Recently I stepped down as the president of the Cedar Valley .net User Group to take a more supportive role in the group. I wanted to step down because I felt like I wasn’t able to give the group the attention it deserved since I started Grad school. Doing well and getting the most out of my Grad school experience is more important to me right now then running the user group. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, you just evolving priorities and at this time it’s Grad school. I am still going to be involved with the group but just not to the level I was previously.
I had an amazing experience running the CVINETA user group, and wouldn’t give up that experience for anything. I met some amazing developers and IT people in the Cedar Valley and the guys that assisted with leading CVINETA were amazing. Here is my top 3 things I’ll take away from my time as CVINETA president. (I hate lists but couldn’t think of a better way of doing this)
- It forced me to be a better developer - Just being around developers more and sharing ideas with my peers at the user group meetings started making me a better developer. I started to care about my craft, and finally started to treat it as a career and not just a job. I’ve always been a leader by example and that’s what I wanted to be for members of CVINETA and I could only do this by pushing myself to be a better developer.
- Made some great friends/networking connections - The people I met through the user group that I probably would’ve never met before was another aspect that I loved about being president. I met some great local developers and loved chatting with them at user group meetings and over lunches about development topics and everything else under the sun. I also got the chance to meet and get to know some of the leaders and developers I respect in the region by having them come speak at the user group or introducing myself at regional events.
- Great leadership experience - My experience as the leader of CVINETA is what pushed me to finally start my journey to get my MBA. I had been putting off starting my Grad school journey, I’m not sure why, but after a few months as the user group leader it became strikingly apparent to me that I wanted to get started on my MBA.
And finally I want to pass on some words of advice for those who are involved in leading groups.
- Get Help - And not just from a therapist:). Find and recruit anyone that will help you with running the group, you can’t do it all yourself. I was lucky enough to have 4 others help me with the group, and it worked out that we all kinda fell into our strengths. My only rule was I didn’t want to have much to do with getting sponsorship money, cause I hate asking for money, and a couple guys picked that role up and got us some great local sponsors for our meetings. Just remember the more people you have involved with the group the better it will be and utilize your strengths and the strengths of those volunteers.
- Don’t take it personal - For the first few months I valued the quality of each meeting by how many people attended the meeting. As much as you try and push to get attendance up for meetings, some people just don’t want to come. It took me awhile but I finally realized that I need to value each meeting not on how many people attend the meeting, but on how well the meeting helped and was received by the people who attended the meeting. No matter how much you try to get people to care about the meetings and get them to attend, they will never care about it as much as you and that’s OK.
- Recruit - Talk about the group to your IT peers as often as you can, if you meet someone from another company introduce yourself as the leader of the user group. All of these help introduce or remind people about the user group and that its there to help and support them.
If I had one major disappointment in my time as the CVINETA president, it was that I wasn’t able to get senior level programmers involved much with the group. I really wanted some top level developers from the area to attend meetings and ask some good quality questions that a junior or mid level developer wouldn’t think of asking. I always saw this is a quality aspect of other user groups (CRINETA) and was really disappointed I couldn’t get that to happen in my time at CVINETA.
Finally I’d like to wish Mike Cole, the next president of CVINETA, the best of luck with the user group. I hope his vision and leadership can take CVINETA to new heights and help improve the development community in the Cedar Valley.
Thanks to everyone who attended and helped with CVINETA you all rock!