Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:18 PM by Michael Paladino
In addition to my full-time job, I have recently been appointed to the volunteer position of Membership Mentor for Arkansas within INETA. According to their website, “INETA provides structured, peer-based organizational, educational, and promotional support to the growing worldwide community of Microsoft® .NET user groups.” Basically, they help support .NET-focused user groups by providing access to high-quality speakers and providing leadership guidance and advice when needed.
I have just started in this new role, and I’m sure my understanding of it will evolve over the next few months. But for now my understanding is that my job will be to help any new groups successfully complete the INETA registration process as well as provide general support to the existing groups in Arkansas. I hope to help coordinate speaker tours in the area and would like to continue to encourage communication amongst the Arkansas user groups which should be an easy task considering the previous work put in by Randy Walker and Jay Smith to schedule a monthly call amongst all the groups.
I’ll be taking over this position from Randy Walker who was appointed as the Director of Speakers for INETA. From what I know of Randy and what I’ve heard from others, I have some very big shoes to fill. Hopefully, I can build on Randy’s efforts and continue to help build the .NET community in our region.
Thursday, January 8, 2009 4:01 PM by Michael Paladino
Jay Smith has just posted the first full episode of User Group Radio, a “monthly podcast dedicated to helping user group and technical community leaders share guidance and best practices”. Interestingly enough, he chose me to be the first guest as I along with a few others have recently gone through the process of starting the Fort Smith .NET User Group. In this episode, we discuss various issues surrounding starting a user group such as venue, sponsorship, speakers, marketing, etc.
Jay has plans to talk to a lot of people much more interesting than me in the next few shows, so the show should be worth a listen for anyone interested in user groups and technical communities.