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I'm a .NET developer, but I've never been to a .NET user group meeting or anything like that.

I might have the opportunity soon to start attending one, but I'm wondering. What happens at user groups? I'm not looking necessarily for info specifically about .NET ones, but they are preferred.

What do you get out of it excluding the opportunity for networking?

Steven Evers
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7 Answers7

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I attend my local .NET User Group every month. Here are some things that go on besides networking:

  • Giveaways: Win books, licenses of ReSharper or CodeRush, etc.
  • Presentations: Speakers from all over the country (and world) give talks on development best practices, new technologies, etc.
  • Eat food: Pizza...of course! (Sponsored by a local business)
Ryan Hayes
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In addition to the items listed by @Ryan, sometimes employers make a quick "I am hiring; please see me after the meeting if you're looking for work" announcement. Or someone talks about the conference they are having in a month or two, maybe asks for volunteers with some project related to the community. It's a great way to stay connected.

Kate Gregory
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You can also add this to your resume: show potential employers that you are involved in the programming community outside work.

ysolik
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This is an elaboration of the second point in Ryan Hayes' answer as I have attended a few local .Net group events:

  • Preview of upcoming stuff: There can be cases where an evangelist comes to show off some functionality that is coming soon.

  • Demonstration of tools or practices: I remember attending a talk where connecting Biztalk and Sharepoint was illustrated. Using jQuery in ASP.Net MVC would be another talk I attended for a specific example.

The giveaways and food are good too. :)

JB King
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What happens at a user group meeting is whatever the user group organizers organize. There is no rule.

Go and find out. You have nothing to lose.

Andy Lester
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I used to belong to a Ruby users' group. At meetings, we mostly caught up with Ruby/Rails news (the group was heavily Rails-centric). Members would show off cool projects or brainstorm solutions with the group if they were stuck on an issue. A couple people would give a mini lecture or presentation on some piece of technology. It wasn't even Ruby-specific: sometimes we'd talk about, e.g., Scala, Clojure, or Cocoa programming, too. One time a guy even gave a presentation on using zsh, and another gave one on using vim.

And, of course, we drank beer and ate pizza. :)

mipadi
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one good part of users groups are the mailing-lists. here, you briefly get informed about trends, news, frameworks, etc.

drawback of user-groups is the "club" behavior in some cases. if you are new or outsider, the hierarchy in some user groups can be disturbing. also, the hidden recruiting strategies of companies may be disturbing for technical subject matter.

poseid
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