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 is a new addition to the INETA Speaker Bureau is speaking at the Alberta.NET user group today as an INETA speaker. Yippee.

http://www.AcehAid.org

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 lot more about .NET than most designers (and has access to whatever she needs to know). So she is a great graphics person to partner with on .NET projects, don’t you think?

Sheri is working on her own design website, SheriBDesigns, (you know, the old shoemaker’s kids syndrome), but watch this space. Sheri tells me that my pointing to her website will light a fire under her to finish it up. Hey, what’s a friend for? 🙂

Hooray!!!

Look in your inboxes if you are subscribed. Or read it online!

Thanks for the major group effort that went behind this newsletter.

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 Bellware.

Posted from BLInk!

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 will just tease you with the list of vendors who have made donations to the boxes.

/nSoftware
Altova
Code Magazine
ComponentOne
Deklarit
DotNetBuilders
Dundas Software
eBay
FarPoint Technologies
FMS Inc.
Infragistics
IVIS Technologies
Kinitos
O’Reilly & Associates
PreEmptive Solutions
SAPIEN Technologies, Inc.
Sax.net
Sys-Con
Wiley Publishing

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 to shift the reigns to. Here’s Bill’s blog post on the subject.

I’m sure Amy Sorokas Mougeotte won’t mind my pasting this from an April 2002 email she sent which was the first time I had heard of INETA. Amy was working for SAMS and I was registering Vermont.NET to their User Group Book Club.

Has your group joined INETA yet? http://www.ineta.org

Thanks Amy! Amy now works for Microsoft in a job where she is very involved with INETA, so we will continue to work together.

Posted from BLInk!

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 Minnessota. There is no way we could have had him at our group otherwise. I recieved this email from a user group member today and with her permission am sharing it here:

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 the leader of a user group that is an INETA member and is in one of these two regions, keep an eye out for the email. If you don’t receive it, contact your INETA liaison. If you don’t know who that is, then email [email protected]. Guess who answers (or forwards to the correct person) every single email that comes to this address which basically equates to info@? ME. So be kind.