It’s part tech, part fun, all Martin…

	Tablet UML News Blog
	Martin Shoemaker’s Blog
	http://www.tabletumlnews.com/

I’ll be speaking the Dayton .NET Developers Group on 8/24/2005 about WSE 3.0 and ASP.NET 2.0.

I was invited my Jim Holmes. He’s no relation to me – just a good friend.

John Hopkins will also be speaking there on the Dotfuscator and what it’s capabilities are.

	Dayton .NE Developers Group
	.NET Users Group in Dayton Ohio
	http://www.daytondevgroup.net/

Effective C#, my business partner’s (Bill Wagner) book, was translated into Hungarian. I just think that it’s cool!

	Hatékony C#
	Hatékony C# == Effective C#
	http://www.kiskapukiado.hu/main.php?SHOW_BODY=books&OP=detailed&PROD_ID=102

I know that it’s not a big deal to some others, but I’m really happy that I’ve got commenting available on my blog now.

Try it out – comment on this post. 🙂

Keep in mind that it is a moderated comment channel so there will be some lag between post and visible.

I’m honored to be in INETA Speaker Bureau with such influential developers as Martin L. Shoemaker, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Rocky Lhotka and Juval Lowy, just to name a few. INETA helped get the Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group (GANG) off the ground by supplying great speakers, such as Richard Hale Shaw, Chris Kinsman and Tom Barnaby (Now with Microsoft and I can’t find his new blog), as well as advice on logistical setup of the meetings and the user group leaders forums. My goal is to help other user groups as much as these great speakers have helped my group.

There were 9 of us added at the same time:

John Alexander
Miguel Castro
Bill Evjen
Julie Lerman
Chris Menegay
Ted Pattison
Les Pinter
Bill Vaughn
Me

It gets better as I’ve already been scheduled to speak through INETA at the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group on October 25th.

Tim Landgrave, Regional Director from Kentucky and a great speaker, will be doing the main presentation on “Developing Enterprise Class Web Services using the .NET Framework” starting at 7:00.

I’m going to give the tutorial session on “Introduction to Web Services” starting at 6:00.

We will also be doing unprecedented giveaways as we give away a copy of VS.NET 2003 Professional, a number of books including Writing Secure Code 2, ASP.NET 2.0 books and more, t-shirts and more.

Bring a friend to increase your chances of winning!

Hello Listeners,

If you are in the Detroit area, please fill out our survey to help me and the rest of the board guide the group in the ways that can best server the South-Eastern Michigan area. We are doing what we think is best, but we’d all like some feedback, especially from those that are not coming currently.

If you are not coming, please let us know why and what would entice you to come.

If you are coming, please let us know what we are doing right and what we are doing slightly less that perfectly.

Either way, please pass this URL around to all of your friends, co-workers and anyone else that might be in our demographic. That includes .NET Developers (Obviously), those interested in .NET, managers who managed developers and so on. Post this on your blogs, email it, tell people about it and other mechanisms that you can think of to get it around to your friends.

Thank you,
Josh Holmes
VP of GANG
Program Chair of GANG

Drew Robbins was the first Dancing DE… Andrew Duthie has raised the bar with his rendition of Love Shack! I wish that I could have gotten the whole thing on video but I did the best that I could here. This was at the MVP Summit 2005. There was a party at the Science Fiction Museum with a kareoke bar upstairs.

Two extra fun bits:
1) That’s his boss, Kim, with him. She’s the manager for all of the DE’s in the Eastern District of the US.
2) He’s pretty good – in fact, he used to have a band before Microsoft took all of his spare time. Oh yeah and he had children so he didn’t have time anyway…

Update: I’ve been corrected – he’s damn good!

