To all ALT.NET NYC Group Members:

As we draw 2009 to a close, the Organizing Team wants to take a moment just to say 'thanks' to all in the community who participate regularly to make this user group what it is.

As a user group that tries to focus more on intelligent discussion and open debate of topics and issues than on formal speakers and presentations, the ultimate measure of the value that ALT.NET NYC can provide its members is more dependent on the participation of the larger community of its members than most other user groups. And that means that the success or failure of this effort is a direct reflection on all of you as much as on our 'organizing team' that coordinates topics, manages logistics, and handles the other drudgery that goes with managing a community user group.

As a testament to that, we're pleased to see that other group members have begun to come forward to offer topics, presentations, and discussions in areas for which they have a particular affinity or expertise. As you probably already know, January will see the talk on the Reactive Extensions for .NET (Rx Framework) lead by group member Scott Weinstein. We're also pleased to announce a bit in advance that February's meeting will offer an introduction to message-bus-based application architecture and design basics leveraging NServiceBus delivered by another group member, Bernard Kowalski. And March is shaping up to have another group member, James Curran, deliver an introduction to that other .NET MVC Framework: Monorail. Altogether, a pretty interesting Q1 for 2010!

Following this pattern, if there are any other members who have an affinity for any given topic and would like to offer to lead a discussion (formal or otherwise) in a specific area of their interest or expertise, please reach out to a member of the Organizing Team to discuss the possibility of your topic getting on the docket for sometime later in 2010. The best talks are those lead by someone who has a genuine passion for the topic so if you have passion for an area of .NET technology that you think would be of interest to the group and would like to share that with others, please reach out and let us know!

Mean time, here's wishing each and every one of our group's membership a happy New Year's holiday and a healthy and successful 2010~!

-The ALT.NET NYC Organizing Team