I would like to take it upon myself to announce the formation of the Milwaukee chapter of the ALT.NET UserGroup. It will meet the first Wednesday of every month, with the first meeting to take place on 3/5/08 @ 7pm at 10000 Innovation Drive, Milwaukee, WI. Pizza and drinks will be served, and the event will be free to attend. Thanks to SpiderLogic for sponsoring the first meeting.

This group will cover agile development tools and techniques with .NET, best practices for architecture and coding, emerging technologies, and anything else the group decides to cover. For more backstory on ALT.NET, read this post. The use group will be a very participant-driven group. I will not look to lead this group in any significant way, other than to call this group to order, and get people involved in sustaining it. I've learned from other user groups that if a group is too dependent upon one person, it is a matter of time before it fails.

For the first meeting's agenda, I propose we get some volunteers to take on some minimum responsibilities and then break into an OpenSpaces format, where technical topics will be presented by anyone who wants to present. I don't want this to be yet another 1-way presentation medium for 1-2 hour topics, so be prepared to be engaged, discuss, and share (bring your laptop to showcase code and/or slides). I'll take a swipe at talking about ASP.NET MVC this first meeting. If you have something you want to see covered, or especially if you want to cover something, post a comment, and we'll get it on the agenda.

Please pass this notice around to anyone you think will be interested! If you plan on attending, I would appreciate either a comment on this blog or email to dmiser@distribucon.com, just so we can gauge how much food and drink to have on hand. I am really excited about this, and look forward to seeing everyone there!!