BizTech: Sydney Business & Technology User Group report

I’m very pleased to report that our first meeting of the Sydney Business & Technology User Group went well.

There was a much bigger turnout than I had expected (we ran out of pizza early!). My thanks to the people who came just to support the group even though it may not directly relevant to them – it was very much appreciated.

Overall the night went well. My session was reasonably well received I think (I hope it was useful – the content is here and the PowerPoint is here). I’ll also be updating it a little over the next few days with some of the comments from attendees.

Adam Cogan’s session was very useful – he went through SQL Server Data Dude, plus compared some of the features to other tools on the market (RedGate, Apex, etc).

Some feedback from attendees:

• There was a number of technical people there, who were probably not as interested in the business related stuff as the technical stuff
• It went far too late (my fault for not keeping the program on track time wise – I’ll be more vigilant next meeting I promise!)
• There was a lot of comment on communication skills and email management during the night (this was a topic of interest)
• Not many people had heard of Eric Sink (I thought everyone read Eric Sink’s blog)

Special thanks to the following people who have encouraged and supported the idea: Frank Arrigo, Andrew Coates, Adam Cogan, Steven Ringo

 

One downside: I had a cap full of business cards (many attendees were good enough to give me their card so I can keep in contact with them), but towards the end of the night ‘someone’ took most of them (they left 3 cards behind).

I mention this for three reasons:

1. I assume it was accidental (perhaps the person thought I’d already taken the cards and these were leftovers?) and to thus request they pop them in the cap next month (I’ll leave it up the back as usual).

2. To apologise to people who did leave their cards if they get unsolicited email from someone!

3. To apologise to those same people when they don’t get reminded of next month’s session because I don’t have their details.

 

Next Month: Steven Ringo talking on the business side of Web 2.0 & 3.0, and Scott Scovell talking on the technology decisions related to Connected Systems (ie BizTalk, WCF, WF).

Stay tuned to the UG web site for more details (I’ll post full session descriptions next week).

Thanks again.