What compels you to attend your local user group(s)?

Question

So I'm in Des Moines, Iowa and we have a good number of user groups in our area considering our size. Ruby, .Net, Java, Agile, *nix, etc... Well, tonight a good number of us "leaders" of said user groups got together for a couple drinks and to talk about how we can work together to help make the "DeMo" (I keep seeing this on Twitter) user group scene better.

We came up with a number of rather good ideas, but I'm curious. What compels you to attend your local user group(s)? Dig deep here guys. Maybe it is the free pizza, or the give aways. But I'm more interested to know about things out side of the freebie stuff.

Answer 1

I've always found the professional networking to be completely invaluable. I got my current job because of the Denver Java Users Group and it was one of the best choices I've ever made.

Answer 2

I agree with Eric. I also enjoy seeing how others approach problems and what solutions they have in place. The reason is, if you're not a consultant, you work with the same set of individuals and it helps to bring fresh new ideas into the group.

Answer 3

Many people really have different reasons for attending, with many of them denying it but are really just after the food and schwags (of course I kid ^_^). But there are a few other things that interest me, particularly:

• Professional networking (as Eric stated above)
• Ability to find out what I've missed out on (if I'm not "drinking from the fire hose" on Google Reader because I was uber-busy)
• Certificate of participation (some employers use UG participation as points towards merit)
• Brownie points on resumes (if you are the speaker, that is)
• Food and schwag (oops, mentioned that already)

Answer 4

I know of 3 different types of events around here for local user groups where each has its own pull:

1) Presentations/Talks - Where someone comes in and talks for an hour or two on a subject to either introduce or advance the knowledge of a technology. So, an introduction Dependency Injection or Windows Workflow are a couple of examples. There are also what are called "deep dives" where the idea is to get really down into the topic and see various tips and tricks and try to improve how all of us develop software well. There are times where Microsoft will rent a movie theater screen for a day and have a series of 4 presentations about their latest technologies would be another example here. This can also include things like the Agile Project Leadership Network.

2) Code camp - These are sooo cool, I love these where part of the idea is that people volunteer to show something off, and the work isn't canned. By canned I mean that the demonstration code is all prepared and we can't see how long it took to get the code to be that way, e.g. a dozen files of code that took a dozen hours to get from nothing to this state that in a demo may seem like this should just come out within a few hours which isn't realistic. Here they have taken a few rooms at a local university to do it. One blogger's view of one a couple of years ago.

3) Open spaces - This was an awesome event that I really look forward to the next one. A bunch of other developers come together and self-organize discuss whatever we want in a sense. The discussions had were varied and in some cases the results weren't great, like how do we get others to take their off time and come to these things or other ways to volunteer our skills beyond open source projects. What was going on the first day link.

Each of the last two occur on a weekend so it isn't during work hours. Sometimes the joy of seeing something new or a better way to do something can really be rewarding, in addition to the good networking opportunity where you'll never know where the people are that come to these things as the Open Spaces had a few people from other countries present which added a nice diversity dimension to things.

Are there other local user group type events?

Answer 5

I really just like the idea of meeting people who are as excited about a certain topic as I am; it's exciting and inspiring. Especially since I live in a fairly small midwestern town, people with common interests in computer technologies will not be very abundant, so the social aspect is really appealing

Answer 6

A little different approach, but I can tell you what keeps me away... I've always been interested in going, but just don't make it to any of them.

• Most of them seem to be in small towns an hour away, right after work, so I'd miss a significant portion of the meeting.
• The rare one that meets here in the city seems to want to meet at night in a part of town I don't want to go to even during the day.

Answer 7

Because I get to see cool things like this (video - RFID deadbolt with embedded RFID tag. And I do mean embedded!)

Of course, this is one of the few groups I make time for - I don't have time to attend every group I'd like to, but this one has a mix of interesting Make, software, etc so they're never boring.

Try to understand what your users need, and provide it is the best advice I can give. Only you know your audience.

Answer 8

I have been attending local JUG meetings for some time and based on that I would say:

• Networking, this is important for me as I have recently relocated
• Organizing the event itself can be fun
• Free beer!