User-Groups

T-SQL Tuesday 153: The Conference that Changed Everything for Me

This month, T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by an old friend of mine Kevin Kline. He’s an old friend as I’ve known him a long time, not because of age. (There are lots of miles left in Kevin). The invite asked about a conference or event that changed your life, that created an opportunity, or just changed your life. It could be career related or another area. Background I was invited to join the Microsoft Regional Director program back in the early 2000’s.

2022-08-09

Opinion: User Groups must avoid ever increasing depth

I’ve attended a lot of user groups over the years. They’ve been data-related, developer-related, and all sorts of other topics. I’ve also organized a lot of user groups over the years. One problem that I fell into early on, and that I see many others falling into, is the problem of increasing depth. User group leaders often have a very skewed view of the content that’s been presented at their groups.

2021-01-14

Building a Great User Group – Part 1 - Don’t Lose Newcomers

Back in 2007, I wrote a book called Building Technical Communities. It was widely distributed at the time, and I’ve always been pleased with the feedback that I received on it. For some time, I’ve been thinking about updating it. Recently, our MVP and RD lead Shiva has encouraged me to put my ideas somewhere they can be seen, so I’ve decided to add a blog post series that covers what I currently think about this.

2019-11-24