 |
|
|
Please be sure to keep your user group data up to date on the INETA website.
Your group's website URL, your contact information and your group size are
important pieces of information. If people are going to the INETA website to
find a user group, and your link is broken, they won't be able to find you. You
must be logged in to the INETA website to gain access to edit your information.
Click Here
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editor: Julia Lerman
[INETA User Group Relations Committee Co-Chair, Vermont
.NET User Group Leader, .NET MVP]
Production: Sheri
Nawrocki [INETA Marketing Commitee, Florida
.NET Group Leader, .NET Developer, Graphic Designer]
Anyone can sign up to receive this newsletter on the home page of
www.ineta.org
Archived newsletters are available on the INETA website at
www.ineta.org/newsletters
Please send news (and pictures) from your user group so we can include it in a
future newsletter! Contact us at:
newsletter@ineta.org.
We welcome your feedback on this newsletter. Please contact
newsletter@ineta.org.
Read our
privacy policy on our website.
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
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It is hard to believe that INETA is two years old this month. When we launched
INETA in February of 2002, .NET was fairly new and we came to the scene with
about 40 user groups in our association. Today, we have close to 500 user
groups and more than 170,000 members from all over the world that are part of
INETA! Our growth is more than anyone ever imagined and outstanding as it is,
it is also one of the most difficult things in managing INETA. More growth
means more speakers, more support and more volunteers needed.
To me, one of the great things about INETA is that we are a volunteer
organization at every level. User groups leaders are volunteers, INETA
committee members are volunteers, INETA committee leaders are volunteers, INETA
regional leaders are volunteers, INETA board members are volunteers and even
the INETA Executive Director position is a volunteer position. We at INETA have
always aimed to run INETA much in the way user groups are run, depending
heavily on our volunteers, word of mouth and community spirit which is so
prevalent in the .NET community.
In this last year, INETA has accomplished a lot. We are still 100% focused on
our original mission of helping support and nurture the local user group. We
understand this mission since INETA's volunteers primarily compromises of the
user group leaders themselves (I, myself, am from the St. Louis .NET User
Group). The main support activities we find that user groups need include:
sending top-name speakers to their cities, food for some of their meetings,
giveaways, contact with Microsoft and other vendors, the ability to communicate
and share best practices with their peers who are in other cities, a place to
go to get great presentation content, and to have the knowledge that they are
part of a larger community and that they are not by themselves in accomplishing
their endeavors.
INETA in 2004 will continue on with this same mission with a collection of new
endeavors. We will continue to support user groups as we have done in the last
two years with the INETA Speakers Bureau, food, content and bringing user group
leaders together. Though, we also have a lot new things planned for 2004 as
well.
We have been working with Microsoft in bringing more Microsoft product-team
based user group tours to the user groups of the world. INETA recently
participated with the ASP.NET Roadshow, which was focused on ASP.NET Whidbey,
and was hugely successful. We will continue to bring you additional roadshows
throughout 2004.
We are going to expand upon the content repository. This is one area that we ask
for everyone's help. The content repository on the INETA website will only grow
if we all feed in presentations that we do at our local meetings into the
system. By giving our presentations to the INETA content repository, we will
have a good selection to share with everyone.
We are going to be providing user groups the possibility of doing Microsoft
Webcasts for one of their meetings to promote to the world what your user group
is all about. We are hoping to have an INETA User Group Webcast Challenge
focused around this idea.
We are going to continue to grow and enhance our website. There is a tremendous
amount of new functionally being planned for the INETA website to make it
easier for volunteers to contribute and for user groups to find the information
they need fast.
We are going to strive to have better communication with all of the user group
leaders, speakers and members of INETA with more outreach and more one-to-one
conversations.
We are going to try and have strong presences at events such as TechEd 2004 and
other events where we feel we can make a lasting impact upon the community.
We are going to actively seek out and bring on more volunteers in powerful and
decision-making positions within INETA. As you are aware, INETA runs only
because of the volunteers that work to make INETA happen. Yes, we have a lot of
fun together, but there is work involved as well. We have a lot of projects to
accomplish and need people to help run these projects for us.
We are going to continue our explosive international expansion. INETA LATAM was
the fastest growing international region in INETA in 2003 and we are working on
heavily expanding our presence in Europe and Asia as well.
One of our goals has always been to show the rest of the world the importance of
community in making technology happen and the pivotal nature in which the user
group plays in this community. So far, we have been rather successful and we
all have only you all to thank for this.
I personally want to thank all the volunteers that make INETA happen. INETA is
now one of the largest developer organizations in the world and it really
wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for your help.
