And I am quite proud to be one of them.  And so is my friend Ben Hoelting .

So what is a community champ you ask?  A community champ is someone that spends time helping out the professional .NET community.  From the INETA perspective it is usually all about the user group and extending that reach.

Ben is the leader of our local Colorado Springs group, SouthColorado.NET and has been involved there for years.  This February he was a GREAT help on what was supposed to be a “simple code camp” but turned into the 1st Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta.  We had a really large crowd, loads of sessions, thousands of pizza slices and the like.  He also does things like speak at our meetings as well as regional meetings also for other groups.

Tooting my own horn a little to talk about my work to get this honor.  In addition to helping out with my local group and the Tech Trifecta, I am a mentor for INETA.  My area currently covers Colorado, Montana, Utah, Wyoming and cloud groups.  Sounds great, but what does that really mean?  Mentors work closely with the groups to help them build/maintain membership, secure good speakers/sponsors and just about anything they might need.  Mentors have a proven track record with their own groups and the desire to help extend that goal.  The mentors I work with are a pretty impressive group of folks (we could use a few more women in that group, but totally different discussion there).

So, do you know a community champ?  Let me know, I would help you work on the submission.  Are YOU a champ?  Let me know, and I’ll help you too.  :)

INETA North America