|
 |
|
|
MVC Conference |
|
On Thursday July 22nd, MvcConf, a virtual community event around the ASP.NET MVC
framework, took place. The event was organized by the leaders of the Community for MVC
(C4MVC) as well by other enthusiasts for the product around the community.
The main purpose of the event was to educate and promote the community involvement with
the framework. Speakers ranged from community members to members of the ASP.NET team
such as Phil Haack (PM of the ASP.NET MVC), David Ebbo (Architect with ASP.NET) and
Scott Hanselman (Principal Program Manager). Both new products from Microsoft, such as
IIS Express, SQL Compact and Open Source projects such as FubuMVC and the Spark View
Engine were topics of interest for conference attendees.
The event had tremendous community support through Twitter, web IRC and through questions
within each session. Each session was recorded and posted after the conference to provide the
content to those that missed the event. The feedback from attendees was very positive that the
organizers have started to work on the next event for next year.
For more on MvcConf, please visit: http://mvcconf.com
For video recordings of the sessions, please visit: http://bit.ly/mvcconf-videos
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Professional Scrum Developer Program |
|
Microsoft, Scrum.org and Accentient have combined to create a Professional Scrum Developer Program. The Professional Scrum Developer (PSD) program trains, assesses, and certifies Scrum developers working on Visual Studio 2010. The program includes a five-day course, an online assessment, and an industry-recognized certification.
The PSD course covers all of the technical practices that team members need to successfully implement and ship functionality. These include coding practices like test-driven development, continuous integration, and refactoring; architecture practices such as emerging architecture and evolutionary database development; release management practices like planning, requirements definition, and shipment, and quality assurance practices from defining "done" to pair programming to version control to acceptance testing.
For more information on the curriculum of the Professional Scrum Developer program, please click here. You can also learn more about this course by watching the interview with Visual Studio product owner Sam Guckenheimer and Ken Schwaber on MSDN Channel 9.
You can also go here for a complete list of scheduled courses in North America.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Best Practices for Cultivating Your Community |
|
Nurturing your community is the single most important task a community leader does. There are six key areas which you need to pay special attention to, 1. New members, 2. Acknowledging contributors, 3. Feedback, 4. Transparency, 5. Motivations, 6. Leaders.
Making it easy for new members
New comers are most susceptible to first impressions, and hence it's most important to make sure they are acknowledged, heard and responded to. Remember the first time you joined a new company or a new team? Wouldn't it have been easier if there was someone to guide you and get you to be part of the organization or team? Make it a point to encourage existing members to connect with new members. Maybe older members get credit points for every new person they connect with or mentor. In addition, create a guidance document or a web page to specifically help new members get familiar with your community and key personnel. One thing you could do is help them connect with people of similar interests and background. It would be a great idea to have one or more people in your community dedicated to reaching out and engaging with new members. Remember a community is all about relationships. The stronger the relationship between the members, the stronger the community.
Acknowledging and rewarding contributors
You can never say "Thank You" enough to the various contributors who help your community grow. Whether it's the people, who reply to questions, speak at your meetings, share articles or introduce new members, make sure you acknowledge each contribution. The best way would be to design an award system which recognizes and rewards such contributors. It could be as simple as giving them a top contributor, or top solution provider or such badge or certificate, or it could be simply listing them prominently on your community web site. In fact this practice alone would go towards encouraging more contributors and ensure a thriving community.
Feedback
Feedback is the lifeblood of any community. However, different people provide feedback in different ways. Some people are comfortable in providing feedback in a discussion, some people prefer to provide feedback anonymously and some are comfortable providing feedback online via a survey. You need to consider all of these in your feedback programs. The most important thing is to listen without being defensive or reactive. This will encourage more people to provide feedback. Your critics are your best friends. They provide valuable feedback. Ensure that feedback provided and actions taken on feedback are publically announced and display them prominently. If you don't have a solution for a particular query, allow your members to contribute their solutions.
Transparency
Someone always knows what someone is doing. It is best to publically explain what your and your group's motivations, objectives and plans are. This ensures clarity and confidence. If a vendor is sponsoring your group meeting or website etc. make sure the community is aware of it. Ensure that there is an open policy on how sponsors can get involved. Similarly, if you have a reward program or a contest make sure that the criteria are publicly displayed. Everybody loves a mystery but no one likes a person who hides things.
Evaluating and enabling motivations
People's motivations will change as they and the group grows. You need to periodically evaluate your member's motivations if you need to serve the community better. You should do this at least once a year. Reference my earlier blog post regarding member motivations.
Enabling new leaders and influencers
Great leaders are most interested in nurturing the next level of leadership and influencers. This ensures that the community grows and thrives beyond the leaders time and in directions not originally envisioned. The pride and satisfaction associated with this is immeasurable.
Summary
If you need an acronym to remember the above six, try Liftman  If you're overwhelmed by the above six keys, then remember it's all about relationships, always. If you look at your community and its members from the point of view of cultivating relationships, you will automatically utilize the above keys.
Article originated at http://blogs.communitiesrus.in/communities/2010/07/30/best-practices-for-cultivating-your-community/
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Community Megaphone |
|
Need to Promote your Events? Try Community Megaphone!
If you've ever wondered if there are additional ways for you to promote your user group and related events, here's one you may want to try. Community Megaphone is a site created by Microsoft Developer Evangelist G. Andrew Duthie to help the community find and promote local events. The goal for Community Megaphone is simplicity, so we focus exclusively on events. Want to add your event? No registration required, just go to the Add Event page, put in your information, and go. We'll make sure everything looks good and then put it up on the system.
Once your event is in the system, potential attendees can find out about it via the Community Megaphone home page, the RSS feed, an iCalendar feed, a customizable web gadget used in many sites across the web, and in the bi-weekly MSDN Flash newsletter. Events entered into Community Megaphone are also automatically shared with the User Group Support Services event calendar (and vice-versa, for US-based events).
If you'd like to integrate Community Megaphone events into your site or application, we provide a variety of ways to consume the data, including the aforementioned RSS feed, and our OData feed for approved events. Additionally, you can add your events to Community Megaphone programmatically via our Web Service API (registration required for API use).
Are there other features that could make your lives easier? Let us know via the Feedback page. Now's a great time to provide feedback, as we're ramping up on our planning for V2 of Community Megaphone, and we want to make sure we make the site even easier to use, and provide more ways to get the word out about your events.
Last, but not least, we recently launched the Community Megaphone Podcast. The podcast is the brainchild of Dane Morgridge, who, with co-host Andrew, highlights local talent and personalities in the .NET community, giving up-and-coming speakers an opportunity to share their interests, knowledge, and community background, and listeners an opportunity to get to know folks that they may get to see speak at their local group or code camp. Know of someone who should be a guest... please let us know!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Community Champions |
|
As you know it is the mission of the Community Champs program to recognize and thank those members of our community that make it all possible.
Q3 is quickly coming to an end, so this is your friendly reminder that you should submit your entries for Community Champs.
Are there any "Rock Stars" in your community who should get a "thank you" for their hard work be sure to let us know.
The deadline for submissions is September 30, so what are you waiting for go to http://www.inetachamps.com.
If you have any questions about the program feel free to contact us at noram.champs@ineta.org.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Upcoming Speaker Bureau Events |
There are no speaker bureau events at this time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Contacting INETA North America |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
