NoDeNUG, The Northern Delaware .Net Users Group has been going strong for a year now! Wow time flies. The success of this group is due to the hard work of John Baird for running the group. They've also had a great partner in Diamond Technologies for sponsoring all (or at least most) of their meetings for an entire year.
For a few years people in the area wanted to start a .Net User Group in Northern DE. A year ago, John, Mitch Ruebush, Doug White and myself finally got it going. Dani Diaz helped of course. Plus Nate Sharp (Diamond Tech) supported the group from the start, and since he and I worked for Diamond, owners Chuck Burns and Greg Ballance offered to host the first few meetings and sponsor one of them. I think we were all pleasantly surprised that the first meeting had about 15 people, if my memory serves me correctly. The second meeting had more, and it grew each month. Diamond offered to host and sponsor the meetings for the year.
After the first few meetings, I was unable to help out anymore since I got a new job and wasn't working in DE anymore. It's an hour from my home and I'm pretty busy with Philly.Net anyway. But John has really done a great job with the group and it's been growing and growing. They moved out of Diamond's office due to size constraints and now host meetings at Delaware Technology Park but Diamond continues to sponsor the meetings. I hope to make it to some meetings soon, but it sure is a long drive down there for me. I'm a bit out of touch and don't know if Mitch or Doug are involved anymore. As far as I know, John is running the show by himself (apologies if I am wrong). Microsoft recently honored John for his efforts with NoDeNUG, among other things, by naming him a Microsoft MVP!
If you are in the area, you really should check out NoDeNUG. Congrats to John Baird for making the groups successful.