This month marks the introduction of the newest slate of INETA North America board members. You can meet them all in the July INETA Newsletter.

If you are a .NET developer and are not familiar with INETA, I'll give you the elevator pitch!

INETA was started in early 2002 by a handful of .NET User Group leaders in the U.S. who wanted to connect with and help other user group leaders. With some support from Microsoft, who was at the same time trying to figure out how to build a community around .NET, INETA was born. Most existing user group leaders, such as myself, had created their groups on their own. I had the great benefit of many years in the FoxPro community which is where I drew my ideas and experience from. NETA quickly became the goto resource for user group leaders all over the world who were looking to meet and learn from other group leaders. At the same time, INETA became an resource to aid hundreds of developers who wanted to start user groups in their own areas. They also created the INETA speaker bureau, which along with sponsorship from MSDN and other .NET vendors, enabled conference level speakers to travel to speak to user groups in places like, oh, tiny Burlington, Vermont.

Today, INETA is made up of 5 regions with : NORAM (North America: 237 groups), LATAM (Latin America) + INETA Brazil with about 260 groups, Europe (265 groups), MEA (Middle East & Africa: 109 groups) and APAC (Asia Pacific: 199 groups).

It's amazing to me to see the huge number of groups in the other regions. While LATAM was already a phenomenon in the early days of INETA, the other regions have grown a lot in the last few years.

I am a huge believer in user groups. My little group in Burlington Vermont, Vermont.NET, has been meeting monthly for over five years. It has truly become a community of friends and coding cohorts who are always happy when new people find their way to our meetings.

So if you are looking for some fellow coders to geek out with and who understand your strange passion for bits & bytes, definitely seek out a user group near by.

All of the regions have a list which you can filter down to see if there is a group in your area. Here is a link to the one for INETA NORAM.