Mike is a solutions architect with speakTECH, a Microsoft Gold Partner in Orange County, California providing clients with enterprise and software architecture and development services, primarily focusing on Microsoft .NET technology. Prior to speakTECH, he held corporate architect positions in financial services and ran his own consulting and ISV business for 18 years.

Actively involved in the user group community since the early 90's, Mike founded both the SoCal .Net Architecture group which is now also IASA's SoCal Chapter and the Orange County C# Developers group which recently became OC .NET. Mike is a frequent presenter at local and regional user groups and Southern California Code Camps and has served with INETA as the California Membership Mentor.

Mike also organized the SoCal .Net Technical Summit regional conferences and is currently organizing IASA's regional architecture summit ITARC coming this fall in San Diego. He can be reached at mike.vincent@ineta.org

INETA and the INETA User Groups of Southern California are hosting a regional Community Leadership Summit on Saturday September 29. The summit is open to all community user group leaders, as well as those active in volunteering support. This will be an excellent opportunity to meet others in the community and for exchanging information and ideas.

For all user group leaders, your leadership team members and those who are involved in the leadership, planning, promotion, or day-to-day operations of a user group community, this event is for YOU! The summit is an open forum to share ideas, discuss common challenges, and gain from the experience of other leaders. INETA Community Leadership summits are part of an ongoing effort by INETA to create, improve and share resources designed to strengthen individual user groups and the community. This meeting will be the perfect opportunity to meet leaders from other groups, benefit from their success stories, and expand your network of contacts.

Mark your calendar and stay tuned for further event details and registration.

As many of you may have heard, Scott Hanselman is going to work for Microsoft. In doing so, he joins Josh Holmes and Carl Prothman who also accepted various positions at Microsoft this past year. The INETA Speakers Bureau Committee is very excited for them and wish them all the very best.

As a result, we are now accepting resumes for qualified speakers for the North America INETA Speakers Bureau. If you would like to be considered to join the INETA Speakers Bureau, please send your resume to: noram.speakers@ineta.org.

I would like to thank the dedicated team that encompasses the INETA North America Speakers Bureau Committee: Bill Wolff, Keith Pleas, Ken Getz, Julie Lerman and Nancy Mesquita. We have several great projects planned and if you would like to help implement them, let us know: noram.speakers@ineta.org.

I look forward to serving you as the new Vice-President of the Speakers Bureau. Bill Wolff dedicated several years in this position and we thank you for your hard work. If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions feel free to contact me at david.walker@ineta.org.

David Walker
Vice-President of Speakers Bureau, INETA NorAm
david.walker@ineta.org

YOU can become one of our INETA NorAm Membership Mentors!

Our Membership Mentors are widely recognized as experienced advisers and supporters in all areas of user group leadership. Mentors advise, guide, and lend support to INETA member user group leadership within specific geographic territories of the United States and Canada.

Mentors are our most vital link between INETA and our local user group leadership community specifically to ensure that we continue to provide quality Membership support to our local user groups. Mentors assist those who want to establish new user groups as well as those who want assistance with growing and strengthening current user groups.

Our Mentors are recognized for their deep involvement in their user group community, their user group leadership experience, and their willingness to help other user groups succeed. Experience, responsibility, innovation, and creativity are some of the traits that we look for when we place a person into a Membership Mentor position to assist our user groups. Our Membership Mentors also work closely with their local Microsoft DE and other INETA volunteers to assist our user group community.

With several of our current Membership Mentors moving into INETA Board of Directors positions, we have open opportunities for you to join us now, especially in these states: Northern CA, Southern CA, CO, KS, MI, MO, MT, OH, PA, TN, IL, IN, UT, WI, and WY.

Your action item: To apply for a Membership Mentor position, we need to learn more about you. Please tell us about your volunteer efforts with your local user group community, your efforts to assist our developer community especially in the user group arena, any thing else that helps us get to know you better, plus your local user group community references and your area of choice. Send your qualifications and references as well as your questions and comments to Chris Wallace (chris.wallace@ineta.org).

Chris Wallace
Vice-President of Membership, INETA NorAm
chris.wallace@ineta.org

We are interested in producing articles about other member activities to share through the INETA user communities. We are looking to trade ideas and methods rather than just topics and calendars. So as well as listing upcoming events, we will be including recaps on those that have occurred in the last month, with the good, the hiccups and the "we-need-a-different-approach" types.

So what does your user group do, other than bring in speakers for regular full group presentations?

If you could list these activities, with details (name, and email) that we can contact to get more information, we will report on some of these activities each month.

Peter McQuirk
Marketing Committee, INETA NorAm
peter.mcquirk@ineta.org

.NET developers can't get enough technical conferences and get-togethers. A quick survey of user group events across the country reveals a trend that is literally sweeping the nation: local and regional Code Camps, Deep Dives and Days of .NET are being organized in great numbers. But these conferences don't just materialize out of thin air; someone has to make the decision and take action to hold one. That 'someone' is usually a user group leader.

