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In This Issue
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President's Note
Nominations
HDC06
Bring a Buddy
Speaker's Corner
Tulsa Techfest
Editor's Note
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Sponsors
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Microsoft


Telerik

InnerWorkings
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 Happenings Around INETA North America (NorAm)

Chris Pels In an accompanying article we are soliciting nominees for positions on the INETA NorAm Board of Directors. This is the first time the nomination process is open to any user group leader of an INETA registered user group in North America (United States and Canada). This change is part of an effort to provide our membership with the opportunity to have a voice in how INETA is run and what benefits and services are provided to our members, you the user group leaders and members.

There is no doubt that being a Board members requires a significant time commitment, but the people you meet from around the United States and Canada provide valuable insights into user groups around the country. Since INETA is a not-for-profit corporation, you also get experience in business structure, operations, and decision making that can be valuable in your career. Last but certainly not least is you get to give back to the community of fellow developers which is what INETA is all about.

So look over the positions and nominate someone you feel could contribute to the developer community or get someone to nominate you.

We continue to need volunteers to assist in the Marketing, Sponsorship, and Technology/Web Site areas for INETA North America. If you have time and are interested please contact our Administrative Director, Nancy Mesquita.

Chris Pels, President, INETA NorAm chris.pels@ineta.org
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 Nominate Someone for the INETA North America Board of Directors
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Elections are being held for the INETA NorAm Board of Directors in mid-March. From now through February 15, 2007 any user group leader of an INETA registered user group in the United States and Canada can nominate an individual for a Board position. The nominee can be any member of the developer community and does not have to be a user group leader. Experience and familiarity with the operation and needs of the user group community is beneficial. You cannot nominate yourself, but any other user group leader may, so get someone to nominate you.

All positions are a 2-year term running from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2009. Nominees must reside in the United States or Canada. Nominations are being accepted for the following positions:
  • President: Provide strategic direction, oversee business operations, interface with other worldwide regions, ensure business and project goals are being met.
  • Vice President: Assist the President with strategic planning, administrative operations, and project management.
  • Secretary: Maintain all corporate records, contracts, and oversee the election process.
  • Treasurer: Oversee financial and accounting including bookkeeping, budgeting, tax returns, and financial reporting.
  • Vice President of Community Activities: Oversee projects related to the user group community like INETA Live and regional user group leader summits.
  • Vice President of Marketing: Provide marketing and communication support for projects and business operations.
  • Vice President of Membership: Oversee individual and user group membership management including application approval and project related to increasing and maintaining quality members.
  • Vice President of Speakers: Oversee the allocation and logistics of the INETA Speakers program.
  • Vice President of Technology: Provide technical functionality for business operations and project implementation including infrastructure and the web site.
This is a great opportunity to work with fellow volunteers from user groups around the United States and Canada as well as get some experience running a business that can help you professionally. Furthermore, you can help foster the larger user group community. Board members are required to attend 1-hr weekly conference calls and up to two in-person weekend meetings (all expenses paid) each year.

Questions about a position including a detailed job description can be obtained from Jason Beres, Secretary (noram.secretary@ineta.org). Nominations can also be submitted to Jason and should include:
  • Full name
  • Mailing address
  • Email address
  • Phone #
  • Board position desired
  • Nominee's resume
  • Brief description on why you think the nominee would make a good candidate for the position.
All nominations must be received by midnight Thursday, 2/15/2007.
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 Heartland Developers Conference 2006
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HDC06
In its 3rd year, the Heartland Developers Conference main theme has been Tech-Ed on a budget. The HDC addresses the need for quality content at a discounted price in the Midwest.

.NET is a development framework that caters to small business and many small businesses cannot afford the costs of sending employees across the country to events like Tech-ED or PDC. The loss of productivity can even outweigh the financial burdens, so The Heartland Developers Conference provides most of the same benefits of these larger events on a smaller scale, locally, and for a cost that is small business budget/staffing friendly.

