As we all prepare for the upcoming month, I would like to wish everyone the happiest holidays and hope that you take some time to enjoy time with family and friends. I also would like to take a moment to thank each and every member of our wonderful community for all the hard work that you dedicate to making user groups across North America and the rest of the world successful.

2008 will feature a number of new programs and services for user groups that will be based specifically on the feedback and suggestions we received from you. Programs such as Regional Leadership Summits and Membership Mentors provide us with an excellent venue to hear great suggestions from you, our membership.  So therefore we look forward to continuing this valuable program into the new year and meeting more of you face to face.

So please take some time to enjoy the holiday season for all it has to offer and we look forward to strengthening our relationship and services to you in the new year.

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

We would like to announce the new release of the Codezone User Group Experience at Codezone.com! This release includes event promotion opportunities, event management and reporting functionality, and improved search for speakers and sponsors.  With this release, you can also designate more than one person as the leader of the group.

INETA continues to be involved with Codezone, and we are proud to be the first to announce this functionality to our user group leaders and hope that it will help create a better user group experience for you. You should also be contacted shortly by your local Developer Evangelist with information about these new Codezone features. Additionally, the new UG kit cycle opened on the 12th, so watch for that announcement from Codezone. Here is a quick glimpse at what is new:

• Event Promotion - Enter your upcoming UG events in Codezone to leverage marketing opportunities in the MSDN Flash, MSDN Online and also the 3 ^rd party event promotion site, eventful.com.
• Improved speaker and sponsor search - When you set up your event in Codezone, you can now more easily search for speakers and sponsors for that event.  Watch for new speakers and sponsors to join Codezone in the months to come!
• UG leader and co-leader designations - now you can have more than one person registered as the leader of your group - a feature many of you asked for.
• Event Management and Reporting - With the new functionality, you can manage your membership, send out meeting invites, and track attendance.  This is a big new feature, and ideally we would like to pilot this with 10-15 groups to start.  If your group is interested in being part of the pilot, please let Trisha Cardell (previously Lacey) know at tlacey@microsoft.com

If your group isn't registered on Codezone, please go out and sign up today.  If you are part of Codezone already, just watch for the kit announcement and be sure to order your next kit, and leverage the new features listed above.

If you have any questions please contact Rob Zelt of the INETA Community Activities at noram.communityactivities@ineta.org

Once again this month INETA will be including special bonus content for participating INETA user groups!

Enjoy using the new functionality,
INETA and Codezone

Several 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 in October 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.

Get a sneak peek at new coding technologies with MSDN Events. Free Admission.

McLean, Virginia is your last chance to get a glimpse of the future of Web development with Visual Studio 2008. On December 18, prepare to power up your Silverlight solutions with AJAX and easy-to-use ASP.NET server controls. Plus, take a sneak peek at Microsoft codename "Astoria," which makes it simple to create and consume Data Services for the Web. Register now before this opportunity passes by.

More Content. More Power

Get ready for a full day of free, live learning - all the resources and content that you've come to expect from MSDN Events - plus more tips, tools, and examples with MSDN Events Power Series. These brand-new sessions plug you in to the absolute latest technical content for developers. You'll leave with fresh ideas, deeper community contacts and hands-on ways to tame even your toughest coding challenges. Register today for the MSDN Events Power Series and spend the day with us!

Leadership team members from Canadian user groups came together at DevTeach in Vancouver, Canada to share ideas and resources on November 26th. Through Community Leadership Summit events like this, INETA continues 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. Look for a leadership summit near you.

User Group leaders at the summit participated in a 'find the Membership Mentor' contest for a chance to win an Xbox 360. Scott Spradlin, INETA NorAm Sponsorship Director awards the prize to Roy Drenker from the Winnipeg .NET Users Group, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

John Hopkins continues his series on organizing a conference with a discussion on handling sponsors.

As discussed previously, many developer and user conferences tend to be free of charge for attendees. Free of charge, however, does not necessarily mean free to plan. You will have expenses for food, the venue, logo'd items and printed materials. This is where sponsors come in. A quality stable of sponsors is key to running a first-class event.

The first step in recruiting sponsors is to decide what you want from them. Do you need cash, giveaway items, or exposure? Whatever you decide, you'll need to communicate this to potential sponsors in the form of a prospectus. Your prospectus will give potential sponsors all the information they need to make an informed decision. You should include such information as date, time, place, maybe some statistics on your audience. You'll also include details on what your sponsors can expect in return for their donation. It is best to offer several 'levels' of sponsorship to accommodate varying degrees of commitment including a level that only requires donation of goods or services such as software licenses, books or other non-cash items.

So what will entice a sponsor to support your event? You'll have to put yourself in the shoes of a marketing person. Generally, a sponsor will be interested in one of two outcomes: sell more of something or make contact with new people. Tool vendors, publishers and recruiting firms are probably your best bet.

Make sure you provide your sponsor with some documentation of their sponsorship. An invoice done with Word or Excel will do. Also make sure you follow up with them if they don't fulfill their commitment to your event. You'll need cash-in-hand as soon as possible to make sure you can pay for your event. You'll also need to make sure you have the items you need for giveaways well in advance.

Depending on what you negotiated with your sponsor, you may have to make accommodations for them on the day of your event. You may need to set aside space for their marketing materials, or you may need to provide them with physical space for tradeshow-style booths (access to power will be a must). Make sure you position your sponsors where the traffic flow will allow them the greatest exposure. It would also be helpful to make sure they have access to power. Also don't forget to include your on-site sponsors in your headcounts for food, t-shirts and handouts. This is a great way to encourage your sponsors to come back to your next event.

After the event, make sure that you thank your sponsors for supporting your event, publicly and privately. A wrap-up blog entry or news item on your event site, along with an email to your sponsor contact will make a positive impression. Make sure you keep them posted on your next event.

Next month, we'll cover promoting your event in the local developer community.

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

While researching new features for the newsletter, I was surprised to find how few user groups actually use RSS feeds - including my own Ann Arbor .NET Developer's Group. Like many of you, RSS is the way I read about - and on some occasions, communicate with - the rest of the world. Because I want to know what INETA is doing, for example, I simply added the INETA Live News Feed. to my favorite RSS feed reader. So, why hasn't our community embraced this technology?

I don't think think the issue is RSS as much as it is web presence. RSS is simply one of many tools that helps facilitate building a presence. Sure employing all of these tools takes a lot of time, but the impact on your group can be huge. Before people can attend your meeting, they have to know about it first.

Because this discussion is so crucial to our collective success, starting in January, the newsletter is going to be taking a hard look at websites and the techniques we can use to make them effective. These articles will come in a variety of formats including website reviews, interviews and discussions of best practices. So, rest up over the Holidays, we have a lot to talk about in 2008.

Darrell Hawley
Vice-President of Marketing, INETA NorAm
darrell.hawley@ineta.org
Ann Arbor .NET Developer's Group
INETA - The Face of .NET