This post says it all about why I love working with INETA.

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 meeting, the slide show was just on a loop cycle. Then for the meeting intro, he used the slides as his talking points. Geeze, I use notes on a piece of paper.

So I put one together for Monday night’s meeting of Vermont.NET with Rocky Lhotka, including, of course a slide about INETA since it’s an INETA sponsored meeting.

Feel free to steal this and make it your own

http://www.vtdotnet.org/docs/vtdotnetnovemberppt.ppt

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 was about.

Today there was an email from a startup user group in Moscow (the one in Russia, not the little town outside of Stowe, Vermont). The leader is a university student who was part of one of the Imagine Cup teams that competed in the final rounds in Russia this year. I just needed to get that mail forwarded to Christian Nagel, but as I did I also cc’d a few other guys in Russia, Andrei Filev who is very involved with INETA and Mike Yasnev, yet another student u.g. leader from Moscow who I have chatted with a bunch of times. This way, the new user group leader could be sure to get connected to some other people who already have a experience with INETA and especially because Andrei is a great resource in Russia for .NET.

There are a ton of things that I do with INETA that give me great pleasure. This is definitely one of them.

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 who spoke had to wear two mikes, one for the speakers in the room and another for the video. He taped almost the entire meetings.

He is in the process now of transferring the video and it will soon be available on the INETA website.

Thanks Eric!

*Chatanooga .NET User Group Leader and INETA User Group RElations Strategic Committee Member

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 become members of INETA by applying and going through an approval process based on a set of criteria. If you are curious how that works and for lots of great info on how to start a user group check out this page on the INETA website.

Also INETA has public forums where many user group leaders discuss all kinds of things about running user groups from how the pizza gets paid for to if it’s necessary to be a non-profit. These are not technical forums, but truly dedicated to user group leaders sharing information.

Enjoy!

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 to him.

If you have ever thought about starting up a user group, this would be a great way to get some very useful and helpful information.

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 APAC (Asia Pacific Region) summit, DevSource’s utility contest with a serious prize, PAG’s new design guidelines and lots more.

Don’t miss the interview with INETA Speaker G. Andrew Duthie!!

We are really lucky to have Sheri Nawrocki designing the newsletter. Isn’t it bee-yoo-tee-ful?

I am now feeding a few of my blog categories to the Vermont.NET website and am happy to see referrals coming in from there. Now I know that I have found another way to share information with my user group members!

Christian Nagel lists and links to some of the latest European additions to INETA. It is amazing and wonderful to see where user groups are popping up!