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Why are Developers a Community? |
Many times you hear the term developer community associated with
our profession. What does this mean? The word community
originated in 1375 from the Latin communis, meaning "common,
public, shared by all or many". We all have writing code of
one type or another and owning computers in common. Is this why we are a
community? This does provide one component of a community which is a
shared interest or knowledge. The term community also suggests a general
sense of altruism, reciprocity, and beneficence that comes from working
together. Members of the community build relationships and affiliations
from which they can learn from one another, improving themselves and
those they interact with in the profession.
User groups, which are the focus of INETA, are in fact sub-communities
within the larger developer community. I've always perceived the strong
sense of community in my own local user group in Boston. However, it was not until I
got involved in INETA and had the opportunity to attend other user group
meetings and meet other user group members that I truly understood the
global nature of this
special attribute of our profession. Over the past several years
I've met user group leaders and members from around the world,
several times where we did not speak the same language. There
has always been an instant sense of belonging to the same community
which is the less tangible, but very strong sense of community that is pervasive throughout
our profession.
It was this sense of community that drove me to join INETA as a
volunteer over four years ago. During the past two years I had the
pleasure of serving as President of INETA North America and have met
many fellow members of our global community. INETA plays an important
role in bringing this global developer community together and I am glad
to have been able to facilitate that goal while working with a great
group of fellow volunteers.
Starting July 1st Amanda Murphy from Newfoundland, Canada takes the
reins as President. I have the utmost confidence Amanda will do a great
job leading the organization. During the past two years we have worked
together as fellow Board members on many projects and she has
demonstrated many attributes that will enable her to do a great job
leading the organization. I will continue to serve on the Board as
Secretary.
Our sincere thanks to outgoing Board members Jason Beres, Sara Faatz,
Matt Ranlett, Brendon Schwartz, Scott Spradlin, and Bill Wolff for their time and
effort on the INETA NorAm Board over the past two years. Bill, Jason and Sara
have been involved with INETA since its inception and their experience
will be missed. Best wishes to them all in their professional and
personal lives!
Thanks for the opportunity to serve as your President and work with so
many passionate volunteers to strengthen our community. We have a
special profession. Enjoy it!
Chris Pels, President, INETA NorAm chris.pels@ineta.org
Boston .NET User Group
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INETA Winners at TechEd 2007 |
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In the INETA booth at TechEd 2007, attendees could sign up for a raffle. Each of the daily winners received a $100.00 gift certificate from Best Buy for themselves PLUS a pizza party for their user group! At the Birds of a Feather session, one winner received a new Zune! Plus, on the last day, Scott Lock won a Zune for his user group. Congratulations to all of the winners!
Monday, June 4th
Thanh Nguyen
Orange County C# Developers Group
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Tuesday, June 5th
Steward Johnston
Santa Barbara .NET Developers Group
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Tuesday, June 5th BoF Zune Winner
Randy Robertson
Wake Technical Community College
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Wednesday, June 6th
Vijay Chettiar
Cincinnati .NET User Group
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INETA Welcomes Verio as Platinum Sponsor |
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| The INETA team and the Verio team at the Verio booth at TechEd 2007 |
The photo above captures the very apparent partnership of INETA's newest Platnum sponsor, Verio Inc., a leading provider of online business services, hosting and managed solutions
at TechEd 2007 in Orlando. The two teams shared some great moments to begin what will probably be a lasting relationship.
Verio brings some very
tangible benefits to the NorAm members of INETA. Your user group leaders will be receiving individual emails from us in the next couple of weeks
outlining exactly how each and every one of you can take immediate advantage of Verio's offer. Our thanks to Pat Tormey from INETA
and David Kidd from Verio on working out the details of these offers!
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INETA Stays Fresh - Meet the New NorAm Board |
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Starting July 1, 2007, there will be a number of fresh new faces in the INETA Board Room that we thought you should meet. Without further ado, here are your new INETA Board Members for 2007/2008. Please consider volunteering your time to assist these new board members in carrying out their new
roles on the board. Volunteer today by sending email to noram.volunteers@ineta.org.
Morgan Baker
VP INETA NorAm
Morgan is a System Analyst for the National Council on Compensation
Insurance, Inc (NCCI). She is currently lead developer for NCCI's first ASP.NET
2.0 application. As a member of the Enterprise Solutions Committee, Morgan is also involved in setting standards,
approving enterprise components and documenting processes for the organization.
When .NET was introduced, Morgan developed and taught the first C# courses at
Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL as an adjunct professor. She
encouraged students to attend user group meetings where several became involved
in the professional developer community and later found employment. During this
time Morgan became active in the user group community helping organize and run
the South Florida Code Camps, hosting Florida .NET User Group meetings,
volunteering for INETA and became the first INETA VP of Community Activities.
Morgan was instrumental in building the foundation of Community Activities for what has become a very active and successful part of INETA.
Daniel N. Egan
VP Technology
Over the past ten years, Daniel has held a variety of
positions in the information technology and engineering fields. He is President
and CEO of Odyssey Consulting Group, Microsoft MVP - ASP/ASP.NET , MCT and
an MCSD as well as a .NET Insider for the Southern California Region.
In addition to his development work, Daniel teaches a .NET Certification course
at California State University Fullerton as well as serves on its .NET Advisory
board. He is the Co-Founder of the SoCalDotNet Developers Group.
