Guide to Organizing an IT Pro Group

I hope that by this point everyone reading this blog is an IT Professional or at least striving to be one. But how do you get together and get better at your job or how do you get a better job? About a year ago I started the Orlando IT Pro group and I started networking with people worldwide that were doing the same thing I was – trying to lead a group, trying to promote it and make people aware of its existance, trying to get people to attend, trying to get vendors to come in and talk to the people that sell and support their software and hardware. Those people helped our ITPRO community in Orlando grow immensely and to give back to the community that gave Orlando IT Pro its legs I decided to put together a how-to whitepaper that will help newer group leaders go through the steps I had to go through. Another 14 people gave up their time to be interviewed to make this a non-biased look at whats involved in running a user group. I hope it helps you as much as its helped me. http://www.vladville.com/articles/GuideToOrganizinganITPROGroup.pdf Update: You are likely reading this as a link from Harry Brelsford's SMB Newsletter so please allow me to make a slight correction and save you a ton of time: The guide you are about to download is a guide to all the resources available to you as a user group leader to better organize and run your group. In addition to all the resources it features 15 other successful SBS group leaders and which resources they rely on to make their groups work. This is not a guide on how or why to start your group.