The .NET Community in Atlanta
Atlanta User Groups are getting several .NET celebrities in the next month. First up is Rocky Lhotka, a long-time top VB author and speaker, next week, November 19 at 6:30pm, at the Atlanta VB Study Group. Then Alan Griver, a MS VB.NET PM, will give a preview of Whidbey (.NET v2.0) at the MS Internet Developer's Association on December 2 at 6:00pm. Finally, Jason Beres, an Ineta speaker and author, will be at the Atlanta DotNet User Group on December 15 at 6:00pm.
On a related note, I've decided to try to start a .NET Community site for Atlanta: DotNetAtlanta.com. The various User Groups are doing great jobs, but there's nothing that pulls them all together, nor is there anything that identifies the various leaders and bloggers and other contributors. The site that I threw together this week, after having lunch with Kirk, is really just to get us thinking -- so please send me your suggestions, both good and bad, and let me know what you want to see!
Right now all I have is upcoming events, user groups, and lists of leaders and bloggers. The leaders and bloggers should probably not be on the main page, but I've been amazed at how many people want to know Who's Who in Atlanta based on posts to my blog and from my experience going to one of the User Groups. Other possibilities include news (is that different from events), resources links (with job sites and trainers), and maybe a local forum for interaction as well.
So, send me your thoughts, and feel free to volunteer if you have the time and desire, since my GUI skills are certainly suspect. I really do want to make this work, since I enjoy knowing the people that I do know here in Atlanta, but I need to know what will make it work for others, since it should not just be a place for “leaders”. Something that would be cool, but I don't have time to do it, would be to provide an aggregate .NET Atlanta blog feed, in html and RSS -- any volunteers.