Newest INETA Members

18 New Groups joined INETA in October!  In the USA we have new groups in: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, and Virginia. Internationally, we signed new groups from: Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Italy, Russia, and Switzerland.  There are now over 435 User Groups representing nearly 125,000 user group members worldwide! Welcome to our new members!
 

PDC Wrap-Up

Bill Gates describes Longhorn

PDC '03 in Los Angeles was a significant and entertaining event. Microsoft unveiled an array of new technologies that will significantly impact the way software systems facilitate business processes over the coming years through a "Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). INETA organized "Birds of a Feather" sessions held each evening for informal discussions on a wide array of topics.

The three major areas of new technology include the next version of Windows (Longhorn, 2005), Visual Studio .NET (Whidbey, 2004), and SQL Server (Yukon, 2004). Longhorn contains a new vector graphics user interface (Avalon), a set of user experience guidelines (Aero), and a new programming model and communications infrastructure build around Web services (Indigo). Whidbey has a number of new language and tool features. Yukon is a major upgrade with an embedded CLR and native XML storage.

Don Box finally gets to show off Indigo!

Collectively, these technologies are designed for the development of "Service" rather than "Object" oriented systems, a major paradigm shift. In addition, the "alpha" bits for these new technologies distributed to PDC attendees will be included in the December MSDN Universal shipment. INETA user groups can play a major role in providing members with opportunities to learn and discuss these new technologies. User groups should consider study groups and demonstrations between now and the release of these new technologies to help members learn and develop systems with today's technologies that parallel the upcoming technologies. A great starting point for resources on the PDC sessions and these new technologies is on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/events/pdc/.

ASP.NET Exposed! Road Show - through February

The team that created ASP.NET is coming to city near you! This is your chance to learn from one of the creators of Microsoft's web development platform. Get the knowledge you need to start developing secure, next generation ASP.NET Web applications with ASP.NET and Visual Studio .NET. After the introduction, we'll dive deep into the product and help you bring your skills to the next level.

	Tour Schedule
	November 4 - Dallas November 13 - Mountain View, CA December 2 - Denver December 4 - St. Louis December 8 - Seattle	January 12 - Chicago January 15 - Orange County January 29 - Portland February 4 - New York February 5 - Boston February 10 - Houston

If you are a User Group Leader in one of the Road Show cities, please contact Catherine Vegher at cvegher@microsoft.com, to find out how your User Group can participate.

Register and learn more at http://www.asp.net/roadshow/.
 

INETA Hosts "Birds of a Feather" Sessions at PDC By Karsten Januszewski, Microsoft

A big thank you to everyone who was involved with Birds of a Feather at PDC2003 this year. The biggest thank you goes to Dave Noderer, who worked hard both prior to the show and onsite to make the BOFs a success. Also, thanks to Shervin Shakibi, who helped out onsite and did the coding of the BOF site itself. And thank you to INETA in general for being part of this.

From my perspective (although the overall attendee evaluations haven't been processed yet), the BOFs were incredibly successful. Attendance-wise, some BOFs had as many as 150 people, with the average around 40 people, and each BOF has at least 10 people. The tenor of the BOFs was decidedly interactive: no one abused the format and hijacked the BOF with a monologue. Rather, dialogues were pervasive, encompassing different formats. In the case where someone clearly had expertise in an area and had the respect of the other attendees, there was more of a Q & A format. In other BOFs, it was more of a shared discussion, where many different people contributed to the overall conversation, and a discussion unfolded and evolved on a given topic.

Every BOF ran the entire hour and usually spilled into the hallway afterward. I had to literally kick people out of the midnight BOFs, warning them that the buses were leaving in 15 minutes and that the lights would be turned out. Had I not warned them of impending bus departure, I have no doubt they would have kept at it for another hour.

Microsoft attendees were very respectful at the BOFs they attended. When appropriate, they jumped in to clarify a point or answer a question. Most of the time, they listened, observed and participated as a an equal, not an "authority".

What became clear to me after witnessing ~50 BOFs over 3 days was that a certain brand of attendee is hungry for opportunities to keep talking about technology at PDC. The BOF semi-structured environment facilitated this in an interactive way that this brand of attendee relished. And, while PDC is forward-looking, the BOFs provided a forum to share ideas and thoughts about technologies that impact them everyday. It also provided a great networking opportunity for individuals to create new connections with like-minded folks.

