INETA VP Events & Sponsorship - Jose Luis Latorre's Blog

Invite to the INETA Country Leaders to the INETA Volunteer Dinner

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:50:00 GMT

About a few minutes I've sent this e-mail to all of the INETA Country Leaders:

Dear Valued Community Contributor,

In name of the INETA Europe Board, I am glad to invite you to our annual INETA Volunteers Dinner, which is to take place during TechEd Developers, at Monday 9th of November.

The place is "Gendarmenmarkt", and the dinner will start at 7pm, German time (GMT +1).

You can check the restaurant at their website here: http://www.brasserieamgendarmenmarkt.de/index.php

It is located here:

Taubenstrasse 30
10117 Berlin

Telefon: +49 (0) 30 / 20 45 35 01

The party will be taking place at one of the best and one of the most charming places in Berlin Gendarmenmarkt. There are plenty of restaurants and pubs where to go after the dinner.

Please confirm as soon as you can your assistance as places are limited and they will be assigned by reception of the acceptance We have a very limited number of places so this is the why of this. Also if you happen not to come after having confirmed be conscious that you will be taking another's person place so please unconfirm with one day ahead. If not we will mark a red cross on your name, whatever the excuse is.

Please confirm your assistance as soon as you can, as places are very limited. For confirming, just reply to this e-mail stating if you will or will not assist.

Thanks so much,

So, if you're a Country Leader and some e-mails have been returned... please act as if you have received it and tell me if you will assist (or not) to the dinner.

Note that this Dinner is Invite only and places are very very very limited and we will assign it to the ones who accepted it first.

Happy new year!! :P (and a contest coming...)

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 11:02:00 GMT

Yes, finally I had some "time" to stop and provide a good introduction to that almost new (we're still in january!!) 2009 :D

Happy 2009 to all INETIANS and INETA Supporters, and also to all the developer community ;)

One of my wishes this year is to help doing great things with the INETA community and I do really believe we will do Big things.

One of the points is that I am behind pushing and pushing since last August an idea that if you're close to me you must have heard: to make a global contest coordinating the different INETA Regions...

Well to say that the INETA Core Contest Framework Team has been set up and we are actually doing the finishing touches for a Global Silverlight Challenge to be hosted by INETA and supported by Microsoft and the product groups..

So, how does that sound? would somebody be intrested to help and support it? we need Sponsors, supporters and people with time to dedicate to it, prefferable with web devlelopment & Silverlight (of course!) skills :)

The model will be far different from the past European Silverlight Challenge... it will be a Region contest and will not have so much "time dedication" needs as last one ;)

Well, you all know my e-mail (glups) or can post a comment here...

Best,

Jose

TechEd & INETA Networking Party

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 14:50:00 GMT

Well TechEd EMEA, Barcelona, is over a lots of things happened, first is the UG Leadership summit that happened at Europe for first Time, during TechEd, this is an event organized by Microsoft, concretely by Graham Watson, Microsoft's Senior Offline Community Lead (http://blogs.technet.com/grahamtwatson/). To say that this event is to see what are the next steps to be taken in the community and there usually take part relevant Microsoft key persons and also key community volunteers of the EMEA region.

Also we, from INETA EMEA are proud to have helped a bit on this event organization. Thanks so much to Graham for letting us have had this event here.

Also we had our Volunteer Dinner at Monday, as usual, managed our booth during our stay at TechEd and also had some interesting meetings there with Microsoft. Honestly I can say I expect lots of things to change, improve substantially, evolve and become even greater.

As for Thursday, we applied what we could until now only see when going to USA: the Always famous party that takes part in all Microsoft North America events: Party with palermo!! But here we called it "INETA Networking party" and for adding a "funny & community" touch to it we called it also as "Party with Jose" ;) that is our 'Cameo' to Jeffrey (http://www.partywithpalermo.com) Thanks Jeffrey for your help and guidance on our first Networking party, that we celebrated at Cafe Noir, thanks to our Sponsors:
TechSmith - http://www.techsmith.com/
Infragistics - http://www.infragistics.com/
Telerik - http://www.telerik.com/
IN2 - http://www.in2.es
And, of course, thanks to Microsoft!!
I leave here some images of the event:

Before the Networking party

The Ineta Europe Board that were at TechEd Developers:

What we wanted, people talking, connecting, networking!!

Also there were lots of interesting new people to meet:

We had Karen-Anne Young!

And we gave exciting presents to the audience, lucky people!!

It was a great moment, very nervous because it was the first we were making it, but we did engage Karen-Anne Young who helped hosting and promoting the party... It's been great having you there Karen!! I do hope we can count with her next year as that indeed assures the success of an event!