This year, the Heartland Developers Conference ended up with 500+ attendees, in addition to 40+ sponsors and presenters. In order to offer the same quality of speakers as Tech-Ed and PDC, the Heartland Developers Network utilized their INETA speakers bureau resources for the day of the conference. Additionally, many local sponsors love the event as larger national conferences do not make sense for their marketing dollar and the Heartland Developers Conference provides them awesome exposure in their business community.

This year the Heartland Developers Conference featured a developer's lounge where attendees could engage with speakers informally and check out the many sponsors of the event. The Pod cast Studio was also set up in the developer's lounge where speakers were interviewed about various .NET topics.

HDC06 The success of the Heartland Developers Conference is built on attendee feedback from previous years. Organizers take the feedback very seriously and use it to get better each year. Joe Olsen of the Heartland Developers network would like to thank all the volunteers, sponsors, speakers, and especially the attendees for making HDC06 the highlight development event of the year for the third time. Putting the Heartland Developers Conference on is a very expensive responsibility to shoulder and each year the development community comes through with great participation and turnout. Without the entire community participating, especially corporate sponsorship, events like HDC would be impossible.

Steven Rockarts
INETA Reporter
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 Bring a Buddy Campaign
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Does size matter when it comes to user groups? It's probably not everyone's top concern when it comes to running their group. However, there are some really good things about a user group getting bigger. A growing user group is an excellent indicator of a healthy user group. A larger user group attracts more speakers and sponsors. There’s also the satisfaction of knowing your hard work is making an ever bigger impact.

So how do you grow your user group? Some user group leaders in the central region of the US have been growing their membership through a unique campaign called Bring a Buddy. Several variations of the campaign exist, but the basic idea is to give members incentive to bring new people to user group meetings.

Jim Holmes, leader of the Dayton .NET Developers Group, used the campaign to increase membership in his user group by 15%. "We've had at least 20 new faces introduced to our group specifically because of this program," said Jim. Jim gave a raffle ticket to each member who brought a new person and a raffle ticket to the new person. Door prizes were awarded at the end of the meeting to winners of the raffle. Jim stated, "Bring a Friend is a good way to get new folks to the meetings, and it's a nice way to thank current members for helping grow our group with other folks who are excited about the whole community thing. Everybody wins."

The Greater Lansing User Group for .NET (GLUGnet) used a slight variation on the same campaign. Instead of having a raffle every meeting, GLUGnet allowed members to accumulate raffle entries for attending members and for bringing new members over a three-month period. "At the end of each three month period, we raffled a large prize to those who participated that quarter," said Joe Kunk, Vice President of GLUGnet. "One quarter, we raffled an MSDN Subscription provided by the MVP program. Another quarter, we raffled a Dell 19" Flat Panel."

Brad Jones, president of the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association, had great success with the campaign. He reports "The Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (IndyNDA) averages around six or seven new members each month. During the three month Bring-A-Buddy campaign we had 52 new attendees (an average of over 17 per month)."

These user groups worked with their local Developer Evangelist to help roll out the campaign. Developer Evangelists are Microsoft employees who support the developer community thru programs such as .NET user groups. "Helping increase the attendance of .NET User Groups is an important part of what we do to support the developer community," said Drew Robbins, Developer Evangelist for the Heartland District (MI, OH, KY, and TN). If you are interested in rolling out this campaign, Drew said to "reach out to your local Developer Evangelist to help drive awareness of your group and provide some cool door prizes for these unique programs."
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 Speaker's Corner with Dan Wahlin
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Dan Wahlin Julia Lerman catchs up with INETA Speaker, Dan Wahlin, who lives just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Dan has been in the INETA Speaker Bureau since INETA began.

We hear you have musical talents, play in a band, and even have a song dedicated to .NET! Do tell!

"Musical talents" is quite subjective, but I have fun with music. I haven't had a band for a long time but may put something together one of these days if I get the time. I have made time to write and record two new songs recently ("Reality" and "No Shame in Crying") that were a lot of fun and got me back into the world of digital recording, V-Synths and all that fun stuff. Using the digital recording software out there can be challenging. There are a million things you can do with them and a billion plugins that have to be learned as well.

