I'll be doing not one, but two, presentations on Entity Framework tomorrow night (Jan 21st) at Philly.NET as an INETA sponsored gig. Normally, Philly.NET has a speaker doing an intro session on something and then their main session. As they were having a hard time scheduling their first speaker, and...

I'm actually leaving my house and leaving my road and even leaving my state today. And I won't be doing it on my bicycle. I'm heading down to Springfield Mass to do an INETA sponsored presentation at the Western Mass .NET User Group hosted by MassMutual . I've spoken at this group before when they were...

I've been laying low from a lot of things while working on my book this summer, but I just confirmed two INETA speaking gigs. The first is only a few weeks away. I'll be doing a presentation on Silverlight 2.0 Annotation at the Western Mass .NET Group in Springfield, MA which should be about a 3 or 3...

I was perusing Chris Williams' blog over on GeekswithBlogs.Net. I met Chris many years ago through INETA and in person at an INETA User Group Leader event. Chris ran the user group in Charleston, South Carolina and has since moved to Minnesota where he has survived his first winter with all of his fingers...

I am thrilled to share this fabulous news ... INETA Noram has a new website . The reason for my jubilation is that for a variety of reasons, INETA has been trying to create a new website for about 4 years, so to see it actually happen is wonderful. This may have just launched because I hadn't heard anything...

Even though i am on the INETA speaker committee (responsible for the NORAM Speaker Bureau), I didn't really know this was public yet but I'm starting to get some emails and see some blog posts that people are announcing their addition to the speaker bureau, so I guess it's okay to blog about it now!...

I'll be in the Detroit area this week giving presentations on the ADO.NET ENtity Framework at GANG in Southfield (Wednesday night) and GLUG in Lansing (Thursday night). THe Lansing talk is sponsored by INETA . Read more here... [A New DevLife post]...

INETA Noram's new board began this month. Thinking about INETA and about what a tiny percentage of .NET developers take advantage of their local user groups, I wrote a little elevator pitch over on my other blog ... [A New DevLife post]...

Once again, INETA is coordinating and leading a full day meeting of .NET User Group Leaders at TechEd . While budget no longer allows INETA to fund bringing many leaders from across the US and Canada to the event (as they have done in the past), TechEd is an event attended by many u.g. leaders, so it...

Thanks so much to INETA , Andy Robinson (leader of Bellingham.NET ) and Paul Mehner and Camey Combs from South Sound .NET for getting me out to the Seattle area to present at their user groups. I did a session on LINQ to SQL in Web Apps in Bellingham on Wednesday night after spending 17 hours trying...

Tomorrow I am flying to Seattle then speaking tomorrow night at the Bellingham.NET User Group (which is even closer to the Canadian border than where I live) and then Thursday night at South Sound.NET in Olympia . Thanks to my pal Camey Combs for suggesting the trip and to INETA and user group leaders...

If you are not on the email list to receive the monthly newsletter for INETA NORAM you can always find them at www.ineta.org/newsletters . Scott Spradlin does a great job putting this together as editor. I do the speaker interviews each month, something I started when I was the editor. This month I got...

I will be speaking in Albany NY at TechValley.NET on March 12th about ADO.NET Orcas. In April I will be doing a two city tour speaking at Bellingham.NET (a group led by Andrew Robinson, that is a brand new member of INETA) and then at South Sound .NET in Olympia, Washington run by my old INETA pal, Paul...

From the INETA NORAM Feb 2007 Newsletter : Elections are being held for the INETA NorAm Board of Directors in mid-March. From now through February 15, 2007 any user group leader of an INETA registered user group in the United States and Canada can nominate an individual for a Board position. The nominee...

I seem to be "just a girl who can't say no". Sept 6th CNY.NET (Syracuse NY - INETA) Advanced Data Access with ADO.NET 2.0 Sept 11th Vermont.NET (Burlington, VT home sweet home) Asynchronous ASP.NET 2.0 Sept 12th Cleveland .NET SIG (OH - INETA) Asynchronous ASP.NET 2.0 Sept 13th Findlay .NET (OH - INETA...

