We usually start our meetings at 6:30, which means people get there anywhere from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm, there is so much networking you can do, personally I prefer to do my Networking after the meeting while enjoying one, two or seventy five adult beverages. If you run a usergoup or are involved with one you know what I am talking about.
Couple of years ago we had this idea for nonprofit ways, initially the plan was that we find a non profit organization that needs a project done which they can not afford to pay some to develop it, and get a group of volunteers who are trying to learn .NET work together and develop this application. So between 6:00 and 7:00 as people get to the meeting we will use that time to discuss progress and review code done by volunteers.
Great Idea, but eventually we had to many architects and not enough coders. Also developing a project is a lengthy process, average volunteer would start very excited and sign up for a lot of tasks, most had a job or a personal life (a few had both) , but eventually they would realize they don't have time to work on the project, then I had to find some one else to do the task and more often I would do it myself.
So to make a long story short, our good friend Joe Healy of Microsoft graciously invited all the Gulf coast user group leaders to VS Live, It was there that (over a few more drinks) we came up with the ideas of having the members write “Grey Papers” ( I think Stan Schultes has a trademark for the term) so I emailed everyone prior to our meeting and we discussed a few topics and now I have about 15 volunteers. Everyone is very excited and they each expect to spend 3-5 hours between now and our next meeting to work on this.
I will let everyone know when we are done with our first Grey Paper.