As far as the .NET song, my good friend Spike Xavier and I wrote and recorded a song called "No More DLL Hell" since we thought it would be a fun experiment. We carpool everyday to work and came up with the song idea while driving one day. Those that listen to the song definitely need to have the words handy since Spike can belt it out with the best of them. Fortunately, my neighbors didn't call the police on us while we were recording.

Do you think you were born a geek or was there a turning point in your life that made you this way?

Depending on who you ask they may say I was born a geek. When I was around 12 years old my Grandpa bought us an Apple IIc computer and I played around with some basic stuff there and played with the good old TRS-80's in high school. But, I spent most of my time in high school and college studying, playing sports and playing around with writing and recording music. Once I realized a career in professional sports or music just wasn't going to happen, I morphed into a geek for sure.

What are your favorite .NET technologies to work with and to present on?

I have a lot of favorites these days, but I really enjoy XML and Web Services technologies since they can be used with so many different things. ASP.NET AJAX obviously has great ties into Web Services, WPF and WPF/E uses XAML and RSS is all the rage these days. I generally spend most of my time working with ASP.NET technologies such as controls, AJAX, ASMX Web Services/WCF integration and others. I've spent a lot of time playing around with WPF/E lately as well and like it since it’s based on XML concepts.

As far as presenting, I enjoy presenting on a variety of technologies from ADO.NET to XML to ASP.NET AJAX. As long as the audience is interested in the topic, I'm willing to present.

What do you do for fun when you aren't programming?

I still enjoy playing sports although I'll have to admit I'm getting old and out of shape. My wife and two boys go play basketball at the park and I play against various teenagers from time to time. My Dad ran a golf course in Pinetop, Arizona since I was a little kid so I’ve always liked to play golf. I also like to ski. My family goes up to Pinetop quite a bit and we ski at Sunrise Ski Park or head to Utah. In addition to those things, I also like to go quadding (4-wheeling) up in the mountains whenever time permits.

What do you do for your "day job"?

For the past 6 years I ran my own consulting company but due to the travel and time away from my family decided to settle down and stay home more. I now work for a great company in Phoenix called Interface Technical Training where I write training courses and provide corporate training to people over the Internet and in a classroom environment. When I'm not training, the company is really good about giving time for "real world" experience so I spend my free time researching and working on projects to keep sharp.

This is your big chance to correct the common mispronunciation of your last name...

Yeah, people definitely don't say it properly until they hear me say it. It's officially pronounced "Wahleen". Think of a wall leaning and that's how it's said.
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 Upcoming INETA Speakers Bureau Events
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User GroupLocationSpeakerDate
Nashville Visual Studio .NET User GroupNashville, TNJuval Lowy1/9/07
TRINUG (Triangle Net User Group)Research Triangle Park, NCJuval Lowy1/10/07
Edmonton .NET User GroupEdmonton, CanadaMiguel Castro1/15/07
Fox Valley .NET User GroupAppleton, WIRobert Green1/16/07
Montreal Microsoft .NET Architecture User GroupMontreal, CanadaScott Cate1/16/07
Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG)Southfield, MIJoel Semeniuk1/17/07
Chippewa Valley .NET User Group (CVNUG)Eua Claire, WIRobert Green1/17/07
Philly .NET User GroupMalvern, PAScott Cate1/17/07
Denver Visual Studio User GroupDenver, CORocky Lhotka1/22/07
Boulder .NET User GroupBoulder, CORocky Lhotka1/23/07
Dallas ASP.NETIrvine, TXPatrick Hynds1/23/07
Dallas C# Programming SigIrvine, TXDan Wahlin2/1/07
New Mexico .NET User GroupAlbuquerque, NMRob Howard2/1/07
Central Maryland ASP ProfessionalsColumbia, MDChris Kinsman2/6/07
Northwestern Arkansas .NET User Group (NWADNUG)Fayetteville, ARWally McClure2/6/07
Iowa .NET User GroupDes Moines, IABilly Hollis2/7/07
Houston .NET User GroupHouston, TXChris Menegay2/8/07
Chicago .NET User Group (Day of .NET)Downers Grove, ILKathleen Dollard2/10/07
Denver Visual Studio User GroupDenver, COMichele Leroux Bustamante2/26/07
Boulder .NET User GroupBoulder, COMichele Leroux Bustamante2/27/07
Portland Area .NET User GroupPortland, ORKeith Pleas2/28/07
Visit our live RSS feed of Speakers Bureau Events!
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 Tulsa TechFest 2006
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On October 14th, 2006, the Tulsa Developers .NET in partnership with several other regional user groups (NorthWest Arkansas DNUG, Wichita DNUG, Dallas DNUG, Dallas DNNDNUG, Tulsa SQL Server, Tulsa SharePoint Interest Group, Tulsa Java Developers, and more) made history, with the first annual Tulsa TechFest.