I'm psyched to be hopping down to NYC tomorrow do an INETA sponsored presentation at NYCdotNETDev . I lived in New York from 1983 to 1991 (as you can imagine, my impressionable 20's), so it's fun to go back once in a while. I plan to spend Friday at the MOMA and eating great food with friends before...

http://www.sadeveloper.net/ The SA Developer Gauteng team (Gauteng is a province in South Africa that includes Johannesburg) all met in the Microsoft offices in Jo'burg to attend the most recent INETA Live Webcast. Andre Odendaal wrtes about doing this and how valuable he thinks these webcasts are to...

Scott Spradlin has cranked out the INETA NORAM July Newsletter . In it, I interview fellow INETA Speaker, Brian Noyes , who has had a path into a development career that is more unusual than most! Check it out along with all of the other NORAM news....

(from the INETA NORAM website:) On June 1st INETA North America launched an extensive new Sponsorship Program aimed at raising funds to expand and improve services for our members. Over the past six months the INETA NorAm Sponsorship Team, led by Sponsorship Director Pat Tormey, has designed a great...

Best Practices for Running a User Group June 28th, 2006 - 3:30PM EST Running a user group is not an easy task. However luckily by being part of INETA you are connected to network of peers that have experienced all aspects of user group leadership from start-up to success. This webcast will be a panel...

Yesterday Rich and I drove from New Brunswick, where I had spoken at the local .NET User Group, to Halifax Nova Scotia, about a 2 1/2 hour drive. Before heading into the city, we drove out the coast a bit to an absolutely-not-to-be-missed treasure of Nova Scotia called Peggy's Cove. Peggy's Cove is a...

Tonight is the last game of the Stanley Cup. Edmonton and Raleigh have both won three games so this is it. I was really surprised that the attendees of the New Brunswick .NET user group stayed for the whole meeting. Even my husband is at the local pub cheering on the Edmonton Oilers! Posted from BLInk...

The June 2006 INETA newsletter came out last week. Althought there's alot of very interesting news in there, I was excited to see the interview of INETA Speaker Bureau member Phil Weber get out in the wild. I had fun asking questions but was astonished at some of his answers. Rather than spoil the fun...

Dave Noderer , Jason Beres and I will be doing an INETA Live webcast this Wednesday, May 31st at 3:30 EST, about Starting a User Group. Dave started and runs one of the larger groups (a consortium of groups, actually) in the U.S., Florida .NET , which Jason helped start. I started and run Vermont.NET...

The May 2006 INETA NORAM Newsletter is out and there is a wonderful article in there by INETA Speaker Kathleen Dollard on a recent 3-user group tour to the Gulf Coast region. Kathleen also donated all of her honorariums for the user group events to local organizations and makes some suggestions how we...

I just happened to be looking at the INETA " Upcoming Speaking Engagements " page and was struck by the fact that there are SIX events tonight! Bill Evjen San Diego .NET User Group 3/28/2006 Bill Vaughn KC .NET User Group 3/28/2006 Chris Menegay Aggieland (Texas A&M Univeristy) .NET Developers 3...

I am astonished that INETA has had to go so far as to have a prize drawing to encourage user group leaders to report on the health of .NET user groups (thereby also helping INETA to show it's sponsors what type of reach they are getting which is a VERY reasonable thing for a sponsor to ask). Once a month...

Well, I'm quoting Scott Watermasysk on that , but since he and I talked about this frequently over the years while I was heavily involved with INETA, I'm happy to see this finally happen! Looks like newlywed Jason Beres has a hand in this, too. Excellent! Hopefully, everyone gets the little joke in the...

D'Arcy Lussier writes: Flash back a few years to when .NET was an emerging technology. Microsoft put their marketing muscle behind the promotion and creation of user group communities: groups of geeks getting together to talk about CLR goodness. Their plan worked to perfection, and user groups sprung...

I am ready to give up. We have our 5 dvds worth of content to share with our user group members but have still, after two months of begging favors, not found a way to get the copies made efficiently. I know Lori Mckinney burned all 700+ dvds herself on two normal home dvd burners. First we have to get...

There's nothing like planning ahead! I will be visiting 3 user groups in late June (yes that's 2006) in Canada's Atlantic provinces. Places I have wanted to go for a long time so I am thrilled to be able to visit the groups and see these beautiful provinces at the same time. I will be going to INETA...

