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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 | |
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Editor:
Julia Lerman
[INETA User Group Relations Committee Co-Chair, Vermont .NET User
Group Leader, .NET MVP]
Design:
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
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| Time |
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Topic |
| 9:00 |
- 9:30 |
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INETA Overview |
| 9:30 |
- 10:45 |
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Committee
Updates |
| 10:45 |
- 11:00 |
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Break |
| 11:00 |
- 11:30 |
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Microsoft
Overview |
| 11:30 |
- 12:15 |
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Lunch |
| 12:15 |
- 12:45 |
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Beyond PowerPoint
Presentations, User Groups Doing
Training |
| 12:45 |
- 1:15 |
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Working with Your Regional
Office |
| 1:15 |
- 1:30 |
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Break |
| 1:30 |
- 2:00 |
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Working with Microsoft
Federal |
| 2:00 |
- 2:30 |
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Working with
Vendors |
| 2:30 |
- 3:00 |
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IT Pro Group
Update |
| 3:00 |
- 3:15 |
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Break |
| 3:15 |
- 4:15 |
|
Executive
Roundtable |
| 4:15 |
- 5:00 |
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Closing |
| 5:00 |
- 6:00 |
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Cocktail Hour |
| 6:00 |
- 7:00 |
|
.NET Rocks BOF (Birds Of a
Feather) kickoff! |
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| Submit a BOF Session or vote for
your favorite at: BOF
Sessions | |
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 by: Sheri
Nawrocki
You may have asked yourself,
as I have many times, where in the world does
Julie find the time to get this newsletter
out. Well...once again I am amazed and
shocked at how much this woman can
do!
Check out this article on the DevSource
Website. Not only is Julie the North
American Chair of INETA's UG Relations
Committee, she is also a Microsoft MVP, an ASP
Insider, and an experienced software developer and
computer consultant who's been programming for 20
years. Learn what she has to say about
establishing user groups, choosing .NET over Java,
and the role of women in technology.
Read
More....
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Find out more about Julie on her weblog http://www.thedatafarm.com/blog/ | |
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In March, Florida.NET
participated in a one day conference called Tech Galaxy
where user groups from many different technologies
got together. Among the technologies represented
were Java, .NET (fladotnet.net of course!), Cisco,
Macintosh, Linux, Act, ACM Students, Palm OS,
FL2600. Each user group did one of their own
presentations so that the other groups could get a
feel for what goes on in the other areas. There
were 20 sessions total throughout the day,
although attendees had to choose between five
session during each of the four break out times.
In addition to the technical presentations, the
leader of the Macintosh group did a talk targetted
at user group leaders on the ins and outs of
running a user group. For more information on this
event, and to possibly get some ideas on
coordinating a similar one in your area visit www.techgalaxy.org.
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On March 26th, there was a 'Microsoft Day 2004'
conference in the Bauman Moscow State Technical
University (BMSTU). It started a series of seven
large scale conferences in the largest Russian
universities. These events are supported by
Microsoft Russia. Over 520 attendees visited the
conference at BMSTU, doubling the attendance from
last year's conference
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| Terekhov from MS Russia |
Moscow Group |
Speed Coding
Contest |
The main target of the conference was to
present the power of the future Microsoft
technologies (ASP.NET 2.0, Yukon, WinFS and
Avalon). Members of the BMSTU .NET Developers UG
prepared materials about these technologies and
presented them at the Microsoft Pavilion.
There were also numerous events at our
conference which attracted a lot of students.
Among them are: Speed Coding Contest on VS.NET
2003, discounted .NET books, two types of '.NET
platform' quizzing game, hands-on-lab about
ASP.NET 2.0. And also two fun contests: logic
questions quizzing game and racing. There were
also three reports at the conference:
- Extreme programming at the .NET platform,
presented by E.Koshelev, Luxoft
- The process of software development in
Microsoft, presented by A. Terekhov, Microsoft
Russia
- Microsoft Conference XP Platform, S.Vonog
and N.Surin, presented by students of the MIPT
You can find more pictures at the official page
of our conference http://library.bmstu.ru/msdnaa/msday2004.aspx |
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INETA Speaker Steven Smith
Deployed
 Steven Smith, who has been on
the INETA Speaker Bureau since INETA began,
recently told us that he has been called to return
to Active Duty in the U.S. Army for the period of
one year. We will miss Steve, who has been a
leader in the ASP and ASP.NET communities for a
long time. Steve looks forward to returning to a
full release of ASP.NET 2.0 and no more messing
around with goofy betas. We send along our pride
and our prayers as he joins Operation Iraqi
Freedom
Read more in Steve's
weblog. Steve will be keeping us informed
of his experiences at his new weblog www.armysteve.com.
