I'm definitely interested!  The ideas Scott suggested are interesting, but ultimately I agree with Corey & Jason that are issue is marketing.

I'll through another thought out there: in the spirit of potentially refocusing a little, we could make it a more hands on lab approach.  I'm not talking about some large project, because I've only seen those fail.  Just something like, decide on a topic/technology for evening and work through some practical issues.

Also, as for an Appleton venue, we could use Skyline's Appleton office downtown on College Ave.

Greg

On Jan 25, 2010, at 3:09 PM, Josh King <actaneon@...> wrote:

I am still definitely interested however, the distance (and corresponding time requirement) makes it difficult for me at times.  I would have attended the the Nov. meeting had it not been rescheduled for the following week which I was out of town.

While I enjoy the casual conversations in some of the meetings it is hard for me to justify the travel without more substance, especially not knowing a head of time what to expect in a meeting.  Ideally I would like to see a planned presentation topic, or even just a single discussion topic to focus on, for the first hour or so and then have open discussion for the second.  Even if we don't have a presentation, having a planned topic would give everyone something to think about  ahead of time to come with more information to share or possible questions to drive more focused conversation.  I really enjoyed the last topic on ESB. 

I agree that I think a bit part of the problem is marketing the group combined with having a small community.  I think we need to get a much larger group of people interested in order to sustain regular meetings so we aren't relying on the same core set of people each month. 

I admit I haven't had any time to put into a presentation topic but I'm hoping to do so now that the holidays are over.  The hardest part for me is that while a lot of the topics are no longer new to me, I don't have much first hand experience so I need to dedicate more time to learning the material in depth.  On the plus side, having a planned topic will provide some more motivation to do so. 

A while back I had suggested that I could present on Automapper, Fluent NHibernate or Git.  Right now I'm leaning towards Automapper since I don't think that there would be much to do with Fluent NHibernate since it really only replaces the XML configuration part of NHibernate though Git might be a possiblity. 

I'd like to get some feedback on interest these topics so please reply ranking these three in order of preference or indicate if you aren't interested in these.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Jason Young <jason@...> wrote:

 

Why didn't you tell me it was about pizza and ice cream? That's a topic I can get behind.

On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 2:18 PM, Corey Coogan <coreycoogan@...> wrote:

 

I see where you are going.  TBH, it is starting to seem like more "work" and jumping through hoops to generate interest in something that the few of us find fun and exciting.  To me, it's like we're racking our brains to get people interested in pizza and ice cream.  I know that there is a larger benefit to the entire community as alternative [read:better] practices are introduced and accepted, but it is seeming like more of a burden.  Part of me says "who cares if nobody is interested in this stuff" and part of me wants to help spread the word and educate on what else is out there.  Is it worth the effort?  The other groups in larger regions like Milwaukee and Chicago don't seem to have this problem.  It's purely a numbers thing and we don't seem to have a large enough pool to have a significant 1% that is passionate about this stuff.

I'd be interested in hearing what the others have to say, but at this point I'd be fine with incorporating people's presentations into FVNUG where desired. For those of us who are interested, maybe we meet for beers once a month and talk some shop.  I may be singing a different tune if I wasn't completely bogged down with work.  Time is truly my most precious asset and I don't want to invest it where there is little to no return. 

In short, I'm guessing there won't be a meeting tomorrow.  I wouldn't be able to make it if there is one, FYI.

My 2 cents,
cc

---

From: Scott M. Felder <scott@...>
To: altdotnet-NEW@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Mon, January 25, 2010 2:02:08 PM

Subject: RE: [altdotnet-NEW] January Meeting

 

Agreed, Point #1 would probably be difficult to pull off especially if you had to find a different venue each time.

Point #2 would be to use the same Skyline conference room that we've been using, just less frequent. So it really shouldn't be any more diffecult than today.

