Australian Microsoft Developer User Groups

Back in 2002 when I, with the help of Power Business Systems, started the Perth .NET Community of Practice there was a lot of emphasis being placed on building the community by Microsoft.  All around the country the DPE team worked with user group leaders to help support the groups wherever possible.  This included flying speakers around each month, providing content if required and helping to co-ordinate venue and catering.  With a succession of failed activities, such as the MSDN Connection Program (great idea, weak implementation) and the Visual Studio 2005 launch event, to name two that come to mind, we now don't see anywhere near the support that we used to.  A lot of this comes down to budget, and the ever increasing range of developer orientated products that the DPE team have to know, promote and support. 

If you check out the MSDN Australia map of the user groups, located here, you can see that there are approximately 40 user groups around Australia.  You can begin to understand why the DPE budget doesn't go very far these days - back in "the good old days" there was only really a single developer user group in each of the major cities (with perhaps the exception of Sydney and Melbourne). Having said that, someone at Microsoft should really look at this list and remove those that don't appear to exist any more (such as Hobart) and those that don't appear to meet any more (such as Geelong). 

What I wanted to do in this post was highlight the developer user groups - the ones that are essentially the .NET user groups based in the major cities (my apologies if I don't include your user group in this list - feel free to contact me if you want me to expand the list). Hopefully this information is correct and please contact me if you think anything isn't accurate.

ACT

Canberra .NET User Group

3rd Thursday of the month, lunchtime (12:30 @ King O'Malley's Irish Pub) and evening (4:30 @ MS Offices). 
Co-ordinator: Athena

NSW

Sydney Deep .NET User Group

1st Thursday of the month, 6pm @ AMP building.
Co-ordinators: Nick Wienholt & Dan Green

Sydney .NET User Group

3rd Wednesday of the month, 5:30 @ MS Offices.
Co-ordinator: Adam Cogan

QLD

Queensland MSDN User Group

3rd Tuesday of the month, 5:30 @ MS Offices.
Co-ordinator: Mike Fitzsimon

Gold Coast .NET SIG

Adhoc, 6pm Griffith University.
Co-ordinator: Shea Strickland

SA

Adelaide Dot Net Users Group

2nd Wednesday of the month, 5:45 @ Innovation Centre.
Co-ordinator: Peter Griffith

 VIC

Victoria.NET Dev SIG

2nd Tuesday of the month, 5:30 @ MS Office.
Co-ordinator: Mahesh S. Krishnan

WA

Perth .NET Community of Practice

1st Thursday of the month, 5:30 @ Excom Training Centre.
Co-ordinators: Mitch Wheat & Alastair Waddell

Published Friday, September 14, 2007 5:26 PM by nick
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Comments

Friday, September 14, 2007 8:01 PM by Peter Griffith

# re: Australian Microsoft Developer User Groups

Can you change the link for Peter Griffith to www.adnug.com/contact.htm.

Thanks for listing us.

PG

pgriffit@senet.com.au

Friday, September 14, 2007 8:30 PM by nick

# re: Australian Microsoft Developer User Groups

Peter, will leave the link as it is as I want people to be able to find and contact the actual people behind the user groups.  Feel free to nominate someone else as the co-ordinator if this is no longer yourself.

Friday, September 14, 2007 8:47 PM by Brian H. Madsen

# re: Australian Microsoft Developer User Groups

Hey Nick,

When looking at the full list of developer UGs its amazing to see the community interest keeps growing.

New groups form and evolve from small meeting up to large gatherings, with both national and international speakers.

The Perth .Net Community of Practise has definitely grown over the last couple of years, thanks to the hard work put in by both yourself, Mitch and Alastair.

The work you've done for the group has put Perth on the map in Australia and I hope that it'll continue to grow.

Great Works guys!