So, what's behind the decision to hold a user conference? The motivation to organize an event for developers usually comes out of some frustration over a lack of similar events in a geographic area. Developers love to get together and talk shop, network and update their knowledge with a few live technical presentations. It is also expensive and time consuming to attend some of the larger, national conferences, such as Tech-Ed or VS Live. These events tend to be rather infrequent too. If your state or region is lacking in developer events, then it just may be ripe for a one-day, home-grown user conference.

Before we get into the details of planning such an event, let's look at a brief overview of what is required to successfully pull-off one of these events. The first step to take is to pick a date and secure a venue. This is really one step, as choosing a date for your event and deciding on a place to hold it go hand in hand. You'll need a location that is conducive to learning and gathering. College and university campuses are usually great locations. Many academic institutions have modern classrooms with data projectors installed. Parking is generally in abundance and large gathering areas, for announcements, vendor booths and displays, and networking are plentiful. These places are also very, very active, so you'll have to be extremely flexible in choosing a date for your event.

Once you've set a date and secured a venue, you'll need some content for your conference, so a 'call for speakers' should be issued as soon as possible. This is an open invitation for potential speakers to submit abstracts for sessions that they would like to present. These sessions will be a big part of the reason people will attend your conference, so be sure to cast your net far and wide to pull together sessions that cover a variety of technical areas and skill levels.

The overwhelming majority of these types of developer events are free of charge, and you are highly encouraged to continue that trend with your own event. However, a conference, no matter how small, is not free to plan and execute. There are the costs of the venue, food & drinks, and marketing, among other expenses. This is a great opportunity for .NET tool vendors, recruiters, and consulting & training companies to get the attention of some highly motivated software developers. With the right pitch, you can generate plenty of funds to pay for your event. Many book publishers will also gladly donate books to give away at the event, and software vendors, particularly if they offer developer tools, can be persuaded to donate product licenses.

Your sessions and sponsors in place, it's now time to get the word out to your developer community. User groups are usually the best way to pass the word about developer events, but don't discount local colleges and universities, technical recruiters, and general word of mouth passed on by colleagues and coworkers. You'll need a way to keep track of who wants to attend, so a website with an on-line registration application is definitely a must-have.

When the big day arrives you'll want plenty of help running the show. Ask for volunteers to help coordinate things at the conference itself, such as check-in and registration, room setup, food handling, speaker coordination, and clean-up. You can never have too many volunteers. You'll also need people to help out after the event is over. You'll want to collect slide decks and sample code from your speakers, and make those available to your attendees by uploading them to the event website.

Next month we'll dive into the details of pre-planning, including organizing your event team, deciding how to structure the event and working with a venue. Stay tuned!

John T. Hopkins
President, Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group
president@migang.org

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.

It's official. My term as Vice-President of Marketing for INETA NorAm has begun. When my predecessor, Scott Spradlin, started his tenure, it had been held by five people over a two year period. By adding stability to the role, he was able to ensure that newsletters went out on a timely basis, something I've referred to as INETA's "heartbeat". I feel the first part of my job is to make sure that heartbeat continues. This is the easiest part since all I have to do continue Scott's work. The second and harder portion will be to grow the position. This can go in a lot of different directions, but I will be focusing on the Leadership Summits (see INETA Community Leadership Summit – Southern California) and web presence. The Leadership summits are a great opportunity to talk to you personally, the community, about what you feel is important. As far as our web presence is concerned, they're just as much about responding to your needs as the Leadership Summits are. We need you actively discussing our decisions, our opinions, even our individual blog posts.

To be successful, I'll need a lot of help. First, nothing can be accomplished without the support of the Board. They answer my questions, they offer suggestions and, in short, they do everything they can to make me successful. After that, I rely on a team of volunteers with a real passion for the community.

• Fortunately for me and INETA, Ralph Rivas has agreed to stay as a member of the Marketing team. His insight and experience have already proven to be invaluable.
• Stacey McKown will continue to take care of all of our administrative duties. She is the glue that holds us all together and without her, we couldn't function.
• Peter McQuirk, our "UK Correspondant", is also staying on and will be continuing to submit high quality content to the newsletter. His willingness to tolerate conference calls that extend beyond midnight London time is a testament to his passion for the community
• John Hopkins is not only President of the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group in Southfield, MI (GANG), but he's also a close personal friend. He has a long track record of community involvement which not only includes GANG, but also Ann Arbor Day of .NET and CodeMash.
• Patrick Steele serves on the board of the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group as Vice-President along with fellow Marketing Teammate, John Hopkins. He's also a friend and co-worker who is well known in the local community.
• Just last year I had the pleasure of meeting Scott Zischerk. In that time, he's proven himself a technically proficient developer and the type of person who can get things done. INETA is fortunate to have him.

This is a far larger team than Marketing has had in the past - and that's a good thing. Marketing requires input from all walks of developer life. If you are interested in volunteering, please email me. We still need to grow if we are going to serve you better.

Darrell Hawley
Vice-President of Marketing, INETA NorAm
darrell.hawley@ineta.org