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So some of you have no idea who I am. I don't even know who I am sometimes. What self respecting 26 year old knows who they are. Anyway, I moved to Kansas City about a year and a half ago and I was depressed when I moved. I had just started to get involved with the St. Louis Jewish Community. I was going to go to start school again, but my job basically was we want to move you to Kansas City and we don't really have other options. I knew how it went. I was 24 years old. I had to move. My boyfriend lived in Kansas City, but I was a St. Louis girl. I would roller-blade in Stacey Park. Every so often I would go and get a free meal from my parents. I could see my friends Leah, Jason, and Jaimie all the time. I knew things were about to change I just didn't know how or why. I ended up moving in June 07. Around April of 07 I started to play World of Warcraft again. I was really depressed, so I pushed myself into an introverted online coma. The happiest times were when I visited St. Louis every weekend up until June. I kept trying to visit St. Louis as much as possible on the weekends. I had some really good times with my boyfriend, but he had to work and go to school. I was really getting into MOSS at my new job at Terracon, but the job can only carry you so far without a social life you are nothing. I didn't like who I was becoming and what I was doing. My mom is Bipolar. I had some rough times growing up. I have more depression checks and balances than some people. If I'm depressed I need to find some way to get out of it. At that point in time I tried to get back into the LGBT Community at UMKC without success. I realized I was a little too old for the college crowd. I tried to hang out with old friends from UMKC, but some of them had moved on. At that point I thought let's try a user group. I thought that I would be overwhelmed by some guys talking about algorithms and procedures that were way over my head. I tried to talk myself out of going. It was new and weird. I was introverted (I still am). So I went to the Kansas City .Net User Group. Jeff Julian, John Alexander, Doug Butscher, and a few other guys were sitting on a panel talking about who knows what for who knows how long. I enjoyed it. They mentioned that they had written a SharePoint Development Book with a bunch of people during the meeting. I thought ok these guys have got to be good people I need to seriously do something I would never do. I need to walk up and talk to one of these guys and open a dialog. That way I might end up meeting someone at the least I can hang out with in the future and watch dvds or play video games. I know it's weird, but I had no friends in Kansas City and I thought maybe this was a way to make some. I spent a decent amount of time talking to Jeff Julian about something SharePoint. I really don't remember. From that point on the best days of my month were spent waiting for the .Net User Group Meetings. It was my only social time away from WoW. Around the late summer months of 07 early fall months Jeff had started a user group called the Kansas City Office Geeks. I wanted to attend, but I was in a Dale Carnegie Trainer Program. Somehow after a few months I quit the program and started attending Office Geeks. I believe it was in October or November of last year that I spoke in front of an audience for the first time (it was around 5 or 6 people). I presented on SharePoint Disaster Recovery. Somehow after that meeting I decided to attend every single Office Geeks meeting. Jeff asked for some recruiting advice and somehow I was a co-leader at some point, then I was running the meetings and the group. At the same point in time, October, I quit World of Warcraft, because I wanted to get out of this depression pool. That's when things started to take off. I planned all the meetings for most of the year, speakers, sponsors, and what not. We were getting on average 13 people. We had a great year in 2008 for the most part we had decent attendance for a special interest group in Kansas City. I really loved working with Office Geeks and with the community in Kansas City. This past year I also took part in the Coders 4 Charity event. We took home the prize and I met some great people. Lee Brandt, Joe Loux, Blake Thiess, and Tim Wright all good people. Lee is I would like to say is a friend. Lee's big thing is getting events started in Kansas City. He wants us to have something for our own, because we don't all have $1,000 to go to Kansas City. His passion kind of fuels my own passion. Early on this year I went to MOSS Camp in St. Louis and I thought wouldn't this be great in Kansas City. I let it stew, because I wasn't sure with so much work needing to be done for Office Geeks how could we hold such an event? Anyway, Lee's baby was the Kansas City Day of Dot Net. He wanted to hold a code camp here. He held it a week ago in Kansas City. I helped out by getting the SharePoint speakers. I secretly was testing his event to see if I could actually hold my event. With his event succeeding I realized that we could hold a SharePoint event after all. We had enough people. It would probably only be about three tracks, but we can do it. After his event I started sending out information and putting things into place for SharePoint Saturday. I get really excited when I am passionate about something. For some reason helping out the community by planning a free SharePoint event got me excited. I built the website, e-mailed a few sponsors (mostly without luck I don't like asking for things from people), got a ton of volunteer support, got a few speakers. The event still could use work, but I am finally coming full circle. I am happy with what I am doing for the community and happy with my life. I am no longer depressed. You guys have to realize yeah I am doing this for selfish reasons, but not the reasons you think I am doing it. If you think otherwise you don't know me. Most of you who read my blog things you know me. I am the product of my environment. I was taught that if you work hard for what you want you will get it. I worked very hard to get to where I am. I am going to continue to work hard. Yes, I am scared most of the time that I will fall like the rest of you so I put out 110% most of the time. I am scared that this event will fail big time, but I am not willing to give up. I will not stop working with the community in Kansas City. I will not stop blogging. I will not stop being me. If you want to get to know me come up and say "Hi" sometime on facebook, im, twitter, whatever you feel like I'm here. I know I'm flawed. I fail at getting back to people sometimes and I am sorry. I will catch you guys later. I hope that you all have a good holidays.
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