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