In September, we saw our second Regional Community Leadership Summit take place since June, marking yet another big month for INETA. These events represent the fantastic potential that exists when great minds and spirits from our community come together in a single room to share experiences and goals. More details on this event can be found below.

As President, I am always interested in hearing from our members. So if you have any suggestions on things we are doing well, things we can improve or areas you would like us to discuss, please fill out the form located at http://www.wedevelop.net/inetafeedback.aspx to let us know. All information submitted via the form will be confidential and shared only with key INETA representatives.

As we continue the process of building up our services and programs to support our growing community, we are continuously looking for new team members to help us in our various endeavors. Understanding that availability for volunteer work may vary amongst many of you, we appreciate all levels of involvement. For some this might include a permanent role in one of our teams such as Marketing, Technology or Community Activities. For others, it may be writing a short article for our newsletter or website covering an important topic or exciting event in your area. To learn more about how you can get involved with our various divisions, teams and programs, please email noram.volunteers@ineta.org. We would love to hear from you!

Amanda Murphy
President, INETA NorAm
amanda.murphy@ineta.org
St. John's .NET User Group
INETA - The Face of .NET

Leadership team members from Southern California .NET user groups came together at Quickstart in Irvine to share ideas and resources on September 29th. The day's agenda consisted of a series of workshops that included moderated discussions in key subject areas including:

• Running a User Group
• Effective Content and Presentations
• User Group Promotion
• Developing Partnerships
• Future of User Groups

Through Community Leadership Summit events like this, INETA is working to gather resources and best practices from the community, and to share them with others around the world.

The INETA Live team will be sharing key content from these events as a resource for the community. Future summits will continue to build on this knowledge base and expand the sharing of resources.

Rob Zelt
VP Community Activities, INETA NorAm
rob.zelt@ineta.org
Triangle .NET User Group
INETA - The Face of .NET

A couple of months ago we sent a notice to all of the North American user group leaders about Verio's offer for free web sites. We reminded you again last month and, yes, the offer still stands for all INETA members to get free web sites! As User group leaders, you will be the contact point for your folks who wish to take advantage of this tremendous offer. You will, in turn, contact Verio to get things set up for them.

Verio's EHS (Educational Hosting Services) program provides free Microsoft Windows websites to Developers and Designers to promote Microsoft Windows-based Hosting software and technologies. The Free services will be available through January 30, 2010. This hard to beat offer is for User Group Members. Interested members must contact their User Group Leader to receive a free website. No credit card is required. Verio's standard usage and privacy policies apply.

As an INETA Platinum sponsor, Verio comes to us as a hosting services provider with over 500,000 hosting customers worldwide and a subsidiary of NTT Communications. Started in 1996 and headquartered in Denver Colorado, Verio is a pioneer in Microsoft Windows-based Hosting and a leader in Windows-based resource virtualization and hosting technology.

The INETA NorAm Board of Directors is expanding to include one (1) additional member for a total of 10 people. The new Board position will be focused on sponsorship for the organization. Responsibilities will include:

• Develop and maintain a sponsorship plan for raising funds to allow INETA to provide the benefits and services to its members.
• Work with individuals responsible for different aspects of the organization to determine sponsorship needs.
• Work with the Treasurer during budget planning and monitoring to map sponsorship efforts to budgetary needs.
• Develop plans to recruit new sponsors within the context of overall marketing efforts.
• Recruit new sponsors.
• Maintain relationships with existing sponsors, ensuring sponsor requirements are met.
• Serve as a Board member in fulfilling general duties in strategic planning and the running of the corporation.

General commitment is around 15-20 hours/month with regular bi-weekly Board conference calls and two expense-paid in-person weekend meetings per year.

Any INETA user group leader or existing Board member is qualified to submit a nomination. Nominations including the person's name, email address, phone number, description of why they would be a good candidate for the position, and any supporting materials should be sent to noram.secretary@ineta.org no later than 12:00 EDT Monday 11/5/2007. Ballots will be distributed to existing Board members on Thu 11/8/2007, returned by Monday, 11/12/2007, and all candidates notified shortly thereafter. Please refer any questions to noram.secretary@ineta.org

Later this fall we will be launching an exciting new project called INETA Live. Without spoiling the surprise, let's just say it's going to be all about you, the INETA Community. For more information, please stay tuned to http://live.ineta.org.

We are looking for volunteers to join our team, and help us build out this exciting project. If you are interested in contributing, please contact us at noram.live@ineta.org

Rob Zelt
VP Community Activities, INETA NorAm
rob.zelt@ineta.org
Triangle .NET User Group
INETA - The Face of .NET

In response to last month's request for information on what is happening other than lectures, Dan Wygant (http://Dan.Wygant.org) of the Huntsville Al users group volunteered his group's very positive experiences. (Ed)

With our group in great shape, it was now time to take our dotNet community to the next level. Since our membership seemed to be notably interested in networking opportunities, it seemed natural to have a few 'Special Interest Groups' (SIGs). The idea for a VS.NET programmers' SIG came from the Greater New Orleans .Net User Group (GNONUG) where they hold their meetings nearly every week to network and solve problems. This enables a much higher level of collaboration and experience sharing among the members.

Now Huntsville's HowToVS.NET SIG meets once a week for a working lunch between 11:30-12:30 at a local Aroma's coffee shop. The goal of the SIG is to get members to collaborate in solving a .NET problem at each meeting. It's hard not to network, the point being working toward more one-to-one collaborations. A simple problem or question usually leads to a discussion on best practices, exploration of some new software, a new website or bleeding edge technologies. Some examples include using GIS on a Blackberry with GPS, using the new Ajax Control Toolkit and doing volunteer web-work for the MadisonCountyWeather.com site.

