Chris Pels

The past several days I have been out at MSFT in Redmond for a series of INETA meetings and other activities. The main meeting Saturday was a gathering of the INETA Working Group which consists of the Board of Directors, Committee Chairs, our Executive Director, and representatives from MSFT, about a dozen people total. We spent the entire day reviewing current activities, planning upcoming tasks, and brainstorming about many aspects of INETA going forward. All in all it was time well spent. There is nothing better than in-person interaction. There are a few exciting activities coming up for the user group community from INETA which I will detail here as soon as the specifics are worked out.

This past week I had the unique opportunity of joining Jonathan Zuck, President of Americans for Competitive Technology, Jim Prendergast, Executive Director of Americans for Technology Leadership, and fellow developer Patrick Hynds for a day of meetings with members of the Massachusetts legislature. I was there as a local small business person and representing the developer community through INETA. Our goal was to make the legislators aware we are available as a resource on technology issues not push any particular agenda. As technology issues arise the legislators would then be able to contact us for briefings etc.

Prior to the start of our meetings we had a private tour of the Massachusetts State House a beautiful and incredibly historic place. Seeing portraits of the early governors like John Hancock and Samuel Adams who were instrumental in starting our country was exciting.

Our meetings with the legislators were very educational and cordial. We sat down one-on-one and just talked about important issues in the technology world today. Topics included outsourcing, spyware, intellectual property in a global economy, K-12 technology education, and others. One thing that really struck me was these people making important decisions about our industry are much like the average adult in our country today, they really only understand a little bit of what technology is all about.

One interesting issue that came up in all our discussions was how our field, technology, contains many more entrepreneurs and small businesses than many other fields. This makes it harder for our voices to be heard on important issues. Thus, Jim and Jonathan's organizations. As I become aware of technology issues on the local or national level I will post information here so everyone is aware of the issues and can follow-up when necessary.

In the end this was a day well spent.

I am excited about being appointed to the Board of Directors for INETA along with Julie Lerman. This is a great organization that focuses on building a better user group community amongst around the world through a variety of programs. I have been volunteering with INETA for about 2 1/2 years and it is a fabulous group of people that have a great passion for helping the developer community. I look forward helping make INETA an even better organization in the coming years. We are always looking for more volunteers. Just email me at chris.pels@ineta.org.

The INETA Meeting Attendance Survey I mentioned in a recent post is coming to close in a little more than a week, Sunday November 7, 2004 to be exact. We have a great response so far with almost 200 user groups reporting their information. If you have not done so already please enter your information at http://www.ineta.org/survey/meetingattendance/default.aspx. I'll post some of the statistics here after we are done along with the winners of the XBOX.

INETA has launched what is being referred to as the Great Attendance Count which I have been coordinating. We are collecting the number of people that attend user group meetings during October 2004 for INETA user groups as well as their total number of members. If you are a user group leader for an INETA user group you should have received an email with details yesterday. If not, visit http://www.ineta.org/survey/meetingattendance/default.aspx and enter your information. BTW, all user groups that submit their data by Sun 11/7 are eligible to win an XBOX for raffle at an upcoming user group meeting.

Thanks to INETA volunteers Devin Rader, Scott Cate, and Julie Lerman for helping out with this task.

INETA is a great organization that has grown rapidly to be quite large and includes members from many countries around the world. Going forward we want to provide services and information that best fit our membership. In order to do this we have to understand our members and this simple survey is a starting point in that process. So help us better serve you and submit your data.

As long as I am here I want to mention we will be having a User Group Leader Summit at TechEd 05 in Orlando next June. It will be an opportunity for user group leaders from around the world to spend a day (probably Sunday before TechEd start) learning how to improve their user group through discussions with other user group leaders. More details here as the planning progresses.

I recently attended a meeting of the INETA Board of Directors and Committee Heads as the Co-Chair of the User Group Relations Committee. In addition, our MSFT representatives Heidi and Amy attended. For those of you that do not know, INETA is an independent non-profit organization that provides resources and services for .NET user groups around the world. Even though I have been volunteering with INETA for about two years I only moved into the Co-Chair position this past May so this was my first Board meeting.

It was a great meeting because it brought all the volunteers responsible for the major areas of INETA together where we were able to discuss many issues and plan for tasks and upcoming events. The in-person communication was invaluable. This was a one-day Saturday meeting since all of us are volunteers and spend some time occasionally in jobs that pay the bills during the week. The first half of the day was spent reviewing the structure and current focus of each INETA committee for our new General Manager Samantha who will be a great asset to the organization. During the afternoon each committee discussed plans for the upcoming year where there was good and sometimes intense discussion. INETA has some exciting new things coming including more speaker events, an expanded User Group Leader Summit at TechEd 2005, a new website, and more.

As always it was lots of fun to get to hang out with the other INETA volunteers. One great thing about INETA is the people. Everyone is passionate about user groups and also genuinely nice and fun to hang out with. The meeting was in Las Vegas so after our all day work session we went out for a great dinner at Drais then did some people watching on the Strip and at a few local watering holes. Also, I came out $5.75 ahead which is more than I can say for other Vegas trips. Sunday morning came and we all parted ways, looking forward to our next gathering.