____________________________________ sent via the Boston User Groups Leadership Listserv ____________________________________ ==================================================================== Our annual user group MegaMeeting-III is near! Wed, Sept-25 Sheraton Tara in Framingham, MA Wednesday, September 25 from 6:30 - 9:30 PM http://www.BostonUserGroups.com/MegaMeeting ==================================================================== To all user group leaders: Boston User Groups is now almost one year old (at least as a true non-profit corporate entity) and MegaMeeting-III is just around the corner. Our value proposition TO you and our expectations OF you as a user group leader are quite simple: Boston User Groups' value proposition TO you: * Greatly increase your user group's visibility to the public * Help promote, increase and cross pollinate your user group membership with other groups * Assist to provide speakers via BUG web site awareness * Provide an annual MegaMeeting for face-to-face networking and exposure Boston User Groups expectation OF you as a user group leader * Greatly increase your User Group's visibility to the public by promoting BUG and it's other user groups * Have a link on your home page or other readily visible location on your web site back to BUG (again to increase mutual awareness) * Promote the MegaMeeting to your group to increase our mutual awareness As you can see, even BUG's expectations OF you are solely to help promote all user groups which certainly includes you. I would like to leave you with two thoughts and a "call to action": 1) Like your own user group, Boston User Groups is mostly funded by out-of-pocket personal donations of it's User Group leadership. In the case of MegaMeeting-III, we could not locate a free facility of adequate size and location so certain people fronted about $3,000 for room rental in the expectation of re-covering the costs by renewed BUG/UG leader memberships, door admission and a few corporate sponsorships. We are VERY non-profit. 2) I ask you to please help to aggressively promote the upcoming MegaMeeting and BUG. In the process, you will be promoting your own group! MegaMeeting-III Chairperson Brad Dinerman will be following up with a "call to action" email with specifics on up-front cash costs to you (none) and how to help promote the MegaMeeting and your own group! Please look for Brad's email coming soon. And finally: Please note a recent article by John C. Dvorak on the death of User Groups and the few glimmers of light out there. As a united group of groups, we may be one of those few glimmers. Please help us to help each other! The URL is http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0,3048,a=29639,00.asp ______________________________________ Rick Zach, President Boston User Groups, Inc. cel: 508-395-8730 http://www.bostonusergroups.com/Benefactors/