The event was from 7 to 10, a 3 hour event in which we had finger food, free drinks, around 100 people to network and talk, speakers, technical responsibles, ATE, Microsoft staff and responsibles, we also had some of our Sponsors but sadly not all... so next year we will plan it more in advance and you can count with the "INETA Networking party for next TechEd Developers", maybe "Party with Damir", our President, who is local..

Directly from UG Leadership Summit: Free TechNet for UG Leaders!!

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 10:42:00 GMT

Hi!

Just want to blog one of the big news I have just heard....

In short, Community UG Leaders will be awarded with free TechNet Online suscriptions :)

these are Great News, thanks Microsoft, thanks Graham Watson!!

Coming to TechEd Developers 2008

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:43:00 GMT

As usual, all the INETA Europe Board will be present this coming edition of TechEd Developers that will be held at Barcelona.

I am organizing some events and activities here for this next TechEd and am interested into knowing if you are coming to have you in mind :). If you are a Country Leader, a User Group Leader or a very strong UG supporter or a Volunteer, we would like to know if you’re coming to have you in mind for some events that we are already organizing and others we are thinking about..

Please, if you are a Country Leader, pass this e-mail or text to your User Group Leaders & INETA/Community volunteers, and if you are a UG Leader, please pass this to your most active members too… For this to work out we need you to take action and pass this communicate without delay. My thanks!!!

Speaking of what are we in, one of them is the INETA Volunteers Dinner, who Microsoft kindly sponsors us each year, but this is invite-only as there aren't much for all the almost one-hundred twenty thousand UG members that are under the umbrella of INETA Europe, with 360 User groups in total, which is not bad but would be difficult to find a restaurant to accommodate all of us ;).).

If you would like to come there and have strongly supported the INETA community through volunteer work, as UG Leader, Country Leader or other activity, feel free to contact me for this.

For this, my e-mail is: joseluis.latorre@ineta-europe.org

Other idea we are thinking and depends on the responses this e-mail gets is to organize a “INETA Networking party” in the clear style of “Party with Palermo” organized at MVP Summit, TechEd North America, etc… The name is not yet decided but could be “Party with Jose”, as some have already suggested ;P…

Also, you are free to answer this e-mail and suggest any activity you think we should celebrate.. or organize as we all make the community!! So… feel free to take action and suggest me something..

For answering, do it by e-mail and check that the theme is exactly “Coming to TechEd Developers 2008”, so it is easy for me to find all the e-mails. My thanks for that!!

Also you have my blog, http://community.ineta-europe.org/blogs/joslat/default.aspx where you will find this exact communicate. You can answer there too (or both) J it will be fun to see how many responses do we get… (I do strongly suggest you use the blog as our SPAM filter is insanely strong.)

Well, as said, pass this information to all UG Leaders & Country leaders you know, then to the INETA Community Volunteers and whoever you consider might be interested in the community activities we are planning for this next exciting TechEd Developers.

Thanks again you all for your dedication and commitment!!!

European Silverlight Challenge... to all that have contributed, Thanks to all!!!

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:57:00 GMT

European Silverlight Challenge contest managers, contestants, Microsoft supporters, INETA Europe Board... to all that have contributed, Thanks to all!!!

It would be a shame not to thank everybody who supported this initiative, that was the past European Silverlight challenge, held during the last few months of 2007 and the start of 2008. The entire marketing effort was a grass roots campaign organized by a relatively small group of INETA volunteers and the community altogether (that means us). The contest did not have a marketing budget or the structure in place that an experienced marketing organization would have. The overriding incentive for participation was the prizes, being its main prizes three tickets to the Mix'08 conference, and the possibility of talking at the MIX.

I have to say, that as INETA being a volunteer organization, the contest was only possible due to dedicated personal effort, being estimated in 100 hours per participating country and around 400 hours of central coordination. That makes a total of 2,100 hours!!! As for prizes we get $240.000 (mostly in products, market price) from different INETA sponsors who provided the different prizes. I can't just have been able to say many times thanks for these time dedicated, so I take the opportunity to do exactly that on this newsletter: thanks for your dedication, your time and also thanks to the ones that participated. you made this possible and are engaging us into doing even greater things.

Some Statistics..

As for the main site, we had over 100.000 Page Views, for the country sites, we had 467.000 page views during the contest duration.
Search engine stats returned approximately:

One million (or 1,010,000 exactly) results for the term "Silverlight Challenge",

1,110 direct references linking to the websites of the contest.

160 Blog entries

So many thanks again to those who helped us communicate and throw the word about the contest.

