I love local user groups.
I’ve been an off-and-on attender of the SQL Server user group and the .NET user group in my area. Neither of these really are about what I do, but it’s been fun to connect with local people about technology. I did speak about PowerShell (embedding in C# apps) once, too. Until recently there hasn’t been a PowerShell-specific user group anywhere close,though.
That all changed at the beginning of the year. First, the St. Louis PowerShell User Group started meeting. I missed the first meeting (in January) but was able to attend in February and March.
I was honored to be a speaker at the March 17th meeting, presenting some of my recent work (which you may have been reading about here) on automating Visio with PowerShell.
Josh Castillo (@DoesItScript) also spoke that night about using Git with PowerShell. His talk, combined with the very positive feedback I received from my talk spurred me on to getting my Visio work up on GitHub and also to using Git at the command-line to manage updating it. It’s been fun so far, and I’ve learned a lot. I’m thinking that Josh might have had a big impact on how I work from now on.
Interestingly, though, another user group started up in Missouri on March 17 as well. This one, the MidMo PowerShell User Group met for the first time in Columbia, MO. The two groups are communicating so that they don’t schedule on top of each other in the future.
I’m super-excited about these groups and plan to attend them as often as I can. Both of these are around a three-hour drive for me, however, so I’m thinking seriously about starting a Southwest Missouri PowerShell User Group (SWMOPUG) in Springfield sometime soon. If you’re close by, let me know and we can talk about what I’m planning.
Here’s the picture from Josh’s tweet about my session:
He called me a “PowerShell guru” so that’s fun. 🙂
How are you sharing your PowerShell? Blogging? Teaching? Contributing to projects?
Get involved. You’ll have a lot of fun and help others at the same time.
Just my thoughts.
–Mike