Scott Bellware (left), from the Austin .Net User Group and also INETA Speaker Committee Chair
 was one of many PDC Attendees to lead a BOF.

In addition, the BOFs provided the hosts an opportunity to shine and establish their leadership and influence among their peers. These hosts relished the chance to be a star. Typically, at Microsoft conferences, there aren't opportunities for attendees to become rockstars: that luxury is reserved for Microsoft speakers. But the BOFs provided a forum for communities and community leaders to emerge in a new way around the Microsoft platform.

Overall, I am really excited about the success of BOFs at PDC this year and hope that they become a tradition at Microsoft conferences.

For some attendees perspectives on the BOFs, see the following links:

* http://www.sys-con.com/dotnet/article.cfm?id=445
* http://hestia.typepad.com/flatlander/2003/10/relections_on_b.html
* http://weblogs.asp.net/jsemeniuk/posts/34369.aspx
* http://weblogs.cs.cornell.edu/AllThingsDistributed/archives/000309.html
* http://weblogs.asp.net/cschittko/posts/34191.aspx
* http://test.objectsharp.com/blogs/barry/posts/159.aspx
* http://weblogs.asp.net/jcollins/posts/33905.aspx
* http://blogs.xcskiwinn.org/panmanphil/posts/168.aspx
* http://www.deploymentcentric.com/Blogs/joe/permalink.aspx?guid=7cd73270-31a1-4323-bb24-57758d5b4cf5
* http://weblogs.asp.net/rmclaws/posts/33898.aspx
* http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/LauraJ/permalink.aspx/5b21eaf2-20b1-4588-a6db-43020888a9b1
* http://jelly.uits.indiana.edu/~klopfens/blog/archives/000018.html
* http://geekswithblogs.net/dnoderer/posts/308.aspx

INETA Speaker Band Rocks the House at PDC

Everyone knows that INETA has assembled under one roof some of the most prominent speakers in the industry. But did you know that INETA boasts some top-flight musicians, too? With a helping hand from Microsoft's George Bullock--an excellent musician himself--INETA assembled an ad hoc rock band at October's PDC and rocked the house with a set that included such favorites as Long Train Runnin' (Doobie Brothers), The Thrill Is Gone (B. B. King), Layla (Eric Clapton), and Daytripper (Beatles). The band's anchor was Carl Franklin of .NET Rocks fame, who is a wonderfully accomplished musician. Carl and Jeff Prosise alternated between guitar and drums, while Richard Hale Shaw provided a backbone to the music with his hot bass licks. George Bullock and Shawn Wildermuth lent their own great guitar work to the gig, while Carl, Shawn, and Andrew Duthie provided the vocals. Despite a glitch in the sound system, it was a night to remember, and a good time was had by all.

INETA founder Bill Evjen had this to say about the evening: "Awesome fun, and great branding for INETA. But tell the guys not to quit their day jobs..."
 

Regional User Groups Initiate and Coordinate INETA booth at Office 2003 Launch Event

User group leaders from 3 cities and 2 states initiated and coordinated an effort to give INETA a presence at the MS Office 2003 launch event in Nashville, TN. Leaders from the Hunstville Ala. New Technologies User Group, the Chattanooga Tenn. Area .NET User Group, and the Nashville Tenn. Visual Studio .NET User Group  came together to represent INETA and their local user groups. Dan Wygant, of HUNTUG, and INETA UG Relations Committee member initiated the effort by acquiring the booth space. Eric King, of CHADNUG, and fellow INETA UG Relations Committee member coordinated the booth for the event. Everyone had a great time hanging out together and discussing ideas, successes and even possible joint ventures between the groups. There were over 150 attendees that came by the booth to talk about .NET development and register for prizes. "It was a great opportunity for us to come together and reach out to the regional development community. We met developers from Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. We were able to help raise awareness of our local groups as well as INETA." said Eric King.

Pictured from left to right: Anthony Basham - Chadnug, Eric King - Chadnug,
Larry Perry - NashVS.net, and Mike Houston - NashVS.net.