The event was the largest one-day event that we are aware of. With over 60 speakers presenting on 20 tracks of 6 sessions throughout the day, with 120 1 hour presentations planned and only one agreeably cancelled (the DNN track presentation during DNN's creator Shaun Walker's keynote presentation).

Here are just a few of the speakers who helped make the event a such a huge success: The complete list can still be viewed on the Speakers page of the site.

The topics covered included full 6 session tracks on: Enterprise Architecture, .NET 3.0,(WinFX) - WCF, WF and WPF, Visual Studio Team System, Microsoft Office SharePoint Services, SQL Server, DotNetNuke, Open Source, Test Driven Development TDD / Agile, AJAX/Atlas, Patterns, Web Development Track 1 and Track 2, Windows Development, Lots of Extras - Track 1 and Track 2, Exhibitor / Vendor Showcase, Professional / Business Development, IT/Infrastructure/Security and Java/Eclipse.

With 441 attendees registered in advanced and 580+ registered on the website, on the day of the event over 360 people descended on to the Oklahoma State University campus in downtown Tulsa.

.NET ROCKS! - PWOP Productions published their LIVE interviews from Tulsa TechFest 2006 on 11/8/2006!

Giovanni Gallucci from TheAgencyBlog.com and MediaSwamp.com covered the event and publishing 444 photos on flikr! Go check 'em out! Podcasts and videos coming!

Did we start a trend? J. Michael Palermo IV blogged about TechFest 2006 - Santa Fe that started on Nov 14th 2006 and traveled to Phoenix, AZ on Nov 15th 2006!

The feedback from attendees, speakers, sponsors and media has been overwhelmingly positive and expressed great interest in what we plan to do next year to top this year's event.

David Walker
President, Tulsa .Net User Group
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 Windows Mobile Offers for INETA Members
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 Free Copy of Microsoft Office Professional 2007
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You are invited to participate in this unique experience, featuring the Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 Microsoft© Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. You will be able to:
  • Attend breakout sessions for developers and IT professionals
  • Test-drive the products and evaluate their functionality
  • Network with peers, Microsoft, and local technology partners
  • Ask the experts
  • Receive valuable resources to help you take full advantage of this new software
See what Microsoft can do for your business. Evaluate new software solutions and see how to:
  • Build security-enhanced applications and help ensure reliability
  • Create engaging, visually stunning, and highly differentiated user interfaces to make applications more usable and productive
  • Build applications that connect users to each other and to their data, allowing them to visualize, share, and act on information
Click here to find a launch event in your area.
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 From the Editor
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Scott Spradlin You have an advocate in your corner that wants to see your user group grow! Microsoft has Developer Evangelists assigned to all parts of the country. (Read the "Bring a Buddy Campaign" article above.) These individuals can be a great resource for your user group. If you don't know who your DE is, contact your INETA membership manager and they can introduce you.

One of the things you can easily do to grow is make sure your user group has a presence at local Microsoft events including launch events, TechNet events, and MSDN events. Most of the coordinators of those events will let you make a quick statement in front of the group or submit a slide to include in the presentation or even host a table where you can provide marketing materials. Again, contact your DE for assistance - they are there to help you!

Scott Spradlin, Vice President - Marketing, INETA NorAm scott.spradlin@ineta.org


Archived newsletters are available on the INETA website at www.ineta.org/newsletters.
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Copyright 2007 by INETA
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