>Now, is this something that is only happening here? Is it only an initiative of the local office? Anyone faced a similiar situation in their city? What about Redmond in all that, do they know?

Jeff Jones of Microsoft is coming to our local user group, PAFOX. His topic: "dotNET Framework Overview". I might go if it doesn't snow too much. Information is at http://pafox.org/

Hijacking the other user groups (or DevCon) is another way to do it. I wonder if Jeff Jones knows anything about VFP and will give a talk geared to our point of view (like Kevin McNeish (sp?) would do).