Get to know your user group INETA Membership Mentor - your number one contact for membership assistance with INETA in the USA and Canada!

"Membership Mentors act as advisor, counselor, guide, tutor, teacher, and guru of Membership to our member user group leadership and user groups. Membership Mentors recommend membership of new user groups and membership renewal of current user groups. Membership Mentors make themselves available for personal contact and are outgoing in building and maintaining superior relationships with the user group leadership for all user groups within their INETA Membership territory to strengthen our INETA user group community. Membership Mentors are the center and the essential provider of the interactions with INETA member local user groups, leaders and individuals for Membership services. Membership Mentors are vital to the strength of our community."

Your Membership Mentor is listed below with their home location and their territory. Use noram.membership@ineta.org to contact INETA Membership and we will route your message directly to your personal Membership Mentor.

Chris Wallace
VP Membership Ineta NorAm
Microsoft MVP
chris.wallace@ineta.orgINETA - The Face of .NET

Chris Wallace, Denver, Colorado, USA
United States and Canada - INETA Vice President, Membership

Chris Wallace, of Wallace Business Solutions, Denver, Colorado, is a software consultant in Microsoft technologies, emphasizing Visual Studio in SOA-OOP/N-tier architectures using .NET. He has extensive IT experience working in the US and Europe. His goal is to deliver complete application development solutions to meet real world business needs. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Information Systems, is a private pilot, and is a worldwide adventure traveler. When not solving the world's business problems, he can be found on the slopes of the Colorado Rockies with his Siberian Huskies. Chris has been the Leader of the Denver Visual Studio User Group since March 1996. In July, 2004, he was honored by his user group members with a "Life Time Achievement Award" in tribute to his many years of service to his user group. He is a business and developer technology speaker and a Microsoft MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional). He serves on the INETA Board of Directors as Vice President in charge of all Membership and previously was Chair and Liaison of the INETA User Group Relations Committee.

Andy Beaulieu, Syracuse, New York, USA
Northeast - CT, NJ, NY, MA, RI, ME, NH, VT

Bill Jones Jr., Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Carolinas - NC, SC

Bill Jones Jr., as a Solutions Architect, specializes in software development using .NET, VB.Net, ASP.NET, C# and SQL Server. He is well versed in all phases of the development life cycle - process, class abstraction, data structures, reporting and user interface. In his spare time, Bill founded and continues to lead the Enterprise Developers Guild, the .Net User Group in Charlotte NC with more than 1500 members. He is currently investigating the major impact Language INtegrated Query (LINQ) will have on .NET development in the near future. Bill is delighted to be designated as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual Development - Visual Basic .Net. He has also qualified as a Microsoft Certified Professional in both Visual Basic.Net and C#.

Chris Woodruff, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA
Michigan, Ohio - MI, OH

Chris Woodruff is an Architect in the Development West Practice group at NuSoft Solutions. His work involves integrating new technologies, assisting development teams with architecture designs, and helping with development standards. Chris is the Vice President of the West Michigan .NET User Group and also is an Advisory Council Member at Capella University for the External Information Technology Advisory Council. In addition, Chris volunteers his time to assist in coordinating several developer community events, including the West Michigan Day of .NET, the Day of .NET in Ann Arbor and CodeMash. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at Michigan State University. In his spare time, Chris coaches his sons sporting teams and plays poker.

D'Arcy Lussier, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Great Plains Canada - AB, MB, SK, NT, NU

D'Arcy Lussier, as part of the emerging Canadian Developer Community 2.0, has been an active member of the developer community for many years. In addition to being part of the leadership for the Winnipeg .NET User Group, he has organized various user group tours which saw Roy Osherove, Jean-Paul Boodhoo, and Jean-Luc David among others, make their way across central Canada for the benefit of Canadian user groups. In addition to his community efforts, D'Arcy holds an MCSD and has been developing with .NET since the initial beta. His focus over the last six years has been on web development with ASP.NET. He has presented at the Winnipeg .NET User Group, the Calgary Code Camp, and the Twin Cities Code Camp on ASP.NET.

