Why Community Matters

So Charles has to travel to Spain to talk to people from the UK about community when he could have attended a DotNetUsers meeting in Seattle.


Where were you when the Seattle dotnet community needed you Charles?

The community innovators were DotNetUsers and NJMSDEV, but DotNetUsers  has just diabanded, you could have helped them Charles they had their meeting in Building 43.

Nationalism…..??

This is about the Seattle DotNet community; they need someone to step-in and help, but you can’t walk over to Building 43.

It's about community in your own backyard.

Two users groups that I regularly attended in the Dallas  area have ceased to meet.

The usual problem is finding people who have the time to lead the group and present material.

They were replaced by other user groups in the area.

Many people simply do not have the time, interest and or talent to make presentations and be active as a user group leader.

Also, there is a fairly high burn-out rate with user group leadership.

At one time in another career, I was very active for over a decade in particiating, presenting and leading professional committees.

I too burned-out and am no longer interested in such a role.

Let people do what they want and are interested in doing.

Eagle, please get off of Charles' case.

Thanks. 

hey great to see some UK guys on c9!

I met Sarah some time back at a Girl Geek Dinner but I must admit I have been out of the community scene for a while. Time to get involved I think!

That said; I may be at the Sharepoint user group shindig in London later

 

btw Charles; I spoke on WPF @ DDD3 (June) shame you didn't make it bro

Eagle is certainly bitter about something that has happened in his community, which is a shame.

I don't think you should have a go at Charles over a video he recorded at TechED in Barcelona, when he found a group of enthusiastic community leaders..

Create a new thread and see if the community can help in any way.

Hi,

Eagle, it sounds to me as though the usergroup that you were part of, and failed to continue just needed someone to spend a bit of time letting people know about it and getting the community to run it themselves.  Part of being a community driven is that the community support each other and sharing the workload, whether Microsoft and other large corporates get involved or not.  This begs the question in your area about whether the community is really there and whether there was or is a better less time intensive way of running it.  Have a think... maybe you could be their new community leader.

A word of advice to any community group from me is let the community run it together, spread the work, spread the joy and most of all have fun with it!


Tim, good to hear from you and I hope that the video entices you back to the community scene

nice video on UK users, would be cool if we could get some Ireland based community videos (not that i know any communities in Ireland)

An_Angel is cute also

back to work for me .....

die-Sel: Thanks... I think... the vid is really bad at picking up the good side of me.  Charles was a little too close with the camera   More info on the london girl geek dinners can be found below and Microsoft did a good virtual side video on the events too which can be found here: http://www.mseventseurope.com/Teched/06/Pre/Live/VideoDev5.aspx

Ion:  Who am I... well for that you will have to go and have a look on my mobility blog here: http://geekswithblogs.net/waterbaby and here http://www.londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk and here http://www.girlygeekdom.blogspot.com and from that you should get which community I am looking after.  I also actively participate in Mobile Mondays and a number of the London groups, but not always just the Microsoft ones.  

I guess you could say I am just another girl geek... with a fixation on mobile devices and tech gadgets. 
 

Hi Sarah, I live nearer to London then I do to Seattle, our community is amazing and includes; NJMSDEV.ORG. NYCDOTNETDEV, N3UG, NJ SQL, NY Metro SQL, NY Enterprise Windows, NYC SharePoint, NYC Connected Systems

We just announced our fifth Code Camp at Microsoft's office in NYC.

Barcelona has two .Net User Groups SpainNet and Bcndev

Hi, On the subject of user groups i thought i'd just drop in the Next Generation User Group can be found at

http://www.nxtgenug.net/">http://www.nxtgenug.net

and our podcasts at

http://www.nxtgenug.net/podcasts.aspx">http://www.nxtgenug.net/podcasts.aspx

An_Angel wrote:

die-Sel: Thanks... I think... the vid is really bad at picking up the good side of me.  Charles was a little too close with the camera   More info on the london girl geek dinners can be found below and Microsoft did a good virtual side video on the events too which can be found here: http://www.mseventseurope.com/Teched/06/Pre/Live/VideoDev5.aspx

Ion:  Who am I... well for that you will have to go and have a look on my mobility blog here: http://geekswithblogs.net/waterbaby and here http://www.londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk and here http://www.girlygeekdom.blogspot.com and from that you should get which community I am looking after.  I also actively participate in Mobile Mondays and a number of the London groups, but not always just the Microsoft ones.  

I guess you could say I am just another girl geek... with a fixation on mobile devices and tech gadgets. 
 

No  problem An_Angel i thought Charles did an excellant job