Gary Pronych

1 Part .NET Developer, 2 Parts Personal Developer; 100% Canadian

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Burdens of a Small Market User Group Leader

All .NET developers should know that there are a number of Launch events across Canada in the coming months.
US and International developers can use this link for registration information.

Larger cities are hosting big splash 'Launch and Technical Readiness' events which are the big bang marketing events for Microsoft.
The big cities and smaller cities will have a 'Community Connections' event which is a typically a more user group community orientated event.

Being a user group leader of a community with 150+ members I can understand we do not qualify for a big bang event; I am more than content with a community event.

My frustration is that everything you do in small market is an up hill battle.
- Limited Sponsors
- Limited experts to assist with events
- Advertisers avoid your region because of size

I can't speak for the large markets, but personally I would have an easier time coordinating events with additional resources in this area.

As Community Connection events are selling out nationally, I haven't even been able to confirm my event location; I just confirmed my speakers with 18 days to my event.

My point is that the Microsoft user group model supports large communities; for me it resolves to the old cliché 'The rich get richer, the poor get poorer'.

I can't decide what my call to action is here, I have shared my voice with my fellow developers at a DevTeach Summit and Microsoft Developer Evangelist to no avail; I just continue to climb the uphill battle.

Challenge 1 of Infinity

Print | posted on Saturday, March 01, 2008 10:18 AM | Filed Under [ Perspective User Group Musings ]

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