Dan Wygant, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
Gulf Coast - AL, LA, MS

Dan Wygant is the founder of HUNTUG.org (HUntsville New Technology Users Group), VSdotNetUG.org (Huntsville VS.Net Users Group), and HowToVS.NET, all in Huntsville, Alabama with over 2,000 members. He is the INETA Assistant Vice President of the Membership Division, founding Board of Directors member of Culminis and a senior software consultant for over 22 years. After writing for Window NT Magazine, Editor Mark Smith suggested that Dan start an early Windows NT users group, which became the HUntsville New Technology Users Group (HUNTUG) in May 1998. In early 2002 he was chosen to participate in the IT Pro Advisory Council (now known as Cuminis), to help Microsoft build a support channel for IT Pro users groups such as HUNTUG. Visual Studio and INETA were born in early 2002 and in June 2002 Dan started the Huntsville VS.Net Users Group. He soon became a vital Membership Division user group volunteer while also sitting on the Board of Directors of Cuminis. With the help of Culminis and INETA, HUNTUG has grown to over 2000 members, up from only about 300 back in early 2002. HUNTUG's mission and goal has been to educate local computer systems specialists on all of the new Microsoft technologies, without having to travel to a major city and without membership dues. Working with local user groups, the IT Pro Advisory Council (Culminis), and Microsoft's Windows Server team lead to Dan's MVP award for Windows Server Customer Experience.

David Hoerster, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Pennsylvania - PA

David Hoerster, who has been working with the Microsoft .NET Framework since the early 1.0 betas, is CIBER's Microsoft Practice Director in Pittsburgh, and has worked for CIBER, a pure-play software consulting company, since 2003. Prior to that, David has worked for several software product development companies in the role of software engineer and architect and has over 15 years of industry experience. David is also owner of AgileWays, a technology services firm specializing in providing software architecture, design and development solutions based upon Microsoft technologies. David is the co-chair of the Pittsburgh .NET User's Group (PGHDOTNET) and is also a frequent speaker at Pittsburgh's user group and code camp events. As co-chair of PGHDOTNET, David's responsibilities include recruiting new members to the group, helping with the logistics of the events, and also encouraging community participation by recruiting members to speak at the regular meetings. For Pittsburgh's Code Camp events, David has been a track coordinator where he was responsible for recruiting speakers, determining appropriate track topics, helping with planning and logistics and assisting with the overall planning of the event. He has also been a frequent speaker at Philadelphia's Code Camps, where his presentations have included topics on Microsoft BizTalk Server and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

Dennis J. Bottjer, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
Oklahoma, Northern Texas - OK, Northern TX

Dennis J. Bottjer is a Software Solutions Architect, for Microsoft Gold Partner SpringPoint Technologies, in Tulsa, OK. He is a Microsoft ASP/ASP.NET MVP. He previously worked for one of the largest US based Financial Services Companies on the FORTUNE 100. He has an undergraduate degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Oklahoma. Dennis served for two years as the President of the Jacksonville Developers User Group www.JaxDug.com where he helped build community and organize three successful Code Camps. He was also an important INETA volunteer helping to organize the INETA Community Leadership Summit at TechEd 2007 in Orlando. Dennis regularly blogs at www.DennisBottjer.com.

Derek Hatchard, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada
Quebec and Atlantic Canada - NB, NL, NS, PE, QC

Derek Hatchard is a web entrepreneur, consultant, and trainer/mentor. He is also a Microsoft Regional Director, Microsoft MVP, author, and speaker. He blogs at www.ardentdev.com and www.derekhat.com, and he co-hosts a developer podcast at www.devcasting.com. Derek is based in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada where he runs the Dev East (Moncton) and Dev East (Halifax) user groups. In 2002, Derek helped turn a dormant Visual Basic group in Moncton into an active .NET user group (.NET NB). In 2004, Derek started the .NET Nova Scotia user group in Halifax. In 2007, those groups were renamed Dev East (Moncton) and Dev East (Halifax) respectively.