Sincerely,
Bill Evjen
Executive Director
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Visit DevDaysBloggers.com to get
the inside scoop from many of the DevDays speakers around the country as they
prepare for this 32 city event! Thanks again to Drew Robbins, leader of .NET
Developers Group in Central
Ohio and partner Kevin Schuler for the effort.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
DevDays 2004 promises to be one of the most
rewarding events of the year for professional developers. With a focus on
building secure Smart client and Web applications using the Visual Studio .NET
infrastructure, this event will help you add power and security to your
applications. Each attendee will also receive:
-
OpenHack source code
-
Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey" technology preview
-
"Whidbey" pre-release software
-
Microsoft Visual Basic®.NET Resource Kit
-
ASP.NET Resource Kit
-
Visual Basic .NET Resource Kit CD
-
SupportVision Source Code
Click here to register today!
DevDays 2004 is coming and developers are getting pumped up -
but Microsoft is throwing in a FREE POCKET PC and PIZZA anyway.
This is a special offer for User Group Leaders only: Encourage five members of
your group to register to attend DevDays 2004 and Microsoft will send you a
FREE ViewSonic Pocket PC (a $325 value). Keep it yourself, give it to your mom
or raffle it off at your next meeting - it's yours, so you decide.
But we mentioned FREE PIZZA - once you go online and register yourself and the
names of five members that will attend DevDays 2004, your group will also be
entered to win a party's worth of free pizza, sodas, little packets of parmesan
cheese, chili peppers, some napkins - Microsoft will even throw in a
sweepstakes for free software and MS Press books. All that for all of you, all
on Microsoft.
You can let Microsoft now about your members who are registered for DevDays by
Registering your User Group at www.INETA.org/devdays
.
* This is a special offer for U.S. (50 states) User Groups only. Game ends
March 24, 2004. For full rules and alternate method of entry, see
www.INETA.org/devdays.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jason Bunting Interviews INETA Speaker, Andrew Brust
JB - What was your first computer and language?
AB - The first computer I ever used (in 7th grade
-- 1978) was a DEC PDP 8, and I programmed it in BASIC. I even became a
certified computer "operator" in my school's computer lab, which meant I knew
the intricate dialog that had to be entered from a teletype terminal to start
the darn thing!
JB - What is your favorite aspect of .NET?
AB - No-touch deployment is one of my favorite
parts of .NET, and the technology will get even better and easier to use under
Whidbey's "Click Once" technology. I think the pendulum is really swinging back
to full-fledged Windows clients…people are tired of treating their
super-powerful PCs as dumb terminals. The Web is great, but it was designed for
documents, not apps. If Microsoft can strike the right balance between ease of
deployment and security, then I think what we now call "rich clients" will
enjoy a lot of renewed popularity.
JB - Do you have a favorite presentation when
speaking to user groups, and if so, what is it about?
AB - I'm about to start doing presentations on ADO
MD.NET to user groups, having already started to talk about this technology on
MSDN Webcasts. ADO MD.NET is the first native, managed code tool for creating
OLAP front-ends. It will have deep support for Yukon-specific OLAP features but
my talk actually focuses on using it against SQL Server 2000 cubes. While ADO
MD.NET is still in Beta, I'm finding it immediately useful in helping me get
things done that ADO MD (its COM-based predecessor) can't do very well, if at
all.
JB - You are the Vice Chairman of the NYSIA – how
long have you been doing that, and what do you do in that position?
AB - NYSIA is the New York City area's trade association for the software
industry. In my capacity as Vice Chairman, I try to help the organization
create great events, pursue a political advocacy agenda, speak to the press,
implement strategies to help the industry in New York City, and in turn to help
create economic activity and jobs here in my home town. Within the
organization, I also help evangelize the .NET and other Microsoft
technologies…in some circles, New York can be a fairly Microsoft-hostile town,
and I view part of my job as combating that, in a positive way. For instance, I
recently testified at a City Council hearing against legislative preferences
for open source software in City agency procurement of software and services.
JB - What's this joke I hear about you and driving?
AB - I am a native New Yorker, and the funny thing
about those of us who live and grew up in New York City (specifically,
Manhattan) is that we never drive, since parking costs a fortune, the subway
runs efficiently 24 hours a day, and taxis are plentiful. I actually took
Driver's Ed in high school (and practiced driving around the then-drug-ridden
Lower East Side the way suburbanites practice driving in parking lots) and got
my license when I was 18. I was cool driving in the city…it was the highway
that scared me…maintaining a speed above 20 mph seemed quite the daredevil act!
I use my license mostly as an ID card, given that I am hardly ever behind the
wheel. Heck, some of my friends from high school _still_ don't have
their licenses! My wife Lauren, who grew up across the river in New Jersey,
where everyone drives everywhere, finds the whole thing quite funny.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
