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Find a User Group near you!
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 February
2006 marks
the 4th
anniversary
of INETA
which has
grown to 900
user groups
representing
465,000
members
worldwide.
Since our
founding
INETA has
focused on
fostering
the local
developer
community
through
various
programs and
services for
user groups
with the
help of over
75
volunteers.
Thanks to
all the
INETA
volunteers
and those of
you in the
local
community
that
contribute
your time to
this great
effort!
Since this
fall over
470 user
groups
around the
world are
participating
in the INETA
Visual
Studio 2005
Community
Launch Event
program
(View list)
coordinated
by our
Community
Activities
Division.
It's great
for user
group
members to
learn from
their peers
which has
been a core
component of
user groups
for many
years. I
encourage
user groups
to get
members
involved in
sharing
their
knowledge
and work. A
hearty
thanks to
our
Community
Activities
team
volunteers,
led by
Morgan
Baker, who
put in
hundreds of
hours on
this
project.
Over the
past year
our efforts
to increase
interest in
the Speakers
Bureau have
gone very
well and
bookings are
at an all
time high.
Microsoft
has
increased
funding 25%
this year,
yet demand
increased
even more.
Bill Wolff,
VP Speakers
Bureau
outlines
below some
of the
revised
guidelines
to provide
an equitable
distribution
of speakers
across the
country to
our 210+
user groups.
I encourage
all user
group
leaders to
work
together to
host a
speaker at a
multi-user
group event
to maximize
our speaker
resources
and
strengthen
your local
community by
working
together
with fellow
user group
leaders.
I would
like to
welcome
Amanda
Murphy as
the new VP
of the
Community
Activities
Division and
Scott
Spradlin as
the new VP
of the
Marketing
Division.
Since
January1st
Nancy
Mesquita,
our long
time
coordinator
for the
Speakers
Bureau, has
assumed an
expanded
role as lead
administrator
for INETA
North
America and
will assist
the Board of
Directors
with
planning and
execution of
various
tasks. All
these people
will be
great assets
for our
organization.
Congratulations
to our
former VP of
Marketing
Sheri
Nawrocki who
is expecting
her first
child in May
and recently
married
fellow Board
member Jason
Beres!
As you
know INETA
is a
volunteer
run
organization
and we
currently
have several
divisions
that are in
need of
volunteers.
If you would
like to help
INETA and
your fellow
user group
leaders and
members for
one project
or on a
regular
basis please
contact
Nancy
Mesquita at
nancy.mesquita@ineta.org.
As always
please let
me know if
your have
any ideas or
feedback
that we can
use help the
user group
community.
Chris
Pels
President,
INETA NorAm
chris.pels@ineta.org
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Community Activities |
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 Since November, over 470 user groups throughout the globe have been participating in our Community Launch Program as part of the launch of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. Working on this event with all of you has been a tremendous experience for our team and we are extremely excited to announce some additional initiatives INETA will be introducing to you in 2006.
In
an
effort
to
reach
out
and
connect
with
our
members
more,
INETA
will
be
hosting
a
series
of
web
casts
that
will
focus
on
topics
that
relate
specifically
to
user
group
leaders,
members
and
the
technology
we
love.
We
plan
to
kick
off
the
series
in
March
2006
with
an
in-depth
discussion
on
how
to
run
a
Code
Camp
featuring
Thom
Robbins
and
Chris
Pels.
Details
on
registration
will
be
available
soon
on
our
website
and
in
our
March
newsletter.
In
the
meantime,
if
you
have
an
idea
for
something
you
would
like
to
see
an
INETA
web
cast
on,
please
let
us
know
by
filling
out
this
form.
We
would
love
to
hear
from
you!
In addition to connecting you with great information, we also want to encourage more interaction between user groups within a specific region. By coming together in a single room to discuss topics that are relevant and challenging to us all, we can improve on our ability to effectively manage our user groups and extend our community. On June 11th, 2006 we will kick off an exciting new community leadership program with the Northeast Region User Group Leadership Summit. This leadership summit will be held directly before the Tech Ed 2006 conference and user group leaders and volunteers from all over North America are invited to participate. This event will be the first of several such regional summits taking place throughout Canada and the United States in 2006.
INETA has grown based on our ability to connect user groups. We will be working hard in 2006 to connect you even further though live presentations, regional summits and local events. Stay tuned for details.
Amanda
Murphy
INETA NorAm Vice President
-
Community
Activities
amanda.murphy@ineta.org |
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MIX06 Winners |
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INETA
gave
away
free
passes
to
four
lucky
user
group
leaders
to MIX
in Las
Vegas
March
20-22
courtesy
of
Microsoft!
Each
pass is
valued
at
$995.
A
live
conversation
between
consumer
web
developers,
designers
and
business
leaders
in at
the
Venetian
with
Bill
Gates
and Tim
O’Reilly,
MIX is
all
about
high-fidelity
commerce,
media,
services
and
security
for the
web that
goes
beyond
the
browser.
At
MIX,
developers
can dive
deep
into the
latest
Microsoft
web
technologies,
including
IE7,
Atlas,
AJAX,
ASP.NET,
InfoCard,
IIS7,
the
Windows
Presentation
Foundation,
Windows
Media
and
others.
You can
find
more
information
about
the
conference
at
http://mix06.com/.
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The following user group leaders won the MIX06 conference passes:
Damon Carr - C# Global Design Patterns Expert Group (New York, NY)
Steve Radich – WinProTeam (Vienna, VA)
Chris Ortman – South Dakota .NET User Group (Mitchell, SD)
David Totzke - Canada's Technology Triangle .Net User Group (Dundas, Ontario Canada)
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Speakers Bureau |
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 The INETA Speaker Bureau enters year five going strong. We passed our 500th event in 2005 and expect to complete more than 300 events this fiscal year which runs from July 2005 to June 2006. This represents a 50% increase over last year. There are now 50 active speakers with 5 more being added this month.
