Cleveland .NET SIG, GANG and MADCLS

This past week I had the pleasure of making a lot of new acquaintances, as well as putting faces to names I've "known" for a while. This is the most exciting part of my job, and is the main reason I became an evangelist for ComponentOne. I drove 1100 miles and made three stops, in Cleveland, Detroit and Reston.

Cleveland .NET SIG, Sep 14

My first stop was at the Cleveland .NET SIG, where I got to hear Dave Swersky give a great talk on ASP.NET MVC. I hope this talk makes the rounds of a few other user groups and code camps, it was very well delivered and informative. After the meeting, I got to spend time with several people, including Dave, Sarah Dutkiewicz (also of Cleveland Tech Events and Overdrive), and Jeff Blankenburg. As conversations tends to go when geeks and beer mix, discussion turned to building a Windows Azure appliance in one's basement using a spare freezer. It actually sounds like a rational use for the spare hardware some of us have laying around the house.

My bonus event in Cleveland was attending part of the Windows Phone 7 Firestarter before heading to Detroit, presented by Jeff Blankenburg. Jeff did an excellent job, and I'm excited for our own Firestarter here in Pittsburgh next week.

Great Lakes Area .NET UG

Next stop was MIGANG. ComponentOne was happy to provide dinner, swag and some licenses to give away. MIGANG meetings are well run, and this is perhaps the most well documented user group I've seen, thanks largely to the secretary Gerhard Weiss. Gerhard even wrote down the names of the people who went to Copper Canyon for social hour!

Speaker for the evening was Jim Holmes, "Quality Guy" at Telligent, makers of the very software hosting this blog. Jim's talk was an intro to test driven development. Fortunately, the talk was recorded and will be posted online. TDD is something that is confusing at first, gets easier as you do it, but it's nice to go back to the original source once in a while. Jim is also the organizer of CodeMash, a premier community event in Sandusky, OH. I was happy to meet Dennis Burton from GLUG and Jason Follas from NWNUG. All in all, I met four UG leaders representing 7 UGs from two states, and it's not uncommon for leaders to

Afterward was social hour at Copper Canyon, where I got to spend some more time with David, Gerhard and Jennifer Marsman.

Prior to the meeting, and then during announcements, David runs a slide deck, which you can see at http://www.migang.org/MeetingInfo/10-05-26/GANG_Meeting_September_15_2010.aspx. The MIGANG Monthly Newsletter and sponsor benefits are two very good examples of how user groups communicate to their members, potential members and sponsors. Very well done!

We provided GANG with certificates for licenses to give away through the year, and two were given away this night. Congrats to the winners Chris Roland and Matt Murto. I can't wait to see what you do with your suites!

MAD CLS

The Mid-Atlantic Developers Community Leadership Summit was organized by G. Andrew Duthie (the force behind Community Megaphone), and brought together about 40 user group leaders in our region, plus Rob Zelt from INETA. I met too many people to list here, but a quick shout out to The Kevins, Pete Brown, Joel, Ganesan, Steve, Brian and Chris, Hal, Dave (looking forward to some advice on the Azure Boot Camp) and everyone else.

There was a lot of discussion about scheduling and collaboration between user groups, and some talk of a Big Event similar to Code Mash or Codestock. I think just getting this many people together at the same time was progress in itself, and we all left with a commitment to do better. Many of us stayed for dinner at Uncle Julio's, where we were witness to the deep love Joel has for Mexican-style food. Not to exaggerate, but I don't recommend wearing a burrito costume near him.

Some other blogs about the meeting are http://www.davidmakogon.com/2010/09/mid-atlantic-developer-community.html and http://geekswithblogs.net/codesailor/archive/2010/09/20/141904.aspx. Also, you can see the tweets at http://twitter.com/#search?q=#MADCLS.

It was a busy week, I covered a lot of miles, but I can say with complete certainty that the people involved in user groups are tremendous. Community is organic, self-organizing and spontaneous. You can't buy community, but you can be part of it and support it. I'm looking forward to good things in the MAD region.