9:00 AM: Introductions
Lots of international representation from various countries including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, Russia, Peru, and USA (of course).
9:00 AM: Bill Evjen - INETA User Group Leader Conference
Introduction: Agenda (party tonight at Eddie Deen's Ranch to meet up with various regional directors); INETA history; INETA (today). Happy birthday to INETA! +94,000 members; 315 member user groups. Unbelieveable! New Web site - it's lookin' pretty sweet. INETA speakers are so important to help increase .NET user group attendance.
Committees: Marketing and Sponsorship, Membership, Infrastructure, Speakers, and International. Lots of work being done. There's still a lot of work to do. (Particularly in the Infrastructure space, which I am a member of. Man, do we have a lot of stuff planned.)
New INETA Board member: Keith Pleas! The man! Our new speaker liaison. Our new International activities organizer.
INETA in the Last Year: "We have grown so fast!" -- Bill Evjen. This is totally cool. We're got a lot of stuff planned - geographic and volunteer expansion.
INETA in the Next Year: New academic focus (i.e. universities and high schools); international expansion in Europe, Latam, Asia/Pacific, Middle East; new speakers; more volunteers; warm-up packages; additional sponsorships; user group leader conferences; more ad hoc support for user groups.
INETA Issues (Help & Advice Needed): Speakers; branding; volunteer burn-out; explosive growth; meeting international demand. INETA has a number of issues, many of which we need help trying to sort out. Get involved! Reach out!
ANN: New chair members for each committee. Excellent news. Should help provide direction for each committee and proxy to the INETA Board.
10:00 AM: Keith Pleas - International Overview (Putting the "I" in INETA)
International Committee: Organize world logically; establish regional affiliation criteria; support regional INETA activities; develop regional Microsoft support; coordinate INETA seed funding; report progress to Microsoft.
International: An Overview: INETA is looking to organize on a more granular level. (On a personal note, Australia looks to be well organized. Cheers to Mitch Denny and Charles Sterling for their fantastic effort.)
10:10 AM: Federico Raggi (Microsoft) and Jose Berrios (INETA) - INETA Latin America and Microsoft Latam Community Programs
(Sorry. I lost my notes here. Radio decided to throw up. Again.)
DEMO: Five Star Developer. A program for certification with total focus on developers. Also to help bring developers together. Showed various screenshots from MSDN Spanish (http://www.microsoft.com/spanish/msdn/). Represented countries include Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.
INETA & Five Star Developer: Third Star is instructed by the User Groups; involves all the online community with the UGs (+100K online users vs. 15K INETA users).
Panorama Box (Content, Content, Content!): Discussion focused on how to draw developers to a Web site. In this case, content is key to bringing people to a site. The aim is to provide developers with the content they need: articles, code samples, how-to guides, speakers, etc. Supports a federated search system. Also supports a Ask for Content (SOS) and a mechanism to reward developers who contribute to the community (both online/offline) with prizes and exposure. (Much a kin to the .NET Junkies writer's program.) Looks great! The Panorama Box is featured on many different sites - plugs into existing HTML template. Also includes a rating and query system.
Panorama Box & INETA: Panorama Box rewards UG developers for their community participation; Speaker Bureau Lite - developers earn points for speaking at UG seminars; promotes UG sites content.
11:00 AM: Committees, Part 1: User Group Relations Committee (Dave Noderer)
Activities: Approve/monitor groups; primary point of contact for UG leaders; publish monthly newsletter; provide support for groups that are in the process of starting. Julie wants more pictures for the monthly newsletter.
Current Membership Criteria: Have an established user group; hold regular in-person meetings open to anyone; have a user group Web site; make every effort to grow the group and expand the local .NET community. An interesting discussion about how the meaning behind .NET is blurring the line that deliniates INETA's responsibilities; is the organization going to target IT user groups? How can INETA target user groups primarily focused on .NET servers like SQL Server?
11:15 AM: Committees, Part 2: Speakers Bureau Committee (Farhan Muhammad)
Vision: Speakers Bureau was created to distribute .NET knowledge throughout the country, to reach out to remote areas where .NET expertise is scarse, and to generate enthusiasm for .NET technology around the country.
11:45 AM: Committees, Part 3: Marketing and Sponsorship Committee (Brian Loesgen)
Responsibilities: Promoting INETA (i.e. press releases, banner programs, industry partnerships), securing sponsorships, and engaging with the .NET 3rd party.
Special Programs: "Plug into INETA" campaign, winter warm-up/spring thaw (raffle/door prize shipments), user group specials program (discounts and banner placement), community book program (community-oriented book discussions and ranking), gifts for UG leaders.
12:30 PM: Committees, Part 4: Infrastructure (Keith Franklin)
Activities: Web site and server maintenance, set technical direction for initiatives, manage Web site redesign, and support other committees.