Solving the latest ESC issues...

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:47:00 GMT

There have been some issues in the prize delivery process, mainly due that we had such a huge list of prizes and winners, and distributing these through 15 countries is not a simple matter...

I have sent an e-mail to all of the contest managers for each of the contest countries to check with their winners and provide feedback about the prize delivery, so I expect to get all of the resting issues (if any!) solved. If you are a contest manager and I have missed sending you this excel file for reporting back, please do contact me at joseluis.latorre@ineta-europe.org and ask me for it.

I recommend you all to indicate any further issue through this blog in response to this post.

We (you) did it!!

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 10:45:00 GMT

You did it! The Web is a little bit richer with your fascinating projects…

Sponsors

Hosting & Software

Software vendors

Publishers

The "1st European Silverlight Challenge" has ended and all of the participants did a pretty good job. But there can be only one who’s becoming Europeans best Silverlight Developer 2008. He or she will receive the ticket to Mix 08 in Las Vegas and also the second and third finalist will go there in addition to some cool prizes from the sponsors of this challenge.

20 Countries from all across Europe where involved in this 1st Challenge developing the best Rich Internet Application with Microsoft Silverlight. The creativity had no limitations and when we take look at the results that were designed and developed in this short period of time and in small teams we can imagine the potential of this new technology.

The variety of projects went from Games to Multimedia over Tools and ended at real Business Applications, everything a unique piece of work.

After the announcement of this challenge every .NET Blogger on the European continent was excited and posted about the challenge to spread the news. And in addition all the European .NET User Group Leaders mobilized their members to participate this event.

At the end some words about the future of Silverlight. Read this is a great article about the strategy (not official)

http://www.realsoftwaredevelopment.com/2008/02/the-silverlight.html

As for the winners, just to congratulate them again:

1st: Dejan Anevski - Macedonia
2nd: Florian Krüsch - Germany
3rd: Radenko Zec – Bosnia & Herzegovina

They had already their trip to Las Vegas and assisted the MIX, and here are some comments that they provided us:

"MIX'08" was one unrepeatable experience. From Bakedowns to Penals, from OpenSpace and Social parties, from top speakers to attendees everyone and everywhere are more than welcome to make new friendship, to approach you and share some geek ideas with you, or maybe to make some business contacts, to find or offer some job opportunities. I've got myself face-to-face with all newest technologies that were promoted from Microsoft's TOP executives, program managers and architects, so I have chance to ask them about all issues and ideas that I had with all that new wave of tools and technologies that they provide.”
– Dejan Anevski

"I had a blast a MIX08. Meeting so many people finally in person was about the greatest thing for me, besides the spectacular keynotes. The European Silverlight Challenge has given me the great opportunity to present my work to a worldwide audience. Thank you INETA!”
– Florian Krüsch

"Mix was great opportunity to me to talk with people from Microsoft about new technologies that will come in the future."
– Radenko Zec

Apart from this I would like to congratulate and give a very big Thank-you to all the country leaders and contest managers that have participated, thanks Lorenzo Barbieri, Andrew Filev, Roman Martynenko. Ireland - Paul Fallon, Andre Obelink, Dobrisa Adamec , George J. Capnias, Branimir Giurov, Martin Kulov, Marcin Celej, Szymon Kobalczyk, Daniel Tizon, Hardy Erlinger, Gill Cleeren , Gregory Renard, Gaidar Magdanurov, Andrew Westgarth, Daniel Joskovski , Aurelian POPA, Tahir Javed, Karl Davies, Nuno Gonçalves, Morten Jokumsen , Tor Einar Solli , Miha Markić.. Probably I am missing a lot of people that have helped a lot, INETA Country Leaders, INETA Supporters… Many thanks to those that have contributed!! As we now are in a time of heroes, just to say that these is the spirit that makes INETA great, empowering community and having fun learning together. Ah, well and getting some outrageous prizes too ;)

Also would like that something quite interesting could be coming in the next months…Silverlight colored and with global reach… ;)

Hello World!! INETA Gets Social!!

Jose Luis Latorre Millás — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:32:00 GMT

This is my first post in this new brand tool for the INETA community. We are to set-up here the blogs of the INETA Board at full and thus enabling this as a social interaction and feedback community tool, providing what we think will be a great "point of communication".

Have to say a big Thanks to Sander, who has set up and configured the server and the blogging software, being "Community Server" the chosen tool.

Also to give a big thank-you to Telligent, the authors of Community Server for providing this great software license.

Hopefully in short here will be some interesting things to read... So keep watching.. ;)

More to follow...