Ever since I first found the DotNetNuke community, I have fallen “in love” for a lack of better words. (Perhaps those are the right words though…) Now, I get to give back to the community I have fallen in love with more than ever before, and in a much more influential way that I’d ever thought was possible.
Will Strohl being a Dork at an Orlando DNN User Group After Party
I was pretty active in a handful of other open source and other technical communities before DNN. They were good and all, but there was always this overbearing number of “newbie” killers that would spoil my day. Hopefully, that undertone has changed by now in those (nameless) communities, but it definitely turned me off from those projects.
When I found the DNN community in 2004, I was mostly quiet online and mostly only participating at the user group and code camp level, but there was definitely a different ambience about the whole thing. Once I began contributing, I found out immediately that the DNN community is chock full of people that want to do one thing: HELP. They don’t care if you’re a competitor, if you’re new, or what your background or expertise is. They want nothing more than to help you be successful with your DNN implementation.
This is what inspired me then, drives me now, and remains true in our community to this day. Keeping that background in mind, when the opportunity came up to participate more, I jumped at the chance!
The Big News!
As of today, I have a new title, “User Groups Team Leader.” This isn’t really a DNN Corp title, but rather a community title. I will be helping user groups and user group leaders in their efforts to provide quality meetings and resources, and all that comes with the territory. If you don’t already realize, this is a huge job, but I am super excited to do everything I can to grow and add value to the DNN user groups all over.
2010 DNN User Group Leaders for Tampa, and Orlando Florida
(The above picture would have my good friend, Kurt Amstutz standing next to Jim above today.)
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or any other concerns in relation to user groups, make sure you visit the user groups page. You can contact myself and others there for any of those related e-mails.
DotNetNuke User Groups
(That, and you can always catch me on twitter, of course.)