Dayton .NET DevGroup Update

We had a terrific kickoff meeting today for the Dayton .NET Developers Group, hosted at GDITA's Tech Day. We had 16 folks show up to hear Brian Prince from Quick Solutions, Inc. give a great talk on web apps in Whidbey. His presentation went very well (a couple hangups from VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 aside), and I think we had some great interest from the attendees. I was pretty dang nervous that we'd only have four or six folks show up after all my legwork, so I was very happy to see the room moderately full! I also had several good contacts for publicising the group. I'm hoping to continue getting good exposure for the group via several IT community organizations here in Dayton. I've got some numeric goals in mind for membership and attendance in the next year. I set the bar high for myself, partially to force me to get other folks involved. All the effort I put in for today paid off, I think. Now I need to notch back a bit in order to refocus on my studies. While I've been productive in chasing down some new knowledge, I've still got a lot of work to do before I'm ready to sit down for my first test. Drew Robbins, the regional Microsoft Developer Evangelist, told me something I already knew but was ignoring: "Make the appointment to take the test. That's the best motivator you'll have."