Grant Killian's Blog

No, this has nothing to do with beer -- but maybe it should?

WeProgram.Net arrives in Richmond

With the first meeting tomorrow at 6:30 PM at CapTech Venture's Richmond office (1118 West Main ST
Richmond, VA 23220), WeProgram.Net begins a new chapter (check out Darrell's post for topic details, a map, etc.). We've been successfully meeting in the Hampton Roads area for a year now (happy birthday WeProgram.Net!), and since some of our group comes from Richmond, we figured it would be good to have sessions up there, too.

To my knowledge, there is another .Net user group in Richmond (at www.RichmondDotNet.com) -- there are certainly enough evenings in a month for us to complement one another instead of compete. It's a true sign of the region's .Net-ification that multiple groups pop up! Maybe we can organize a friendly user group Cricket Match (WeProgram.Net Hampton Roads is having a BBQ and Cricket Match June 12th, contact me for details)?! For that matter, in Hampton Roads, there's the www.HRRSUG.org (who are having an INETA sponsored author next Thursday, May 20th!). At this rate, we could hold a regional user group summit (and have a little Cricket Tournament!). You heard it here first!

I know this WeProgram.Net hands-on Test Driven Development workshop will be very popular -- it's a great way to kick off <cheesyMusic>WeProgram.Net: the Richmond Years</cheesyMusic>. This presentation crushed at OOPsla. I was happy to update Steve Metsker's bio from “author of forthcoming book on C# Design Patterns“ to “author of C# Design Patterns books“ -- it's no longer forthcoming: it's available now; I've got a hard-backed copy watching me from my coffee table as I type this. It wants me to read it.

Anyway, I hope to see you tomorrow night at 6:30 at CapTech! We've got books and other giveaways (I heard a little rumour there's even baseball tickets?); it should be a good time!

Happy .Netting!

Published May 12 2004, 06:39 AM by grant.killian

Comments

Greg Robinson said:

This makes no sense at all when we already have a very successful group up in running.

# May 21, 2004 12:54 AM

Mark said:

Greg,

As I understand it, we have reached out to your group. There is no reason what-so-ever that we cannot compliment each other rather than compete. It is neither my intention nor the intention of Darrell or Grant to be a competitor.

Our main goal is to bring the development community together. It’s about developers and not us. We compliment HRSUG, another user’s group in the Tidewater area. They are not just about SQL Server, they are also about .NET. We promote them just as much as they promote us.

WeProgram.NET feels that Richmond has a large enough development community to warrant monthly or even bimonthly meetings. There are a lot of us doing very interesting and unique things with .NET and other technologies that can benefit the developers in our area.

Why don’t we get together and discuss how our groups can better serve the development community together?

Shoot me an email via http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/markdigiovanni/contact.aspx with your contact info.

--Mark

# May 21, 2004 2:52 AM

Mike Richardson said:

The Webster dictionary defines competition as "the effort of two or more parties acting independently to secure the business of a third party by offering the most favorable terms."
In my opinion, there are not that many .NET developers in the Richmond area. Case in point - we now have 130 active members in our group. From what I have heard around town, it just doesn't seem like their are hundreds or even thousands of developers to support two different groups trying to accomplish the same thing. However, if we can support two groups, then I am all for it. The issue that sort of bothers me is that I was never contacted about forming another group. Nobody ever "reached out" to our group as was said earlier on this blog. Third, and certainly not least, I am just too old for this crap. So good luck. I am sure I will even be showing up at your meetings. My main goal in forming our group was not to grow or get popular or get some type of reward - it was to learn the ins and outs of .NET development. If your group is going to offer that, then I will show up myself.

# May 25, 2004 9:04 AM

Grant said:

"I am just too old for this crap." -- Mike, I concur.

I was talking with some of the INETA folks about it here at TechEd and we were laughing about it; Scott Locke and the INETA folks approved the group (months ago) with the understanding that this wasn't a competitive thing.

Hope to see everyone at a RichmondDotNet or WeProgram.Net event sometime soon!

# May 26, 2004 2:36 PM

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