From the INETA website INETA Announces New Board Members, Sheri Nawrocki, Matt Ranlett & Brendon Schwarz. INETA ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF SHERI NAWROCKI AS VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING Redmond, WA – October 4, 2005 – The International .NET Association (INETA), an organization that provides resources...

I'm so happy to already have two INETA gigs lined up. I'll be speaking at WeProgram.net in Virginia Beach on December 6th. Next will be Tech Valley.NET , in Albany NY on January 25th. I'll hope for now blizzards! In addition to that, I will be speaking next month at the new group in Syracuse, NY - CNY...

I know - it sounds awfully formal, but INETA is getting all organized and grown up. When I began as a volunteer in the User Group Management committee almost 3 1/2 years ago, I was the liaison for all of Canada and all of the northeast and a handful of other states as well. Slowly that has shrunk. Bill...

Here are the timeslots allocated by the PDC organizers for the BOFs. Monday (pre-con day) 7:00, 8:15, 9:30 Tuesday 9:00pm 10:15 pm (Tablet PC Developer BOF is here) Thursday 9:00pm (Going Solo BOF is here) 10:15pm Stuart Celarier, who is leading up the INETA charge to coordinate all of the BOFs reports...

INETA has added 9 new members to the speaker bureau. Although it's "official", it is not yet posted anywhere so I thought I would. Unfortunately, their budget limited the number of new people that they could bring on board. I know that they had a lot of wonderful people to choose from and had a difficult...

The BOF sessions that are being organized by INETA at PDC will be set up like this: In total, there will be 7 time slots spread out over a few nights for sessions. My guess is maybe 3 on one night and 4 on another, but I truly have no idea. During each time slot there will be 6 rooms available. Therefore...

The developer community in Latin America is astounding and much larger than most people outside of LATAM might imagine. INETA LATAM makes up over 25% of all of the INETA member groups worldwide. Their latest newsletter is out and is full of so much information about events, their speaker bureau, new...

When INETA began, Christian Nagel was our man in Europe. When INETA was divided up into the five regions (North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East Africa and Europe) he took the lead of Europe. Now that region is very organized. Christian did a fantastic job and also brought a lot of great...

Jim Holmes is in the process of starting a .net group in Dayton, Ohio ( Dayton .NET Developers Group ). He has written down a list of things he is doing as tips for others starting user groups . The tips are great. It is important to remember that every group is different and everyone's approach is different...

This morning I see not one, but two posts from user group leaders who are reassessing how their user group is working and what they need to do for the future of the group. Sam Gentile leads Beantown.NET , in downtown Boston. The other long-established and very large Boston.NET group is actually in Waltham...

Jeff Schoolcraft asks some good questions about growing a User Group (he is one of the leaders of WinProTeamVienna) - how to increase awareness, why do people go, why do people NOT go? I have heard these questions before. Sounds like a perfect survey for INETA! www.acehaid.org...

At the INETA NORAM User Group Leader Summit on June 5, a new board was announced. I am no longer on the INETA NORAM board. The original board members and founders of INETA (Bill Evjen, Brian Loesgen, Keith Franklin, Keith Pleas) as well as myself (I was not a founding board member) are now on the Advisory...

I was just updating some old "About INETA" powerpoints to use at the Candian User Group leader summit that is being hosted on June 18th at the DevTeach conference. The slides were from April 2003. I had to change the numbers on the slides from April 2003 275 User Groups 87,000 Developers 41 Countries...

Oh yeah, and we left the "Test" title on the email - since we email it to each other in advance for last minute checks. So even though it says "Test" that is the real deal!!! Lots of good stuff in there - our User Group Leader Summit schedule, an article on creating Certification Study Groups, some new...

Do you know that worldwide, INETA has (at the moment) 769 member user groups? INETA NORAM (that's North America, as in US & Canada) accounts for 250 of those groups. About 200 of them are in Latin America. APAC is about 120, Europe 130 and MEA (Middle East & Africa) is about 70. We have groups...

Reading Jerry Delany's post about attending the Atlanta.NET meeting and a comment he made at the end about attending the Atlanta C# meetings because they are more advanced made me think of a problem I have been pondering lately with my user group , Vermont.NET, that is not uncommon. We have been meeting...

The INETA Newsletter archive page also now has links to watch the INETA Video INETA on MSDN TV and listen to INETA on DotNetRocks more to come... http://www.AcehAid.org...

