Boise .Net User Group

Two or so years ago I attended one of the monthly meetings of what was then a fledgling
Microsoft user group here in Boise. In order to introduce myself, I presented that
night on Web Services. Web Services were still fairly distrusted and I think we were
still on WSE 1.0. What I found was a group that clearly would have had me as a member,
and in the words of Rodney Dangerfield, any club that would have me as a member isn’t
worth joining.

Skip ahead to tonight and the local meeting of the Boise
.Net Users Group. I witnessed a fairly well organized and attended gathering of
professionals who are talking about meaningful issues. Well, mostly. The pedantic
murmur of corporate sponsorship is there, but mostly appreciated. I will gladly soldier
through 15 minutes of slides on Infragistics if
I get to see real code from the new Enterprise
Library for .NET Framework 2.0 after that. The slight mention of Smart
Client – Composite UI Application Block was enough to make me care, too.

Bottom line, I will be back. I know that Redmond encourages this sort of grass roots
gathering and it does feel a bit like a night at the Apollo, but overall it was a
completely worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours. I really like to meet other
folks in the industry and Boise is a burgeoning source of talent. It is also a small
valley we live in, as proven by my being able to connect to several people through
no more than 1 degree of seperation within about 2 minutes of chit chat.

I also have to mention something that happened because it took me so completely by
surprise. After the speakers were done and while I was gathering my coat, a couple
of guys introduced themselves by asking, “Aren’t you the Elegant Code guy?” OK, c’mon…
how sweet is that? Never in a million years did I think anyone other than my mom actually
reads this blog, but it was very cool to hear that someone does.