Rocky Lhotka named Microsoft
Software Legend
 INETA Speaker Rockford Lhotka
was inducted into Microsoft's Software Legends
program in March. Software Legends are recognized
by Microsoft as authors who have significantly
contributed to the developer community and its
understanding of the Microsoft .NET Framework. One
of Rocky's recent bestsellers is "Expert Visual
Basic .NET Business Objects."
The other
Software Legends are INETA Speakers: Billy Hollis,
Juval Lowy, and Stephen Walther as well as David
Chappel, David Platt, Chris Sells and Jeffrey
Richter.
Congratulations, Rocky!
Visit the Software Legends Website at http://www.softwarelegends.com
Read
More about Rocky at his website: http://www.lhotka.net
| Jason Bunting Interviews
INETA Speaker, Paul Litwin
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J: How long have you been using .NET
technologies?
P: I started on Beta 1
of .NET back at the beginning of 2001. I had been
meaning to dig into it for a few months but I
usually need something concrete to get me really
started. And that something was that Mike Amundsen
asked me to co-author a book with him. That book
became ASP.NET for Developers and shipped at the
end of 2001. I've been on the .NET bandwagon ever
since.
J: What do you feel are the
most compelling things about NET?
P:
The end of DLL hell gets a lot of play but I think
something that is at least equally important is
the end of what I call "registry hell". The fact
that .NET executables contain self-describing
metadata is just fabulous. Of course, after using
.NET for a few months I immediately asked myself
why Microsoft DLLs and EXEs didn't work this way
previously. And the ASP.NET Web Form is so much
better than the old spaghetti pages of ASP.NET
classic.
J: Have you ran any other
marathons since last year's Capitol City Marathon,
and if not, are you planning on
it?
P: I was originally
planning on running the Portland Marathon in the
fall of last year, but alas I suffered an injury
to my right knee several months before the race
and it took me a while to get running consistently
again. I am currently scheduled to run the 2004
Capitol City Marathon (in Olympia, Washington) on
May 16th. That's in three weeks from today (the
day I am answering these interview questions). I
am in much better shape this year and thus I
expect to run well enough to qualify for the
Boston Marathon.
J: How is the
consulting market these days - is there more than
enough work out there to keep a guy like you busy?
P: The consulting and training
markets are pretty down. They appear to be coming
back slowly but it is definitely harder to earn a
buck in this business during the past three years.
That reminds me -- I actually have a full-time job
now. Since February of this year, I work as lead
programmer for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center in Seattle. I work for a unit at the center
which provides programming services for various
research projects. So it's like a consulting job,
but I don't have to do any marketing or sales and
the clients are all internal. It's my first "real
job" in 11 years and I'm loving it.
I still
run my training company, Deep Training, on the
side but only occasionally do training. Instead, I
have a number of other capable trainers working
for me.
J: I could not find a Paul
Litwin blog . . . what gives, haven't you caught
the blog bug?
P: Blogging is the rap
or hip-hop of the computing world. Instead of
singing in a harmony with other performers (i.e.,
speaking at user groups and conferences, writing
books, magazines, etc.), the blogger does her or
her own thing. While a lot of good can come out of
the blog -- mainly the sharing of information that
hasn't been sanitized -- blogging also has a
tendency to produce a lot of noise. I've resisted
the urge to contribute to the cacophony for some
time but recently started rethinking the issue and
may start one any day on ASP.NET. Stay
tuned.
J: You have written a couple
of books on Access, do you think a lot of the
criticism directed at Access is
unfounded?
P: Access was one of the
amazing enabling technologies of the 1990s. It
empowered millions of people to manage their own
data and launched the careers of probably hundreds
of thousands of programmers. It's a fantastic tool
for creating data-centric smart client
applications in a hurry. Access is not, however, a
server database. Thus, it lacks a bit in the
security front and doesn't scale well beyond a few
dozen users. And you definitely don't want to use
it to run your Internet Web site. But in small
work groups it works
great.
J: What has your
experience been in speaking to user groups as part
of the INETA Speakers Bureau?
P: I've spoken to about four
user groups since I joined the INETA Speaker's
Bureau (and quite a few before then). The
experience has been, in every case, very positive.
My first speaking gig for INETA was to fly to
Toronto to speak at the VBDOGs group in February
to speak in front of about 120 members at a brand
new Microsoft office building. It was very cold
outside. The next time I spoke for INETA was for
the Visual Basic Learner's Group in New Orleans
sitting around a conference table in a small room
on top of a garage. It was very hot and humid and
there were about ten people in attendance. What a
contrast between the two experiences yet I had a
fantastic time at both events. It was great to
talk in front of over a hundred people in Toronto
but at the same time the small New Orleans event
was very personal and satisfying.
I've
also spoken several times at my user group (.NET
Developer's Association) in Redmond as well as for
the DotNetUsers group, also in Redmond. Every
INETA sponsored event that I have spoken at has
been great. And the pizza was pretty good too.
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your user group. Readers of 
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