Daniel is a frequent speaker and conference presenter and has written several
articles in addition to being the author of Building Websites
With VB.Net and DotNetNuke 3.0.
To find out more about Daniel, visit either of his blogs, Dot Net Doc (www.DotNetDoc.com),
a .NET and DNN developer resource website built using the Dot Net Nuke
framework, or The Pattern Man (www.ThePatternMan.com) which focuses on Design Patterns in .NET.
Darrell Hawley
VP Marketing
Darrell is a .NET developer working with both web and windows applications.
Currently, he is working in the automotive sector with a team of engineers and
software developers solving complex engineering problems using the .NET
Framework.
During a four year stay at a Farmington Hills, MI advertising company, he
streamlined business processes and acted as the company SQL Server
administrator. He has also worked with Visual Basic 6, Visual Basic for
Applications, VBScript and ASP.
He is actively involved in the Ann Arbor .NET Developers Group, Day of .NET and
CodeMash.
David Walker
VP Speakers Bureau
David has over 15 years experience in application development with over 50% of
that employed as a consultant with companies such as Texaco, Bank of Oklahoma,
Winner Communications and IBM Global Services. In March 2007, he returned
to Winner Communications as Manager of Technical Architecture
and was promoted to Manager of Software Development and Technical
Architecture in June 2007.
He is the President of his own growing consulting business Professional
Business Technologies, Inc. He is the current President of the Tulsa Developers
.NET user group, founder and President of the Tulsa SQL Server Group and Tulsa
Java Developers Group and the Vice-President of the Tulsa SharePoint Interest
Group.
He has been an MCP since 2003 and MCAD and MCSD since 2005.
Rob Zelt
VP Community Activities
Officially the Data Product Manager for The Phone Experts Communications, Rob works as both a
Software Developer and Solutions Architect providing mobile and network based
voice and data communications solutions.
Rob is a Leadership Team member for the Triangle .Net User Group in Raleigh, NC
and an active supporter of the local developer community, he has organized and
presented at Code Camps and user group events on .NET related topics including
Tablet PC, WPF, and WCF.
He maintains an active .NET and technology related blog (www.robzelt.com/blog) sharing
experiences relating to software, technology, and community.
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CodeZone Community Portal |
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As many of you may know Microsoft has developed CodeZone, a community portal, to support and promote community efforts. One valuable aspect of CodeZone is the User Group Experience, built to complement the current user group offerings provided by INETA. One valuable component for user groups is the User Group kit which include books, software and other swag that leaders can use at the user group meetings.
INETA is collaborating with CodeZone to co-sponsor the next kit shipped to user groups and will be including some additional items for INETA user groups. The deadline for User Group Leaders to sign up for the next kit is July 7th, 2007 so visit
www.codezone.com
and register your group for the upcoming kit.
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Upcoming INETA Speakers Bureau Events |
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| User Group | Location | Speaker | Date |
| Little Rock .Net Users Group | Little Rock, AR | Paul Sheriff | 2007-07-12 |
| Tampabay .NET Users Group | Tampa, FL | Miguel Castro | 2007-07-12 |
| Lubbock .NET Users Group | Lubbock, TX | Ken Getz | 2007-07-16 |
| HAL-PC C# SIG | Houston, TX | Ken Getz | 2007-07-17 |
| Toronto Visual Basic User Group | Toronto, ON | Michele Leroux | 2007-07-18 |
| Space Coast Dot Net User Group | Melbourne, FL | Brian Noyes | 2007-07-18 |
| Greater Lansing .NET User Group | East Lansing, MI | Julia Lerman | 2007-07-19 |
| Orlando .NET User Group | Orlando, FL | Brian Noyes | 2007-07-19 |
| St. Louis .NET User Group | St. Louis, MO | Scott Cate | 2007-07-30 |
| Central California .Net User Group | Fresno, CA | Kathleen Dollard | 2007-08-08 |
| San Diego SQL Server User Group | San Diego, CA | Bill Vaughn | 2007-08-15 |
| Central Pennsylvania .NET Users Group | Harrisburg, PA | Sahil Malik | 2007-08-21 |
| Greenville Spartanburg Enterprise Developer's Guild | Greenville, SC | Les Pinter | 2007-08-21 |
| Capital Area .Net Users Group | Vienna, VA | Ken Spencer | 2007-08-28 |
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From the Editor |
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Yes, it's been a wonderful experience serving as the VP of Marketing. I'm excited to pass the position on to Darrell Hawley, who will bring a fresh
new outlook and wonderful ideas into the position. As always, if you are interested in helping Darrell out on the Marketing team, don't be afraid
to volunteer now.
I've volunteered to help Pat Tormey out on the sponsorship team. Pat has done a wonderful job forming that team and getting it in
motion. Our collective thanks to him for serving in that role! Very soon, each of you will be benefiting as a result of Pat's efforts. I'll get
to share in some of the joy of telling you about those things in the coming months as they become finalized.
Our thanks also to Microsoft for their continued sponsorship and support. Specificially, I'd like to recognize Trisha Lacey for her contributions this
year in supporting the developer community! Trisha, we thank you for your work and what you've done on our behalf. Our best to you in this
new chapter of your life. We look forward to the future!
And to my fellow board members, it's been a great time serving along side you these last two years. Michael, maybe that dog did hunt after all!
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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President's Note