Some members are more experienced than others, but when a question is asked everyone benefits. The standard meetings and presentations are excellent resources to introduce members to new technologies. However, the SIG brings together a much smaller set of members who seek ever more answers and experience.

Dan Wygant
Huntsville Alabama VS.NET User Group

OnMicrosoft is a new video podcast series brought to you by Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Cisco Press and InformIT -- imprints of Pearson Education.

Each week they will talk to some of the IT Pro and Developer community's leading experts about a wide range of programming, systems, and software issues. Their video interviews include talks with Microsoft's Program Manager on the .NET Framework, Brad Abrams; Connected Systems Division Architect at Microsoft, Chris Anderson; Wintellect Co-Founder Jeff Prosise, and Group Product Manager at Microsoft, Brian Goldfarb. With discussions on topics including ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, PowerShell WPF, and SharePoint, we have something for professionals working in every part of the industry.

Canadian User Group Leaders Take Note!

Once again, DevTeach is hosting the Canadian User Group Leader summit on November 26th, 2007. This event will be held at the Vancouver Sheraton Wall Center. All Canadian User Group Leaders and Regional Directors are invited and encouraged to attend. This will be the perfect opportunity to share experiences and ideas for our community.

Attending the User Group Summit will give you a free registration to DevTeach 2007. We would like to thank MSDN Canada for making this event possible. For complete details, visit the User Group Rebate page for DevTeach at http://www.devteach.com/UserGroupRebate.aspx.

John Hopkins continues his multi-part series on organizing a conference.

You're going to need a lot of help pulling off your event, so the recruiting of volunteers to carry out the multitude of tasks you'll be facing needs to happen as soon as you make the decision to hold your event. While you may not need an army of volunteers, an ideal event team would include, at a minimum, coordinators to handle speakers, sponsors, registration, and finances.

As mentioned in last month's article, a call for speakers should be announced as soon as the date and location are chosen. The call for speakers can initially be an email to a few select people. Look at your user group's roster of speakers for the last couple of years. This list of potential speakers will undoubtedly include some locals who will be glad to speak at your conference. The speaker coordinator should handle the publication of the call for speakers, and ask for session 'abstracts' that consist of a title, brief description, and intended audience (i.e. level 100, 200, 300, or novice, intermediate or expert). The speaker coordinator should also be tasked with evaluating the submitted abstracts (with help from the rest of the event team) and arranging of the selected session into tracks and time slots. Finally the speaker coordinator should take responsibility of notifying speakers, who were selected for the conference, as well as communicating when and where to show up, and gathering slide decks and sample code to provide to your attendees after the event is over.

If you're planning on having sponsors help defray the costs for your event, you'll need someone dedicated to recruiting sponsors. The sponsor coordinator should be responsible for soliciting and securing sponsorships, following up with sponsors to make sure they fulfill their commitment to your event and, in the event that you offer your sponsors some exhibit space at the event itself, making sure that the sponsor's booth gets set up and the sponsor has everything they need.

You'll need a treasurer to handle the inflow and outflow of funds related to your event. The treasurer will be responsible for depositing checks from sponsors and paying vendors, and reporting financial status to the rest of the team. The treasurer should also play a role in budgeting for the event.

You will also want a registration coordinator, who will take responsibility for putting together a method of allowing your attendees to register for the event. The registration coordinator will also be responsible for handling the on-site check-in of attendees on the day of the event.

You may want to consider adding a communications coordinator to your team as well, to handle tasks such as setup and maintenance of the event website and email blasts to attendees. On the day of the event you'll want plenty of hands to help out with attendee check-in, food, setting up vendor displays, directions, and general information among other things. It's safe to say you can never have enough volunteers to help with the running of the event.

John T. Hopkins
Marketing Committee, INETA NorAm
president@migang.org
Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group
INETA - The Face of .NET

We have recently replaced all our old email addresses for INETA NorAm with the simplified and standardized the email addresses below. Please use these email aliases if you need to contact us.

Free Stuff Here! Is that why you started your own user group and, later, INETA?  As a user group leader who joined INETA in its first couple of years I have certainly been "basking" in the free stuff provided by INETA. Joining INETA made running my user group much easier.  I can get top notch speakers who would otherwise cost hundreds or even thousands to see at their normal venues (i.e., Tech Ed, V-Bits or as consultants come to call.)  I get "care packages" from various vendors and even Code Zone to entice current members and new members alike.  I meet and correspond with the biggest names in .NET development.

When I really think about it, this isn't much different than why I'm involved in the Basement Club I get access to the best speakers in the country; I get freebies and sponsorships from local companies AND I have access to some of the best .NET talent around. Volunteering for INETA has just extended my user group from the Chicago to North America.  In the end, I get the most out of the knowledge Microsoft and its .NET partners want to give us. Volunteering, in essence, does mean more FREE STUFF well beyond the swag provided by our sponsors.  Thinking about getting more FREE STUFF?  Think about volunteering. I'll bet you that the editor who follows me next month will be a person who has also benefited from FREE STUFF.  ;-)

So what are you waiting for? Come get your FREE STUFF HERE!

Ralph Rivas
Asst VP of Marketing, INETA NorAm
noram.marketing@ineta.org
Dot Net Basement Club, Northern Illinois Chapter
INETA - The Face of .NET