No matter how much the web has progressed, it will never replace human contact. Or at least I hope not......

As part of our program to develop the European Runtime Revolution community, we want to explore the idea of regional user groups as a way to increase peer to peer knowledge sharing as well as an opportunity to schedule events with RR staff and outside presenters. Not everyone has the opportunity to attend our conferences and even then they are few and far apart. And in any case, it will be fun to meet informally now and then at a pub or similar location. More than one developer has told me that the best part of the conferences is the networking that goes on in the evenings after the sessions are finished.

During the next few months, I will be asking our customers who are located in Europe how we can best develop this concept. For those of you located in the Americas or Asia, you can contact Lynn Fredricks for more information. We are investigating the best way to support these activities in terms of the Internet but in the meantime please contact me directly with opinions and ideas.

To get get ball rolling, I am available next week in the following locations if anyone would like to start with an informal chat over a beer at a local pub. I will be in Edinburgh on the evenings of February 5th, Bath on February 7th, and London on February 8th. Anyone interested please contact me. I have not chosen any particular place to meet so I am open to any suggestions as well. Each person will be responsible for their own tab, in order to make this painless, anyone who attends will receive a voucher for £10 towards their next purchase of £50 or more.

Let me know as well what vehicles we should explore such as on line chats or a forum topic or web pages for local user groups. Do we set up local user group mailing lists? How formal shall we be? Do we charge dues? What do you expect from RR in terms of support? What are your expectations? Are you interested in being a facilitator for a local group? In short, we want to develop our user group concept according to your wishes.