I certainly don't want to disband the group and would not be suggesting that we do so. Unfortunetly if you look at attendence including the non-attendence for November, doesn't that seem to be what's happening on its own? I think the problem is we just don't have a very large base to draw from so we end up with the same handful of people that come each month which I'm not sure is enough to sustain the group for the long term. Now I completely agree that the typical FVNUG attendee may not have any interest in something like NServiceBus or CQRS and quite frankly would probably send them into epileptic seizures. They are there for the usual topics of SharePoint, SilverLight, Linq/EF or anything new from Micro$oft. I'm also not sure how many of those people really know about Alt.NET or what it is. So maybe a way to grow that base of people is to present on topics they want to see (ie SilverLight) and include Alt.NET ideas into it. This month Jason Young was scheduled to speak on Single Responsibilty Princple, so why not include that in a Silver Light presentation, Single Responsibility Princple with SilverLight. MVC presentation built around CQRS. Distributed systems with WCF and a service bus, where the service bus just happens to be NServiceBus. Oh and by the way if you want to talk more about NServiceBus, or NHibernate, or CQRS, or SRP, ALT.Net meets up in green bay on the 4th tuesday of the month in a more open discussions forum. So maybe we still meeting for ALT.Net but we also try and grow that base by getting people more educated educated at FVNUG.

____________ _________ _________ __

From: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com on behalf of Corey Coogan
Sent: Mon 1/25/2010 12:53 PM
To: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: Re: [altdotnet-NEW] January Meeting

Thanks for the input Scott. Points 1 and 2 are interesting, and probably difficult to pull off. It was hard enough to get a venue for this meeting, but maybe it would be easier than I think.

It sounds like item 3 is a suggestion to disband the separate group and just have people present at the FVNUG? That's certainly an option, but I do wonder how much interest there would be in some of these topics. I can't imagine most of the typical FVNUG audience having much interest in your NServiceBus presentation. This comes from my own personal experience with the .net community and it is completely anecdotal, so I admit that I could be completely wrong. I also like the informal discussions we have and wonder if those could survive in the FVNUG space? The meetings I've attended have been pretty much eyes forward, 3-5 questions after the presentation and then go home. I'm not saying what would or wouldn't work one way or the other, but am just throwing these out for topics of discussion.

____________ _________ _________ __

From: Scott M. Felder <scott@feltech. com>
To: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com
Sent: Mon, January 25, 2010 12:28:37 PM
Subject: RE: [altdotnet-NEW] January Meeting

Just a few thoughts to throw out there.

1.) Rotate where the meeting is held between Green Bay and Appleton or Green Bay, Appleton and Oshkosh. Try and reach some of the .Net community that wouldn't be able to make it up to GB each month.

2.) Go to an every other month meeting schedule. Maybe people would be more inclined to make it if they didn't have to fit it into their schedule every month. We are also competing for time with two new user groups in the area. NEW Agile Users Group and NEW SharePoint and Business Intelligence Users Group (starts in Feburary).

3.) Work closer with FVNUG. Not only for getting the word out but also possibly as the forum to present on Alt.NET <http://alt.net/> topics. Is the goal to have a seperate group or to provide education on Alt.NET topics to the area .NET developers? With an average attendence of 30 people at the monthly FVNUG meetings, thats a much larger audience than the usual 5-6 people we get today.

Scott

____________ _________ _________ __

From: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:altdotnet- NEW%40yahoogroup s.com> on behalf of Corey Coogan

Sent: Mon 1/25/2010 11:26 AM

To: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:altdotnet- NEW%40yahoogroup s.com>

Subject: Re: [altdotnet-NEW] January Meeting

Wow, I can't believe it's time already. I must admit that a good bit of my fire was extinguished after preparing a presentation for a no-show group in November.

Is anyone besides Felder and I still interested in this group? Please reply with honest answers, if you can actually see yourself participating most of the time. If you like the idea of this group and think you might like to show up every now again, that's good to know and I would appreciate if you disclose your "casual interest".

After the last meeting failure I put some thought into why a group with such a strong beginning has crashed so hard. I thought the presentations would be helpful, but that may not be enough. Is it more an issue of awareness? Could we do a better job of promoting at the FVNUG meetings? Any other ideas for getting the word out? I tell a lot of people about this group but nobody ever shows up, which leaves me wondering if this stuff isn't mainstream enough to grab the attention of our local .Net community.

Thanks for your input,
cc

____________ _________ _________ __

From: scott_felder <scott@feltech. com <mailto:scott% 40feltech. com> >

To: altdotnet-NEW@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:altdotnet- NEW%40yahoogroup s.com>

Sent: Mon, January 25, 2010 11:12:04 AM
Subject: [altdotnet-NEW] January Meeting

Does anyone know if we are still meeting tomorrow night?

Scott

--

 Josh