Thanks to Microsoft for support of Speakers Bureau at PDC

We would like to thank Microsoft and particularly, Eric Ewing, for their support of the Speakers Bureau. Eric was instrumental in involving US, European, and LATAM speakers in the PDC as well as providing a professional speaker trainer - the incredible Richard Klees, getting speakers involved in Ask The Experts, and invited to parties. Thanks Eric!
 

INETA gets Blogging

Thanks to GeekswithBlogs.NET for hosting new bloggers from INETA. Bill Evjen (Exec Director), Dave Noderer (Board Member), Brian Loesgen (President), Jason Beres (Academic Committee and Speaker), Devin Rader (Infrastructure) and Shervin Shakibi (Infrastructure) have all finally started blogging. There are already a host of INETA related volunteers with blogs. Too many to list here. Look for a list on the INETA website in the future. You can use an rss aggregator such as SharpReader or NewsGator to simplify reading many blogs at once. GeekswithBlogs is owned and hosted by Academic and Infrastructure Committee member, Jeff Julian using the dotText application created by Scott Watermasysk. Thanks for all of the community effort that comes together to enable this to happen. These are but a few of the many individuals in the INETA community with weblogs.

Bay.NET User Group Leader wins PDC Pass!

Last month, Wintellect had the great idea of raffling off a PDC pass on their website. The lucky winner happened to be Bay.NET User Group leader Oliver Nguyen!

Here's a picture of the happy attendee, Oliver, at PDC.

Speaker Corner - Get to know the Speakers Bureau

This month, Academic Committee member Jason Bunting, interviews Aaron Skonnard.

JB - What is your area of specialty?
AS - XML, Web Services, and Microsoft .NET technologies.

JB - How long have you been using .NET technologies?
AS - Since the very first Alpha releases.

JB - What are you currently working on?
AS - I've always loved teaching software developers about new technologies. Towards that end, I've spent the past several years writing and delivering courses for DevelopMentor at various locations throughout the world. Lately, however, I've been focusing my energies closer to home at Northface University in Salt Lake City, Utah. Northface University is working to establish the finest university in the world for software developers by designing a completely project-driven curriculum that focuses on leading-edge technologies and collaboration skills. This unparalleled experiential approach could have a major influence on education at large.

I'm also spending quite a bit of time with the latest XML Web Services bits out of Redmond (System.MessageBus or "Indigo"). Specifically, I've been engaged with the Microsoft Web services teams on various SDRs, I'm working on some related writing projects, and I'm ultimately trying to make sense of how the new technology announced at the PDC will shape the industry longer term. For more details, check out my site at www.skonnard.com.

JB -  What has your experience been in speaking to user groups as part of the INETA Speakers Bureau?

AS - User groups provide a valuable sense of community to developers locally. Whether it's helping establish relationships, getting answers to questions, or just spurring the imagination, user groups help developers progress. I love showing up to meetings and finding developers from all walks of life craving information. In my book, there's nothing better than speaking to a group of passionate developers about the latest and greatest, just for the "fun" of it!
 

San Diego .NET User Group Road Trip

When the San Diego .NET User Group heard that members of the Redmond product team would be in Orange County talking about Whidbey, they sprang into action and chartered a bus to take members up to the meeting approximately 2 hours away.

So a busload of .NET developers headed north. On the bus, they had tablet PCs with Whidbey installed, food and drinks. They even printed up event T-Shirts.

"This was an awesome experience, everybody had a blast. If any user group has a chance to do a similar thing, I would highly recommend it. Everyone that was on the bus is looking forward to doing future road trips, and you can be sure that we will do this again", said INETA's own Brian Loesgen, also a leader of the SDNETUG.

MSDN News for your User Group Members

New to .NET? Get started with free online training & labs
Need a simple, flexible way to start learning .NET development and that's free, too? Microsoft's new .NET Developer Jump Start training sessions provide guided online learning through selected core skills of .NET Web and Windows application development. These sessions consist of a short set of free online learning seminars and hands-on labs, hosted by MSDN Online, that help you practice the skills taught.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/using/training/seminarlabs/default.aspx
 

About this newsletter

Thanks to Karsten Januszewski, Eric King, Chris Pels, Jeff Prosise, Jason Bunting and Brian Loesgen for their articles.

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