Hi Jim,
I guess so. INETA was announced back in February of this year. FWIW, I don't think this is a bad thing. I think it is good to see MS giving full support to the .NET development community. It would be nice if they included all of their products in that plan, but MS has always advanced their agenda by being good to developers. That agenda happens to include .NET right now, and not VB or VFP. Unfortunately, that is making it harder for other user groups to compete.
As a VFP developer, I enjoy one of the best online communities, that was built by the community, not MS. I certainly wouldn't trade you folks in for door prizes. Of course, I would like to see some of the big name gurus in our community speak in person, but any one of them would speak to me one-on-one on a forum or through email. I guess I've got no complaints, but again, the credit doesn't go to MS.
>Hi Joel,
>
>So the "front" that I talked about already exists for .NET!!!
>
>Here's an extract from ineta.org: "
INETA is the next evolution in user group communities – a non-profit, independent organization, chartered with supporting all user groups interested in the Microsoft .NET platform. ".
>
>You have to go to the Sponsors page to see that Microsoft and MSDN (who'da thunk they were two different entitites???) are the sponsors. Sure sounds "independent" to me.
>
>
>>Hi Michel,
>>
>>I attend our local .NET User Group in Nashville. There is obviously some funding and sponsorship from Microsoft, as well as other development companies with a local presence. INETA at
www.ineta.org is Microsoft's support mechanism for user groups, and it appears to be focused on .NET groups only. I don't know if our speakers get paid. I'm pretty sure local speakers are volunteers. Occasionally we'll get a big name here, and I'm sure their expenses would be covered (see Speaker's Bureau on the INETA site to see how that works). In addition, several times the speaker has been from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), which is in the same building as the meetings. They bring the best door prizes. At the last meeting I went to, they gave away a copy of Office XP Pro and Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Architect. Not too shabby.
>>
>>We don't have a VFP user group here, so I can't compare. We do have an independent VB user group that converted to VB.NET. To see how it is doing, click here:
http://www.microworksinc.com/mtnug/
