Well, I AM having a second post! This is a personal best.

I wanted to talk a bit about something I'm working on at the moment. A couple of friends and I are starting a new user group for our area. We are developers who have worked with a variety of technologies over the years. I have spent years working with Java and Oracle PL/SQL, but since 2005 we have done much of our work with Microsoft technologies like C#, .Net, ASP.Net and the .Net Compact Framework.

We came to Microsoft via the Pocket PC. We all work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writing software primarily to support the delivery of the paper. We were originally using the Palm OS for handhelds, Java for the web app and Oracle for the database. It worked pretty well, but we bought a syncing package that to us was a black box. It broke down frequently and there was little we could do about it. The company that made it was bought by a consulting company who dropped the product leaving us high and dry.

After several missteps trying to replace it, we decided to write our own. I had just bought a Pocket PC myself and wanted to learn to code for it. It didn't take long before I realized that we could ease much of our suffering if we went with Pocket PC instead of Palm. We could use one language to write code on the handhled, web app, database, and server apps. That meant we could divide work more logically, rather than each being in totally unrelated technical silos.

Long story somewhat shortened: we've worked with Microsoft since '05 and they have been very helpful. Our sync software has worked great and given us very few problems. We want to get involved with the local user group community, but there is a problem. Geography.

The city of Atlanta is very small. The region known as Metro Atlanta is HUGE. We live in a part of the Metro area known as Gwinnett County. For us it would take at least an hour to get to the Atlanta meetings during rush hour traffic. Rush hour traffic here is pretty much defined as all hours other than 2-3 AM.

For that reason we decided to form our own user group: the Gwinnett, Georgia, Microsoft User Group (GGMUG). Our first meeting will be May 8 at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville. We have two great speakers lined up and so far about 25 people signed up to attend.

I'll post more info here as we go. I'm also posting to the GGMUG website. I'm trying to keep the posts there down to a minimum so I don't wind up obscuring information that people need about meetings.

I'm very excited about GGMUG and looking forward to our first meeting. We're planning to meet every second Thursday.