Doug Spindler, San Francisco Bay Area (Orinda, California), USA
Northern California - Northern CA

Douglas R. Spindler grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. He wrote his fist computer program was when he was 12 years old on a Teletype machine with paper tape and a 300 baud modem connected to the University of California at Berkeley. After writing a program too long for tape he began using punch cards then cassette tapes on an IBM-PC. Doug attended the University of California and received a degree in Molecular-Cellular and Developmental Biology while still maintaining an interest in computers and technology. While in college Doug became involved in technology user groups and later founded Pacific IT Professionals or Pac IT Pros. The interest in the Pac IT Pros community still continues to grow. Doug's monthly Pac IT Pros meetings are simulcast live to 9 other IT Pro community groups on the west coast. Microsoft recognized Doug's work in the IT Pro community and invited him to become a member of Microsoft's IT Pro Council which lead to him supporting IT Pro communities across the US, South America, Europe and India. Doug is the creator of TechDays, technical training events "where IT Pros learn IT today, and deploy IT tomorrow". Doug works as a Technology Consultant for the past twenty-five years. He has designed solutions for the US Department of Energy, UCSF Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, Lawrence National Laboratory, GTE, and several financial institutions. Doug also teaches Microsoft technology classes at a Bay Area College, is an author, lecturer and on occasion can be found on the local evening TV news broadcast commenting on technology. Doug has earned several Microsoft certifications which include MCSE 2003, MCITP Server 2008, and Microsoft Certified Trainer. Doug is a four time award winner of Microsoft's prestigious MVP award and was selected by Windows IT Pro Magazine's as their first IT Pro Hero. Doug lives in the San Francisco Bay area with his four kids, and 12 Microsoft Servers.

Evan Hoff, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Kentucky, Tennessee - KY, TN

Evan Hoff, after migrating to .NET shortly after the 1.0 release in 2002, has spent the past few years working as a consultant in .NET projects both large and small. Industry experience has included ERP/CRM systems, entertainment marketing, mobile, and healthcare. Notable accomplishments include having his work featured in both television and print, making an appearance in Wired Magazine, and placing 3rd in Yahoo's 2006 HackDay competition. He currently holds a consulting position with Compuware, Inc. in Nashville, TN. His passions include software design and the pragmatic application of better practices and processes.

Frank La Vigne, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
Mid-Atlantic - DC, DE, MD

Frank La Vigne is a Microsoft Tablet PC MVP and Lead Architect/Designer for Applied Information Sciences (AIS) in Northern Virginia. Frank started in software development when he was twelve, writing BASIC programs for the Commodore 64. He began his professional career writing Visual Basic 3 applications for Wall Street firms in 1993. He then moved on to be the first webmaster for a major book retailer. Frank then went on to develop a large multinational online banking project in Germany. In 2004, Frank became heavily focused on Tablet PC application development. Since then, he has been working on various tablet-based solutions. Frank was president of the Richmond.NET User Group and organized the first Richmond Code Camp. In 2006 , he moved to Northern Virginia and began helping the CapArea.NET user group. Recently, he organized the Silverlight DevCamp DC, the first community driven Silverlight event on the East Coast. See his blog at http://www.FranksWorld.com.

Jeff Schoolcraft, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
Virginia, West Virginia - VA, WV

Jeff Schoolcraft is the founder of The Queue, Incorporated; a consulting shop that writes software and helps write software better. He has been in the .NET space from nearly the beginning and is still, mostly, writing web applications in C#. He has run two .NET user groups in the DC Metro area, helped start a third and has organized several code camps. When he's not immersed in code he enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters.

Jeffrey Palermo, Austin, Texas, USA
Southern Texas - Southern TX

Jeffrey Palermo is a software management consultant and the CTO of Headspring Systems in Austin, TX, specializing in agile coaching and helping companies double the productivity of their software teams. He is an MCSD.Net , Microsoft MVP, Certified Scrummaster, Austin .Net User Group leader, AgileAustin board member, INETA speaker, Christian, husband, father, motorcyclist, Eagle Scout, U.S. Army Veteran, and Texas A&M University graduate.

Jim Wooley, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Georgia - GA

Jim Wooley is a Microsoft MVP in Visual Basic and has been active evangelizing LINQ since it's announcement in 2005. In addition, he attempts to pass on the insights he has gained by being active in the community, including leading the Atlanta MS Pros (formerly VB Study Group) and assisting user groups throughout Georgia. Jim actively discusses LINQ and Visual Basic on his blog at http://www.devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley.