2003 Activities: New site is just beginning, automate INETA business processes, Web services for INETA groups, RSS feeds, determine how to support international/i18n efforts. INETA currently hosted 2 RSS feeds: http://www.ineta.org/rss/speakerschedule.aspx and http://www.ineta.org/rss/contentrepository.aspx.
12:55 PM: Committees, Part 5: International Efforts
INETA Europe - Collaboration is much more difficult due to the variety of languages.
1:05 PM: Kevin Briody (Microsoft)
INETA is increasing its level of visibility within Microsoft. The strength of INETA is being used as a measurement proxy for the strength of the development community at large. (Cool!) Most/all product teams at Microsoft are quite aware of INETA. (Way cool!)
1:35 PM: Microsoft Developer Community Initiatives (Eric Ewing)
Highlights From FY '03: .NET Code Wise Community program - members doubled their Web site traffic more than 4.5M developer sessions per month. (Wow.) 450 books published. New Integrated Community Search functionality in VS.NET 2003. New MCSD .NET certification. Launch of "Community Rooms" on Microsoft campus.
INETA Sponsorship: Microsoft is "charter sponsor". Speaker bureau training events. Content for repository. TechEd participation. Board liaison.
What's New For FY '04: Increased subsidiary engagement. (A lot more local representation.) Developer evangelists being asked to engage with INETA in every state and subsidiary. MGB sessions will include clear "call to action" and goals for scorecard. INETA video. (Neat-o.)
MSDN User Group Program: Microsoft's baseline support for all developer user groups. Quarterly kits. Online directory of groups. Occasional user group tours.
Influencer Programs MVP, RD, Code Wise - What's New for FY '04: "Expand and Energize" the community. MVP, RD, and Code Wise groups are working together to reduce overlap and confusion. More to come!
100% Participation Goals for Microsoft Employees: Focus on getting Microsoft employees from Redmond out into the community. Newsgroups, UGs, customer visits, blogs, etc.. Includes developers, marketing, evangelism, and administrative staff.
Integrated Community Search: Bringing expert community content directly to the VS.NET users. Just the first step in integrating community features into the product. Code Wise Community sites are the content providers. (INETA.org would be the point of integration if UGs wanted to participate.) Today - English-speaking only. (Tomorrow?)
Special Campaigns: Software Legends - in-store events. (I love Chris Sells' picture.)
Events: Ask the Experts - now, "Ask the INETA Experts". Networking events at conferences. Bootcamps and briefings.
Eric Ewing - a pretty cool guy.
2:15 PM: ASP.NET Community Starter Kit (Ruth Walther)
ASP.NET Community Starter Kit: Create a community Web site such as a user group site, a developer's resource site, or a new site. Enables information sharing. Source code is public. In part of other starter kits.
Comments: Looks promising for UGs that are just getting started. Some nice template and skin design.
3:00 PM: Promoting Your User Group - Oliver Nguyen (Bay .NET UG) and Devin Rader (St. Louis .NET UG)
Evolutionary Stages E-Business Community: Birth, expansion, leadership, self-renewal.
Defining Internal/External Resources: Volunteers, INETA, newspapers, flyers, sponsors, Web site, template slide deck for meetings. (All good ideas.)
Defining Services/Offerings: Identify core service and special opportunistic services, involving sponsors to suggest & create services, intangibles; networking.
Providing Vision: Define a purpose. Create excitement and motivate volunteers.
Building Your Team: Volunteers who can coordinate and market your UG. (To help minimize the work you need to do.) Include a "call to arms" in your monthly newsletter.
Defining Outreach: Educational institutions and like-minded UGs. MSDN academic alliance. Local colleges and universities. Partner up!
Co-opetition: Working together to extend reach. (How can your UG fit into the picture?) "Cannibalization". (Try not to steal from other groups and plan ahead!) Creative cooperation.
Marketing: (Needless to say, quite important.)
Audience: (Too fast!)
Understand the Motivations for Each Audience: Sponsors, Members, UGs, and Educational Institutions.
SWAG Strategy: Book publishers, tool vendors, consulting companies, headhunters, hosting companies. (The list goes on and on.)
Programming Content is Your Product: Finding the best speaker - INETA Speaker's Bureau. Diversifying content. Surveying the membership.
Scheduling Communications: Consistency and concentrated campaigns.
Setting Expectations: Keeping a culture of growth, innovation, and flexibility. Allow for failure! :-)
Comments: Excellent presentation. A lot of very good points made. A must read for anyone starting a UG.
3:45 PM: User Group Sponsorship (Scott Robertson and Julie Lerman)
Why Sponsorship? Meeting space, Web site hosting, food, SWAG, speaker gifts, cash (i.e. sundries like postage, business cards and promotions like t-shirts).
PHOTOS: http://groups.msn.com/inetameetingatteched2003/
9:20:40 AM 
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