Just a reminder! Birds of a Feather sessions are not presentations or panel discussions. There are no speakers and no slides. A microphone and whiteboard will be available, but there will be no projection equipment. By proposing a session you agree to host it and moderate the discussion at the conference...

I got this idea from attending and speaking at GUVSM meetings in Montreal and have been doing it at Vermont.NET since October of last year. I prepare a powerpoint deck of what's going on in the area, upcoming events. other things people should know (eg. Microsoft's 2nd chance certification which I will...

Bill Evjen just pointed this out. Very cool. The MSDN VS Developer Center is subscribing to INETA NORAM's RSS Feed for speaker events . It's on the bottom of the page. http://www.AcehAid.org...

You would think that by now I would be used to the amazing places that there are .NET user groups. But I think I will never be jaded. I loved reading this post about some Microsoft folks presenting at the Romania .NET Users Association (yes of course, an INETA member!) http://www.AcehAid.org...

Don Kiely says he just can't get good Indian food where he lives in Alaska. When he came to Vermont in July we took him out for Indian one night. It was his only requirement during the whole visit. Now he is in Alberta and I see that he went out again with John Bristowe for Indian last night . Don who...

People keep emailing me to say how great the latest INETA newsletter looks (Jan '05 went out a few days ago but is here online ). I have nothing to do with it's wonderful good looks. Sheri Nawrocki is the graphic designer extraoadinaire. Though she is a professional graphic designer, she also knows a...

INETA has added 8 new speakers to the North American Speaker Bureau!! They are: Don Kiely Kathleen Dollard Joel Semeniuk Russ Nemhauser Stephen Forte Jim Duffy Phil Weber Craig Utley :-) . If you want to be considered for the INETA Speaker Bureau please refer to this blog post by Committee Chair, Scott...

Dave Totzke has done an amazing job getting swag from vendors for the next mailing out to INETA User Groups (NORAM region). It's all coming together. And they are starting the last piece of the shipment process. Although I have seen the list of what exactly is going in there (and it is awesome!!!), I...

Chris Pels and I have become board members for INETA, joining INETA founder Bill Evjen, Keith Pleas, Dave Noderer, Keith Franklin and Brian Loesgen. Chris and I are co-chairs for the User Group Relations committee and we are very lucky to have many awesome people on the committee that we will be able...

When Bill Evjen first dreamt up INETA, the problem he was trying to solve was how to enable small user groups to have world-class speakers present to them. This is what we now know as the INETA Speaker Bureau. Rocky Lhotka spoke at at the October Vermont.NET meeting as an INETA speaker. Rocky lives in...

An email just went out to the user group leaders of all NORAM (US & Canada) and APAC (Asia Pacific) user groups about filling out a VERY SHORT online survey (two whole entries to make) asking how many people attended your October meeting and how many people are on your mailing list. If you are a...

When I spoke at GUVSM (and also when I attended a talk there a few years ago) I learned a great idea from Guy Barrette for the user group meeting. He had a slide show prepared of user group information - tonight's speaker, local events, upcoming meetings, etc. While people were settling down for the...

Feed: Geekswithblogs.net Main Feed Title: New Presentation: Microsoft Services Oriented Architecture Source: XML Bill Evjen's Blog Author: Bill Evjen 0 Comments Another presentation for .NET User Groups to use from Microsoft has been made available from the INETA website! Microsoft is giving INETA user...

I am [by choice] somewhat of a filter for the many general emails that come into INETA. It's actually fun because I see so much that is going on and connect with a lot of people. Most times I need to just make sure the email gets to the person with the right knowledge to respond to whatever the email...

Steve will be missed during his tenure in Iraq in many places. One of them is the INETA Speaker Bureau where he is a popular speaker. In the meantime, Ted Neward has been asked to fill this gap . Ted brings a wonderful perspective on .NET and he's a heck of a lot of fun to have around, too!...

Eric King* has become theh unofficial documenter of all things INETA. Besides being in the process of creating a DVD for INETA full of content which includes many interviews of INETA folks and speaker bureau members, he brought his cool video camera and fancy digital camera to the INETA meeting. Everyone...

I've seen a references here and there to people talking about INETA groups. There is really no such thing (in my own mind - though I am the co-Chair of the User Group Relations committee...) as an “INETA group“. There are .NET user groups and many of those groups are members of INETA. They...