	Andrew’s Video Performance
	https://joshholmes.com/images/DuthieLoveShack.wmv
	Andrew Duthie’s Blog

My current contract is a Compact Framework application for a LXE device running Windows CE 4.2. I was having some issues connecting to it from VS.NET and so I asked my good friend Google what he knew about it with this query – http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=VS.NET+Compact+Framework+Device+Connection+Issue. Wouldn’t you know that it pops up with my good friend Doug Reilly when he posted about VS.NET Compact Framework Deployment Issues. It turns out that I didn’t have the exact same issue as Doug, but it did fix me because in the download that me pointed me to (Windows CE Utilities for Visual Studio .NET 2003 Add-on Pack 1.1). In there they mentioned that you have to configure VS.NET for the processor type that you are using with Windows CE with ActiveSync.

That’s a real pain, but it fixed me…

When I was at the Rockford, IL .NET Users Group we spent a lot of time afterwards talking about the formation of a user group and best practices. We talked about the idea that they should structure the group so that one person is not having to do all of the work. It’s not sustainable to have one person running the whole show. I just got an email from Chris Hoffman asking me to repeat some of that information. 

 

The basic structure that we are using for three different groups (Great Lakes Area .NET Users Group, Ann Arbor .NET Developers Group and Ann Arbor Computer Society) is as follows:

 

4-5 elected officials – elections once a year.

President

This is the coordinator of all of the different people. Their two basic tasks are to makes sure that everyone else gets their work done and to run the meetings.

 

Vice-President

The basic task of the VP is to take over when the President is not able to make it. We also use the VPs as an extra body on any of the tasks that need to be done such as helping to coordinate marketing, pizza, venue and so on.

 

Treasurer

The Treasurer is the one that maintains the bank account.

User groups have expenses. Those can come in the form of paying for venue, pizza, web hosting, swag to give away and lots more. You can get money for these expenses through paid membership, sponsors, donations or some combination of the three. At all three of the groups that I’m involved in, there is a voluntary $20.00 membership. On top of that, they all have free venue so we are able to cover the expenses with that membership. Two of the groups also accept sponsorships so they can make money that way as well. The treasurer takes the money in and writes the checks so make sure this is someone that you trust. Not that the user group will ever make enough money that it’s worth embezzling but still.

 

Secretary

This secretary’s job is to record minutes at any of the board meetings and such. They are also responsible for running the elections. They should get familiar with Roberts Rules of Order before running the elections. That not required but it’s definitely good because it gives the whole process order and a sense of officialness.

 

At AACS (Ann Arbor Computer Society) we also have a Quartermaster who is responsible for physical things like getting the projector ready and the like. It’s their responsibility to make sure that the room is ready for everyone.

 

Then there are the appointed chair positions. The president has the power to create and appoint chair positions on an as needed basis. The reason that these are by appointment rather than by election is that it makes it easy for administration after administration to reuse the same chairs so there is some continuity between the years. The two chair positions that all of the groups have are:

 

Program Chair

This is the hardest job of the whole group in my opinion. It’s this chair’s job to ensure that there are speakers for every meeting. This person coordinates with INETA if it’s a .NET Users group, scan search engines for local speakers, contacts friends and family and begs and pleads for speakers. It’s a good idea to have a well connected person in this position when the group is starting up because it will make the job easier. As time goes on, the group will gain a reputation and it will be a touch easier because you’ll have some number of speakers asking to come speak + the INETA gigs so you really only have to find 4-5 presenters a year.

 

Web Master Chair

This is the person responsible for the web site. Plan on using Community Server, Dotnetnuke or some other portal style framework because it will make life easier.

 

 

Other chairs that have been created by various groups

 

Publicity Chair

Responsible for mailing out the meeting announcements, getting the group into MSDN flash and other community calendars and so on. Publicity is essential to growing the group. First you have to get the word out to get people interested in it. Second, until you get burned into people’s brain, people will intend on coming but forget about it unless there’s a reminder sent out.

 

Academic Liaison Chair

We have a lot of universities here so it made sense.

 

I hope that this helps. Please let me know if I missed something or if you have anything to add.