FAQ

No. Our meetings are entirely free. This is made possible by the help we are given by organizations within the .NET developer community. Microsoft helps us out by providing a venue. We do not pay our speakers for their time, they volunteer or are paid by third-parties that want to help us out. I just fund the web presence out of my own pocket. No big deal. Because we are non-commercial we do not ask for any subscriptions, hold a register of members, or spam you with free offers. At the same time we do not offer the range of services that commercial user groups make available. We provide meetings where London developers can get the latest .NET information and network, but what happens beyond that is up to you.

We advertise a meeting by three main methods: this website, our mailing list, and on MSDN Flash. From time-to-time we do try spread the word in other places or media to make the .NET developer community aware of our presence. To sign up for a meeting just send me an email either by replying through the mailing list or meetings@dnug.org.uk We just need a name so that we can tell security that you are coming (at Microsoft House you will probably get a name tag with that name on it). Be aware that I do not reply directly to every mail - unless I guess it is your first meeting or you mention it - but I will reply to if we cannot fit you in. If you subscribe to the mailing list, you will find that I post a regularly updated list of people who I have signed up for a meeting. Subscribing is the best way of keeping track of whether I have noted your desire to attend. The mailing list is where I post the most timely updates on date, time, or place. In the past we have had to cancel meetings when the speaker has become unavailable, so it is your own interest to keep in touch by subscribing. On the night please try to turn up as close to time as possible, however if you cannot make it on time I do not mind if you sneak in the back. Just do not make too much fuss.

I prefer to keep traffic on londondotnet@yahoogroups.com for pushing information about new meetings, other activities, and housekeeping issues. As such the default option is for members to reply to me and not to the list. This is simply because it is our main means of communication with people and I do not want people to unsubscribe from the mailing because of too much extraneous traffic. We do have a list londondotnetchat@yahoogroups.com where you can post freely and this site may include forums in the future.

We are always looking for speakers. Speakers with experience should contact me directly at meetings@dnug.org.uk ; for those people who have not spoken before we offer 'open mike' slots of about 30 mins. This can be either a whole evening of slots - an Open Mike night - or preceding the night's main speakers. If you want to present an open mike slot please let me know. Be aware that we are often booked about 2-3 months in advance.

Running the meetings, mailing list, and the web site do not need much extra input for the moment, though that may change in the future. I am considering putting together a community group to work on additions or upgrades to this site, once the codebase for the fist version has stabilised. However there are many more activities this group could undertake. Some examples include Special Interest Groups and Study Groups. If you want to start one of these or something similar please do. If I need to look for help organizing meetings it will be to the people who have demonstrated the ablity to start up these kind of groups that I will look first.

In 2001 user groups were springing up in the US. I searched for a while to see if there were any in London, but could not find any. Deciding that rather than give up I should take responsibility for starting one I set about the process. User group leaders in the US gave me advice including contacting Chris Sells (at Developmentor at the time). Chris put me in touch with Martin Gudgin (also at DM at the time). Developmentor let us use their office for our first meeting and Niels Berglund spoke at our first meeting. Later, through when we asked Stephen Turner of Microsoft to speak we began to build a relationship with MS and the rest as they say is history.

Ian Cooper - founder and organiser of the London.Net user group

Right now we are using Yahoo Groups to host our mailing lists - we may move to an ASP.NET forums approach in the future. There are two lists. The main one is for annoucements and administration (send a subscribe message to LondonDotNet-subscribe@yahoogroups.com), we try to keep traffic low for people who have to manage enough email as it is but we provide a chat list for other traffic (londondotnetchat@yahoogroups.com).