I’m a day late and a dollar short.

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY to INETA!!!

Bill Evjen says it all in his blog post which will be also in the next newsletter.

What Bill doesn’t say is this.

This was Bill’s dream. He came up with the idea from his experiences as a user group leader and he pursued making it a reality.

Many people think Microsoft started INETA. Not true. They are merely a sponsor. A wonderful, generous sponsor – but that is all. They do give INETA resources besides financial ones and Eric Ewing definitely needs to be pointed out for the time and energy he puts into INETA which goes above and beyond his job.

Many many people have come together to make this happen. Hundreds of volunteers, user group leaders that have joined INETA (478 and counting) from all over the world. And the speakers who are so generous with their time. Though they get a small honorarium for their speaking engagements, it does not come close to paying for their valuable time. Perhaps one or two hours of it. But certainly not for what is generally a few days of travel. Making INETA happen is not a small thing. Because of many people’s passions, it has become practically a part-time job (volunteer) for many of us and we wouldn’t have it any other way. (Though some of our spouses probably feel differently…)

Thanks to everyone who makes INETA happen and thanks to INETA for giving me a place to fulfill my obsessions! And thanks to all of our spouses/partners who put up with us.

The Vermont .NET User Group also celebrates it’s 2nd year anniversary this month. That’s a whole ‘nother story!

I’m happy I’ll get to see Brian in Boston as he will be speaking at the EdgeEast conference also on BizTalk Server 2004.

But today I had a special treat when my two new copies of ASPNetPro arrived and there he was talking about INETA.

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 beautiful. She also is doing the physical production of the newsletter which is a huge help to me. We finally have a home for old newsletters (you know, old newsletters never die, they just fade away) at www.ineta.org/newsletters. We will also start putting the international newsletters there as well. Since INETA is know defined as regions (North America aka NORAM, Latin America aka LATAM, Europe, MiddleEast/Africa aka MEA and AsiaPacific aka APAC) each region will be doing their own newsletter, though the one I do (NorAm) does have a bit of a world view still. Though some of the news is user group related and INETA related, it may still be of interest to others and you can subscribe to Sheri’s thing of beauty on the home page of the INETA website. We’ll get the January newsletter onto the newsletter page shortly if you were not susbscribed before it went out.

see Devin’s post here for more information…