Eric King has just added a Birds of a Feather Session to the TechEd schedule . He will be leading a BOF on How to Start a User Group. Eric is someone who is wildly enthusiastic about his group and helping other groups. He is on the INETA User Group Relations Strategic committee and is an enormous help...

And it is on the INETA website: www.ineta.org/newsletters This newsletter has details about our upcoming INETA User Group Leader Summit that is in San Diego this Sunday, May 23rd at the beginning of TechEd. It also has info about the BOFs. Plus lots of news about some of our member groups, the recent...

Just a reminder that, thanks to INETA, Tim Huckaby speaks at Vermont.NET tonight. We are gettingn a preview of his TechEd 2004 talk on Architecting and Building Smart Client Apps with .NET. Here are all of the details! www.vtdotnet.org Tim took great advantage of the trip east. He and his wife spent...

The April 2004 edition of the INETA NORAM (North America) Newsletter just went out and is also up on the INETA site at http://www.ineta.org/newsletters . Some of the other regions also have newsletters now and they are on this page as well. The “NORAM” newsletter is not explicitly about US...

HEre's the deal When you first go to www.ineta.org/bof you will see a choice of TechEd 2004 or Tech-Ed EUrope 2004. Select one of those BEFORE you click on the Proposed Topics, Submit a Topic or VOte on a Topic links. Also, you can vote from within the proposed topics or by selecting “Vote on a...

If you *must* look up the definition: here ! Tim Huckaby, known simply as “Huckaby” to some, is coming to speak at Vermont.NET on May 10th. Tim lives in California, so to take advantage of the trip east, he and his wife will be doing an enviable little New England B&B tour (NH, Maine...

Many of the people who volunteer for INETA have been doing it for a long time. As INETA grows, we are fortunate that our volunteer base grows. For those of us who have been at it for a while, it has really become a part of our life. Many of the INETA volunteers spend time almost every day, sometimes...

I was just looking at the list of many schools that could still use volunteer judges that is on the INETA Website. The best way to see is on this page http://inetaacademic.com/imaginecup/matrixmatches.aspx About 15 in California Boulder, CO Storrs, CT Dayton Beach, FL Athens and Kennesaw, GA 2 in Honolulu...

Amy Sorokas from SAMS sent me a bunch of ASP.NET books to give away at DevDays! Since there is no time really to do that after my talk (since there is the 4th session immediately) I will bring them to the User Group booth and we will be raffling them off. The booth will be a shared effort by the local...

Although Jason is an INETA speaker, he recently started working for Infragistics and it was Infragistics that sponsored him coming to speak to Vermont.NET monday. Jason was such a hit with our user group (see this example on Dave Burke's blog ), I am still getting emails from attendees thanking me and...

I am *so* happy to see this. Sam did this talk at Vermont.NET last summer. It is a phenomenal presentation that made everyone in the group (from newbies to experts) feel like they gleaned a real inside understanding of .NET. And Sam is a lot of fun when he gets going on this topic that he is so passionate...

Infragistics recently scooped up Jason Beres (lucky them) and he moved from Florida to New Jersey. Tomorrow they are sending Jason, who is also an INETA speaker, to speak at Vermont.NET. Jason will fly in in the early afternoon, get a quick tour of Burlington, do the meeting then we'll head back downtown...

MSDN was very generous in purchasing a booth at each DevDays event for local user groups to share in order to let attendees know about the user groups. If you are a user group leader and are NOT set up to do this and want to be for an upcoming DevDays event, contact ugrelations@ineta.org asap. If your...

The folks on the infrastructure committee for INETA , especially Devin Rader , are building a phenomenal new website for INETA. They are spending a lot of their personal time on this, as it is a volunteer project, and would welcome some volunteers with C# and ASP.NET experience to help them out. Read...

The next INETA newsletter is on it's way out. I got some awesome help this month (and going forward) from Sheri Nawrocki who is on the INETA Marketing committee and also a graphic designer (consultant hint hint) as well as a .NET Developer. Sheri did a major redesign of the newsletter and it is just...

I love the description of this talk! Zen and the Art of Web Services (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love WSDL) Will Web Services save the world? More importantly, will they save you time? Are Web Services just a bunch of hooey? We’ll separate the good from the bad and dig into the WHY...