Congratulations to our new speakers! Scott Cate, Robert Green, Richard Hundhausen, Sahil Malik, and Wally McClure were selected as alternates in the September 2005 enrollment process. We look forward to their community contributions.
The increased number of events this year is a proud achievement. But bear in mind that there are more requests than we can fill. New usage policies ensure fair coverage by user group and region. Each group can have up to 3 events per calendar year. There can only be 1 event per quarter with no more than 2 consecutive quarters. If there are several user groups including SIGs in one region/city, reasonable limits are enforced. We ask that each region/city have no more than 5 events in a given year. Adjustments are made for cancellations and special requests.
We recently implemented a streamlined expense policy that will get reimbursements to user group leaders and speakers in record time. We ask that you submit requests a day or two following the conclusion of your event or trip.
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Every evaluation counts! Please make sure that each attendee completes the official INETA evaluation form. These should be collected and in the prepaid mailer and dropped at your post office within a day or two of the event. We do log each response and generate summary statistical reports for our managers and sponsors. Note that refreshment reimbursement is tied to the number of submitted evaluations. If you want pizza, you have to send in the forms!
We are partnering with Microsoft Academic for a new program that brings our talented speakers to universities across America. Student Ambassadors work closely with MS Academic to sponsor user communities for students and faculty. They can now request a speaker event. Local user group leaders are notified of these events and collaboration encouraged. Please work with the local university .NET resource if you want an event in your area.
Telerik recently agreed to continue their sponsorship of the Speaker Bureau. We thank them for their support and urge all leaders to have their members check out the fine products at www.telerik.com.
We want to make our Speaker Bureau the best possible resource for community evangelism. Your comments and concerns are always welcome. Send feedback to spcomm@ineta.org.
Bill Wolff
INETA NorAm Vice President - Speakers Bureau bill.wolff@ineta.org |
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Win a Mobile Smartphone or a Wireless Keyboard!
Help create great Microsoft Certification exams. Take the Beta version of one or more of the following developer exams and you will be automatically entered to win one of two Windows Mobile Smartphones and one of 10 Microsoft Laser Desktop 6000 Keyboards. PLUS, you will get a free exam voucher for taking and passing an exam.
- 71-547 PRO: Designing and Developing Web-based Applications
by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework
- 71-548 PRO: Designing and Developing Windows®-based Applications
by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework
- 71-549 PRO: Designing and Developing Enterprise Applications
by Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/offers/beta/ for more details.
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Membership |
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 We are excited to bring you speakers for your meetings, boxes of swag, participation in events like our recent Community Launch program, free passes to events like Microsoft MIX06, discounts to events like TechEd 2006, and more. Our Membership monthly user group surveys are part of an effort to better understand you, our membership, so that we can provide better programs and services.
We want to do more for you, but we are at a loss when it comes to paying for more services. Our sponsors tell us they need to know how many people we are reaching on a regular basis and what subjects you are covering that are of interest to your members. Your user group survey information is accumulated with all your fellow INETA user groups and presented as an aggregate. We make no inferences about your specific user group information outside of INETA. Large or small, all INETA user groups are important to us.
We read each one of your survey responses and make them available immediately to your Membership Managers for follow up to your comments made in your survey. If you miss submitting your survey, we become concerned - after all you are our members and we are concerned if we don't hear from you regularly!
We have received tremendous positive feedback so far indicating from our user group leaders that they deeply appreciate our interest in their meetings and how we can obtain more information regularly about your membership and topics of interest. Of course this is just one method of communication with you - our Membership Managers are always there to assist you first with anything INETA!
It is quite common for membership organizations like INETA to require that their member groups submit basic membership, meeting attendance numbers, and some general demographics. For INETA, this information has been collected for years in all parts of the world except in the US and Canada. For our continuing internal understanding and sponsorship benefits it is essential
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that we quantify our membership regularly, thus to best serve our membership. We designed our survey to not be a burden on you, since we all volunteer and we appreciate your time and efforts - the survey should take just a couple of minutes or less! We are also striving to make our surveys easier to submit -- you will see those changes in the future.
You can't win unless you play! Make sure to submit your monthly surveys! We are looking into providing some incentives for your feedback, but we also hope that you will participate with us without either a stick or a carrot being paramount in our membership arrangement. To provide you incentives we need hard numbers, so we are in a chicken and egg situation. Stay tuned for updates about this.
Remember, you are an INETA member user group all the times, not just when you receive a free speaker from our Speaker Bureau or a box of swag. We very much want you and your independent user group to remain members and submitting your monthly survey is a requirement of continued membership.
About the middle of each month, you will receive an e-mail announcing that the current monthly survey is open and ready for you. It will stay open until the seventh of the next month for your convenience. We won't hound you with reminders. Make sure your user group leader and e-mail address is up to date on your page of our INETA web site, so you won't miss your messages.
For any questions or comments, please contact your Membership Manager. Your Membership Manager and I along with all of INETA are all volunteers and just as you are, we are all working for the benefit of our members. Thank you for participating with us and remember -- You can't win unless you play! Make sure to submit your monthly surveys!
Chris Wallace
INETA NorAm Vice President - Membership chris.wallace@ineta.org
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For a limited time, you can get a free second chance to pass your Microsoft Certification exam.
Register now at www.microsoft.com/learning/2ndshot
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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! We also welcome your feedback on this newsletter. Contact us at: newsletter@ineta.org.
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| Copyright 2006 by
INETA |
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President's Corner
