Why Community? Celebrating #INETA’s birthday
When I got into the software development world by accident many years ago I was amazed at this professional community. Shocked that there were people out there that wanted to help others, their (gasp!) competitors even, to do better. To learn. To share. And then there were whole groups, a great big organized eco-system of people helping people just because it was the right thing to do, not because someone paid them. Wow. Just wow.
I had to be part of it.
I couldn’t watch, I had to DO IT too.
I co-founded and worked with my local .NET group (www.southcolorado.net) for many years. It was great to watch it grow from two or three people to several hundred. That group is still going strong and is a great resource for our local professionals. And with meetings at The Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, the group has the coolest meeting space that I know of.
From that group we met several other local .NET leaders and together worked to make what started as a code camp but wound up being the Rocky Mountain Tech Trifecta. The event was for coders, DBAs, server folks, SharePoint techies and more. It has been awesome. These free all day events each had over 500 attendees, giving up their Saturday morning sleep-in time to learn and to share.
Now my time is spent working with a virtual group for Dynamics CRM developers (www.xrmvirtual.com). We are about to hit our five-year anniversary with over two thousand members. With such a specialized technology family a virtual group seemed the way to go to get the audience we needed. We have had a handful of spin-off traditional groups in areas where there are enough developers to have those meetings.
It is my honor to be here to serve this community.
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