Hi,

Many thanks to those who came along to our PDC Fireworks session last night. I hope you had an interesting time hearing about what's coming on the horizon, and that your families enjoyed meeting your geek friends!
A huge thank you to our speakers who presented on such a wide range of topics in a limited time. If you want to find out more or watch any sessions from the PDC, you could visit the Channel 9 PDC site, or visit the blogs of the presenters:

• Chris Auld
• James Newton-King
• James Hippolite
• Mark Orange
• Chan Kulathilake
• Owen Evans
• Kirk Jackson

Also, a big thanks to those who helped set up and tidy up the room. Great job!

The .NET user group meets once or twice monthly, usually on the first and third Wednesday of the month. If you'd like to go on my mailing list for upcoming user group presentations, please email me.

If you're interested in the Wellington Sharepoint User Group, or the Wellington SQL User Group, make sure you follow the links to sign up to them.

Upcoming Sessions:

There's a few events coming up in Wellington that are free to attend:

Wed 19 Nov, 6pm - Microsoft .NET Services with Chaks Chandran [.NET User Group]

Microsoft .Net Services is a part of the recently announced Microsoft Azure Platform. What does Microsoft .Net Services provide ?

Microsoft .Net Services consists of three main components:

1. Service Bus
2. Access Control
3. Workflow Services

They provide a hosting platform where you can develop connected, peer to peer applications that can speak to each other without considering the other complexities such as firewall rules and NAT etc,.

Venue: Xero, Level 1, 98 Customhouse Quay, Wellington

Please RSVP to kirkj@paradise.net.nz

Thurs 13 Nov, 1:10-5pm - MSDN Unplugged [Microsoft]

This free half day event, organised by Microsoft, sees JD Trask and myself talking on WPF, Silverlight and Visual Studio. More info here.

Sat 6 & Sun 7 Dec - SQL Pass Community Connection [NZ User Groups]

A free, all day event focussed on SQL and related technologies. Overseas and NZ speakers. Find out more at the event website.

Wed 3 Dec, 6pm - Overcoming your web insecurity [.NET User Group]

In this hour-long session, I'll be introducing you to some of the threats your ASP.NET website will face, and give you ideas on how to protect your users, company and yourself. This applies to public facing and internal (intranet) applications.

RSVP details will be sent out to the announcement list closer to the date.

 

Thanks for reading this far!

Kirk

I enjoyed reading this book. Christopher Fairbairn, organiser of the Christchurch .NET User Group recommended it to me as containing a bunch of useful tips for running a user group, and I have to agree with him.

The author is Dr. Greg Low, who has spent a long time organising MSDN and SQL Server user groups in Queensland, Australia. Greg is a big supporter of Code Camps, and has helped organise Code Camps in Australia and spoken in New Zealand. When I first met Greg, I was impressed by his enthusiasm and energy.

The Rational Guide to Building Technical Communities is all about improving your user group, with ideas on running your group more consistently; finding, recruiting and growing your speaker pool; recruiting volunteers; and running the meeting successfully.

The book has the following sections:

• Overview
• People, Not Technology
• Something for everyone
• Finding speakers
• Tried and true
• Starting and growing user groups
• Pizza does not define a user group
• Don't reinvent the wheel
• Recruiting members
• Content and handouts
• User group meetings and conferences
• Using technologies
• Recruiting volunteers
• Conducting meetings
• Tips for presenters
• Legal and finance
• The fine print
• Funding

Some things (like Legal and Finance), we've got sorted now in New Zealand with our incorporated society (although the section on different types of insurance we might need was an eye opener), and others I still struggle with.

Most interesting to me was how to attract and keep new members by making them feel welcome in the group. Some ideas, like introducing new members at the start of a meeting I will try out at our next meeting.

Greg repeats a marketing adage: "the easiest customer to find is the one you already have", and that's too true. Each time someone comes along to our user group, we have to give them as much opportunity as possible to stay in our group -- by pitching future topics at their level, and making sure that they know about them. In our Wellington group we're trying to have some more introductory or general purpose topics to try and appeal to more people.

In summary, I guess the most useful things I drew from this book were about the human side of running a user group. That's what I find the most enjoyable and rewarding, and Greg gives some good tips on how to make it happen.

Cheers,

Kirk