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It's A User Group Thing!
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Keep Your User Group Up to Date
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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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INETA Forums Back To Top

The INETA forums are a great place to learn about how other user groups function and to talk with other user group leaders about ideas or questions you may have.

Visit the Forums Today !
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About this Newsletter

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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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INETA's 3rd Annual North American User Group Leader Summit!

When: Sunday, May 23, 2004, 8:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

Where: Westin Hotel in Downtown San Diego
(910 Broadway Circle, San Diego, CA  92101)

Who: The North American User Group Leader Summit is a coming together of INETA volunteers and user group leaders from the U.S. & Canada. If you are a user group leader from anywhere in the world attending TechEd in San Diego, please make plans to attend the Summit

What: The aim of the Summit is to provide overall direction and vision for INETA and to provide valuable resources for user group leaders.

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24 New User Groups joined INETA in March! 


They come from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, South Korea, Nigeria, Russia(2), Spain, Turkey(2)

In Latin America we have groups from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico(3), Peru(3)

And in the U.S. new member groups are from Florida, Virginia, California(2) and Washington D.C.

TechEd Bloggers:
TechEdBloggers.NET is making it easier for professionals to connect with your user group.  Read More... 		* *
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User Group Leader Summit Agenda

Time | Topic
9:00 - 9:30 INETA Overview
9:30 - 10:45 Committee Updates
10:45 - 11:00 Break
11:00 - 11:30 Microsoft Overview
11:30 - 12:15 Lunch
12:15 - 12:45 Beyond PowerPoint Presentations, User Groups Doing Training
12:45 - 1:15 Working with Your Regional Office
1:15 - 1:30 Break
1:30 - 2:00 Working with Microsoft Federal
2:00 - 2:30 Working with Vendors
2:30 - 3:00 IT Pro Group Update
3:00 - 3:15 Break
3:15 - 4:15 Executive Roundtable
4:15 - 5:00 Closing
5:00 - 6:00 Cocktail Hour
6:00 - 7:00 .NET Rocks BOF (Birds Of a Feather) kickoff!
Submit a BOF Session or vote for your favorite at: BOF Sessions
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TechEd Bloggers.NET - Connect with your UG Back To Top

TechEd Bloggers is making it easier for professionals to connect with your user group. Readers of TechEdBloggers.net can use the Find A User Group feature on a page focused on INETA to locate user groups. Whenever an article is posted to TechEd Bloggers about INETA activities at TechEd, readers will see a link to Find A User Group in their news reader.

You can also attract professionals to your user group website using news from TechEd. Attendees of this year's Microsoft TechEd will be reporting on the sessions and technologies they see before, during and after the event. You can enhance your website with news from TechEd using the TechEdBloggersFeed user control. Displaying news from TechEd will keep your website fresh with new information so readers return often to check up on what's new.

The TechEdBloggersFeed user control displays an article list from TechEdBloggers.net on any website. The list updates automatically when articles are added to TechEdBloggers.net. The user control is a single ASP.NET control (ASCX) file that is customizable for including in any ASP.NET web page (ASPX). User Groups and individuals who add the TechEd Bloggers feed to their website will be entered in the Partners drawing to win an XBox. Details will be announced on TechEdBloggers.net in the next few days.

Full instructions are available at: http://techedbloggers.net/News/1923.item

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.NET Rock Star: Julie Lerman Back To Top

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....

 

 

Find out more about Julie on her weblog http://www.thedatafarm.com/blog/

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User Group Leaders - Watch Your Inbox for Special INETA Marketing Newsletters Back To Top

Beginning in May, User Group leaders will begin to receive quarterly newsletters from the INETA Marketing Committee. Created out of the need for a vehicle to communicate outstanding offers to user group leaders, the marketing newsletter is designed to introduce you to the vendors who are interested in furthering the growth of the .NET community through sponsorship and discounts. The offers, unless otherwise noted, are for you to share with your user group members through your own form of communication - in your own newsletter, on your web site, in meetings, etc. This program was designed in an attempt to build relationships between you and active vendors in the community. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact marketing@ineta.org.
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Cross-Technology User Group Get Together in Florida Back To Top
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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Microsoft Day 2004 in the Bauman Moscow State Technical University Back To Top

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

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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Visual Basic 2004 Tour hits the Boston.NET User Group Back To Top

The Boston .NET User Group had the pleasure of having two members of the VB.NET team travel from Redmond as part of the VB.NET 2004 World Tour to present at our April 14th meeting. Before the main meeting we had what the VB.NET team called a Reverse User Group Meeting. A small group of members representing a diverse group of VB developers had the opportunity to voice any and all ideas and concerns to Amanda Silver and Steve Lees. Thom Robbins , a MSFT Developer Community Champion, based in New England also attended the event. The members loved the opportunity to talk directly with people involved in the development of the product.

Following the feedback session we had over 150 people attend our main meeting which started with members consuming lots of pizza and drinks provided by Microsoft.

Steve spent the first hour or so showing off some VS.NET 2003 features including a new set of controls coming sometime this summer. Amanda followed with a preview of many new features in VS 2005 including the new GridView control, partial classes, generics, etc. We then had a great raffle with a bunch of books and a Pocket PC, all donated by Microsoft. This was a great event which I strongly encourage you to attend if it comes to your area!

About the Tour:
The Visual Basic 2004 World Tour is underway and the VB Team is visiting user groups around the country. So far the team has visited 10 user groups and presented on new features coming in Visual Basic 2005 and new ways to use existing VB skills today including the Visual Basic Power Pack, tablet development and Office development. The events have been a tremendous success, routinely drawing more than 150 people and filling the hall to overflowing. For more information and to register for an event, check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/worldtour. Please mail Jay Roxe (jroxe@microsoft.com) with any questions.
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Coming to a city near you the Microsoft Tablet PC Developer Tour Back To Top

The Tablet PC is a next-generation PC - the evolution of the notebook PC. Tablet PCs run the Microsoft® Windows® XP Tablet PC Edition operating system, which incorporates the convenient and intuitive aspects of pen and paper into the PC experience. The Tablet PC team is excited to offer a Free course providing an overview of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition features for developers, architects, systems integrators, and solution providers. Plan to spend a few hours with us and we'll teach you what you need to know to get started.

For dates, registration and additional information please visit http://www.tabletpctraining.com/microsoft

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Speakers Corner Back To Top

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  Back To Top
Paul Litwin

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