

Pictures from recent user group events

NU-FAST holds its first user group event in August 2003

.NET User Group Karachi's event in August 2003


 

MSDN News to Share

Explore the New Mobility and Embedded Developer Center! Visit the new one-stop shop for all mobile and embedded application development information, including the .NET Compact Framework, Visual Studio .NET, Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC and Smartphone, and Windows CE .NET.   
 

A note about the INETA North America Summer Sizzler

When you or your member is ready to register their copy of SourceGear Vault that was included in the summer sizzle shipment, they should contact SourceGear directly. Their online system does not recognize these copies of the software. You can register by contacting Erica Wells ewells@sourcegear.com or Nancy Harvey nancy@sourcegear.com and they will help you out with everything you need
 

INETA Authors
 

Congratulations to INETA Executive Director Bill Evjen and INETA Board member Farhan Muhammad on their recent .NET Books. Bill's follow up to his XML Web Services book is entitled Web Services Enhancements, Understanding the WSE for .NET Enterprise Applications, published by Wiley. Farhan's book, Real World ASP.NET Best Practices, published by APress, has already been getting rave reviews. Of course, there are many other published authors among the ranks of INETA Committee members, speakers and user group leaders. But Bill and Farhan definitely deserve special mention.

INETA Wear - Here, there and everywhere

New in User Group Specials

Want great deals on stuff you really need?
Mach5 offers a 20% discount on their Mailer and Analyzer products
Fog Creek Software offers a 20% discount on FogBugz or any other product
More...
Visit the Specials page at INETA.ORG for these and other great deals

Ooh Baby!

Special congratulations to the  assistant editor of this newsletter, Manuel Dennis (gnonug.xocomp.net) and his wife on their new baby, Corbin, born August 27th.

About this newsletter

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