Jay Harris is Cpt. LoadTest

February was election month for us .Net Developers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On February 11th, during the monthly meeting, the Ann Arbor .Net Developers user group held its annual elections. After serving as the group's leader for the past 3 years--ever since the group was formed--Bill Wagner decided to hand over the reins. When the election dust settled, I stood as the second President of the Ann Arbor .Net Developers. I appreciate the honor and the opportunity given to me, and I look forward to serving the group for 2009.

The Elected

President: Jay Harris
Vice Pres: Scott Zischerk
Secretary: Darrell Hawley
Treasurer: Eric Bratton

That evening, after the meeting, we held our first board meeting, as we were responsible for filling the two appointed positions: Program Chair and Webmaster. As the group has grown, so have these two roles. Program Chair turned into a catchall for most of the membership and speaker management, and was an overload for one person. Webmaster had changed, too, as the group's web site is no longer the only communication medium we employ.

We restructured these two appointed positions into four. Program Director is responsible for knowing what people want to learn about, and making sure that our schedule is booked solid with great speakers. Webmaster has been rebranded as Communication Director, and is the public voice of our group; the position is responsible for any articles and communications published by the group, and for maintaining the web site, Twitter, Facebook, and all of our other various methods of getting the word out. Membership Director is one of our entirely new roles, responsible for maintaining demographics on the group, membership listings, and swag. Finally, we wanted to ease the burden on our group membership and work towards eliminating our member-dues fiscal model; the new Sponsorship Director is responsible for finding sponsorship funding to help run our group.

The Appointed

Program Director: Mike Woelmer
Membership Director: Dennis Burton
Sponsorship Director: Brian Genisio
Communications Director: Len Smith

The new board has some great ideas for the upcoming year, and I am excited to be a part of it. In addition, a sincere thank you goes out to the departing board members, Bill Wagner (President) and Dave Redding (Vice President); we appreciate the effort that you have put in to this group.