Meetup.com Group Created as (Eventual) Google Group Replacement

[Tim Franklin]

Exciting news, everyone!  We now officially have a Meetup.com group in addition to our Facebook page.  We've been discussing over the past several months how better to reach out to our local developer community and in particular how to best serve our existing members, and we think this is the right move to make and the right time to make it.

Over the next several months we'll be transitioning from the Google group to the Meetup group.  If you are interested in continuing to receive emails about upcoming meetings, whether or not you want to also enjoy some of the additional (free) Meetup group member benefits, we strongly encourage you to join the Meetup group as soon as conveniently possible.  We don't want to leave anyone behind but as you can guess, it's a bit of a hassle on the officers to maintain the group information and activities in multiple places, so we'll try to strike a good balance between the two.

Join now!  http://www.meetup.com/sgfdotnet

Why Meetup?

• Better discoverability and exposure for people looking for local developer community groups
• Easier (and to a certain extent, included) cross-pollination with other local, related Meetups
  
• The ability to provide better professional networking, should you choose to enter optional profile information, as well as an optional photo for better recognizing people at the meetings
  
• Automated event reminders and feedback requests
  
• Calendar features, both on the site/app and integration with your own calendar
• Community discussion sections for job postings, questions, etc.
• Ability to provide group photos, ask polls, etc.
• Easier meeting management, both for individuals and administrators
  
• Individuals can manage their profile/attendance/correspondence for multiple groups on one common platform (such as the SGF Web Dev group and Springfield Drupal Meetup)
• Native app support for iOS and Android smartphones
• Better security for preventing spammers from joining/trolling
  

Additional Info

• Meetup.com is free to create/maintain an account.
  
• Our Meetup group is also free to join and participate in, thanks to Old Town IT generously donating the first year's Meetup.com fee (we plan to continue having the group be free to members by seeking corporate sponsorship for this in the future as well)
  
• Each member can manage their email notification settings to avoid any potentially unwanted spam.
  
• If you just want to get the emails like you do with the Google group and aren't interested in any of the other free features, you can absolutely do that.  Just join the group and edit your communication settings as you see fit.
• We will continue to post upcoming meeting information in the Google group for the next couple months, but the sooner you join our Meetup the more peace of mind you get for knowing you won't be left behind!
• We will continue to maintain the Facebook group for the foreseeable future (https://www.facebook.com/groups/sgfdotnet/).
• We will continue to have a presence at www.sgfdotnet.org (bet some of you didn't know we even had a web site!) though it will eventually just be a landing spot to send people to other related SGF .NET outlets.
• Meetings will continue to be held the 4th Tuesday of every month at the same time and location--6pm till 7:30pm at the Library Center on S. Campbell Ave.

Check it out and join today!  We are excited about this next step and really hope you are too.

http://www.meetup.com/sgfdotnet

If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to reach out to me directly at pureux [at] gmail.com or in person, or to speak with any of our other officers (Ben Ellis, Wesley Livesay, and Todd Christell).

This month (May 26th) we have a case study from our very own Jordan Morgan, presenting about his iOS app Spend Stack.  Though the topic doesn't directly touch .NET technologies it is a good example of tips and tricks for other local entrepreneurs looking to launch their own app.

Fellow Nerds of Springfield, Spread the Word!

Tim Franklin

President, Springfield .NET Users Group

pureux [at] gmail.com