Great User Group Leader Summit

Jeff and Josh invited me to attend the Heartland Influencer Summit in Detroit, MI, on Dec 7.

There were a lot of great people there, many I know from the user group and MVP communities.

Josh and Jeff wanted to get us together to discuss how we can work better together as community leaders, and what MS could do to help support us better.

There was some great idea swapping. For example, other groups use a session called 'lightening talks' I want to do in our group (CONDG). For lightening talks, members sign up with any topic they want, and speak for ten minutes. The audience votes for best presentation. The winners get the swag.

The lightening talks keeps the pace moving fast, and short, so the 'new' speaker doesn't have much to prepare or stress about. I think this is a great way to start grooming new community leaders and speakers.

Coming out of this meeting was a few other action items. Josh/Jeff are going to put together a MOSS portal for the Heartland user group leaders to share speakers, schedules, ideas, and resources. This will be a great way to make all of our groups stronger. There are so many resources out there, and this will help make sure everyone knows about them.

Something the Northwest groups are doing is called the 'Northwest Tour'. They have arranged their meeting schedules so that a speaker can hit about five groups in a few days. This makes it easier to attract large speakers.

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