Julie Yack, Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
Rocky Mountains - CO, MT, WY, UT

Julie Yack is a founding partner of Colorado Technology Consultants (CTC), Colorado Springs, and currently serves as its Chief Operations Officer. CTC offers high-end custom software solutions, primarily on the .NET platform. Julie is a Microsoft CRM 3.0 Certified Professional and earned her Bachelors' degree in Business Management from The University of Phoenix. Julie has a strong commitment to community involvement and regularly volunteers her time to local and national groups. She founded and led the SouthColorado.NET user group which focuses on the growth of .NET professionals. Julie helps local schools with their technology vision and plans by serving on the Education Technology and Information Literacy committees for both Challenger Middle School and Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs. She has enjoyed both judging and sponsoring local and regional science fairs. Julie and her husband David, along with their children, enjoy living and playing in Colorado.

Mark Rosenberg, Long Beach, California, USA
Southern California - Southern CA

Mark Rosenberg has been a software developer for the last ten years. He has been working as a trainer for Quickstart Intelligence since April of 2007. Mark has been active in the local user group community for the last two years booking the speakers and being on the board for two user groups. He has been active in setting up and running two code camps per year, one in Orange County, CA and one in San Diego, CA. He has also been presenting talks for local user groups and at code camps for the last two years. Mark was influential in organizing the INETA Southern California Community Leadership Summit held in late September, 2007.

Nolan Zak, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Pacific Canada - BC, YT

Nolan Zak is an ASP.NET application architect. He has been leading the Victoria .NET Developers Association since June 2004 and has also operated three successful code camps. Nolan mentors other user group leaders on how to run their groups successfully. He also participates in regular discussions with other user group leaders on how to create successful online/offline communities.

Paul Mehner, Olympia, Washington, USA
Pacific Northwest - AK, GU, HI, ID, OR, WA

Paul Mehner is an instructor and consultant for Wintellect, a training and consulting firm dedicated to helping clients ship better software faster. His expertise is with Windows Workflow and Windows Communication Foundation. For more than three decades, Paul has been a software developer, architect, project manager, consultant, speaker, mentor, instructor, and entrepreneur. He is co-founder of the South Sound .NET User Group, one of the oldest recorded .NET user groups in the world, and was one of the earliest committee members of INETA. Paul currently specializes in .NET technologies for state government business systems. He has also provided community college instruction on .NET software development and he is an active trainer at software community events such as Code Camps. Prior to being reborn as a .NET protagonist in 2000, Paul's experience included over 20 years supporting many flavors of the UNIX operating system. Paul began his early computing career in 1977 on a homebuilt breadboard computer.

Philip Wolfe, Omaha, Nebraska, USA
North Central - IA, MN, ND, NE, SD

Philip Wolfe is one of the top .NET leaders in the Midwest region. He has been the president of the Omaha .NET user group (http://www.OmahaMTG.com) off and on for the past six and a half years, assistant director of the Heartland Developers Conference (http://www.heartlandDC.com) for the last four years, and INETA Membership Mentor for Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and Minnesota for the last two years. He is very involved in the community by speaking at MSDN events, conferences, teaching .NET courses at the post-secondary level, and helping to start three separate Microsoft technology-related user groups. Philip has also served as a community liaison to Microsoft.

Randy Walker, Fayetteville, Arkansas, USA
Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri - AR, KS, MO

Randy Walker, in the early Alpha days of .Net, can remember being quite skeptical of all the promises that .Net was to bring to the VB community. Randy has now not only embraced the technology but works to passionately educate our programmer community to its unique use of technology and innovation. Randy's community efforts helped to found the Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group, being its first Vice President and second President. He has also helped re-start the University of Arkansas .Net User Group. Randy was instrumental in putting together Tulsa's first TechFest in 2006 (www.tulsatechfest.com) as well as helping with the Dallas Code Camps. He has spoken at numerous events including the INETA Birds of a Feather sessions at TechEd in Orlando (2007). Randy's personal blog site can be found at http://www.vonlar.com and his small business help website and blog is at http://www.mysoftwarestartup.com.

Rob Windsor, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Ontario Canada - ON

Rob Windsor is a Senior Consultant and the Director of Training with ObjectSharp Consulting - a Microsoft Gold Partner based in Toronto, Canada. Rob focuses on the architecture, design and development of custom business applications using leading edge Microsoft technologies. In addition Rob is a top rated instructor - authoring and teaching courses on .NET development, SharePoint and software architecture. As a member of the MSDN Canada Speakers Bureau, Rob has had a chance to present at conferences, code camps, and user group meetings in Toronto and across North America. He is President of the Toronto Visual Basic User Group and has been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for his involvement in the developer community.

Scott Cate, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Southwest - AZ, NV, NM

Scott Cate is the President of myKB.com, Inc., in Scottsdale, Arizona. myKB.com is a technology company specializing in commercial ASP.NET applications. His product line includes myKB.com (Knowledge Base Software), kbAlertz.com (Microsoft Knowledge Base Notifications), and EasySearchASP.net (a Pluggable Search Engine for ASP.NET sites). Scott also runs AZGroups.com (Arizona .NET User Groups), one of the largest and most active user group communities in the country, and is a member of ASPInsiders.com, a group devoted to giving early feedback to the Microsoft ASP.NET Team. Scott has also been awarded the ASP.NET MVP for five years in a row, from 2004-2008. In addition, Scott has co-authored an AJAX book titled "Beginning AJAX with ASP.NET" and the non-fiction novel "Surveillance" (http://surveillance-the-novel.com).

Scott Isaacs, Milwaukee , Wisconsin, USA
Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin - IL, IN, WI

Scott Isaacs, born and raised a stone's throw from California's Silicon Valley, discovered an early interest in computers. As with many other 30-somethings in IT and software development, it started off with the Commodore 64 and BASIC. Having gone to college for Applied Mathematics, software was primarily a hobby for Scott until the late 90s. That's when Scott took his first software development job at the Department of Education. Since then, Scott has developed software for dotcom companies, news/media corporations and financial institutions, as well as a number of other businesses on a consulting basis. Currently, he is working at another startup, building an RFID-based security system. As the first version of the .NET Framework was released in early 2002, a new users group was being formed in Wisconsin. Scott attended the first few meetings, and when a call for volunteers was made, he signed up to help out however he could. In 2005, Scott became the president of the WI .NET Users Group (www.wi-ineta.org). Since that time, membership has grown by about 50% to over 2500 total members, and average meeting attendance has nearly doubled. Additionally, a second, independently-run group (Madison .NET Users Group) was formed out of the WI .NET Users Group to better serve the growing number of members in the region. Scott moved to Wisconsin in 1999, and now lives in a Milwaukee suburb with his wife and daughter. He blogs at www.tapmymind.com, and can be contacted from that site.

Shawn Weisfeld, Orlando, Florida, USA
Florida - FL

Shawn Weisfeld is a Sr. Developer at an Orlando FL based fortune 100 company. There he specializes in intranet and smart client development for internal line of business applications. Besides his day job Shawn also is an Adjunct Professor at The Florida Institute of Technology and Seminole Community College. He also does freelance software development work for local small businesses and training. In his free time he volunteers as the President of the Orlando .NET users group and at other local charities and has earned the Presidents Volunteer service award, two years running. Shawn started his career at his family business in Port St. Lucie, FL, while working on his undergraduate degree in Business Administration at the University of Central Florida and after a year off Shawn moved back to Orlando to pursue a Masters degree in Management Information Systems at The University of Central Florida and has since earned a second Masters degree in Computer Information Systems from Florida Institute of Technology. Shawn was awarded the Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional award for 1997. Shawn is an avid technology presenter and since July of 2005 Shawn has presented at over 25 user group events, and was a featured speaker for Microsoft at the launch of Visual Studio 2005. His web site is http://www.shawnweisfeld.com.

Stuart Celarier, Portland, Oregon, USA
At-Large

Stuart Celarier has been volunteering with INETA since 2002 working with member user groups. He is a founder and director of the Portland Code Camp, and presents regularly at user groups and code camps throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has chaired the Birds-of-a-Feather tracks at TechEd 2005 - 2007, and PDC 2005. He also serves on the Software Association of Oregon's Development SIG committee. Stuart is a staff software engineer with Corillian, a leader in online banking software, now part of Fiserv, and is a Microsoft MVP in the Windows Server Systems - Connected System Developer competency.