What is a successful User Group to you?
In discussion yesterday, Brian, Kent and I skirted around the idea of what "success" would be for this user group. What's interesting was how each of us, while being passionate about the idea of having a local user group, had varying ideas of what would define "success." It's not that our ideas conflicted, it was more the emphasis which was put on all the different factors that will define the group. My personal idea of a successful user group has the following elements:
Community
A place where people are able to exchange ideas and grow from one another. We don't have to all be in agreement to grow - bring on all the "controversial" topics from whether stored procedures are useful to static vs dynamic languages to something as trivial as style and whether you put your curly braces on a new line - at the end of the day having good discussion and building friendships will be a big sign of success.
Content
It will be really important to have a steady diet of knowledgeable speakers and information sharing. Although getting along and having fun is good, I'm wary of a group that simply operates as a "club" where some people are "in" or "popular." I hope we can plumb the depths of whatever topic is at hand and be a great resource for those who participate to learn.
Swag
I'm hoping that as time passes we'll get better at getting swag for people who attend.
So that's a few of the things I think would make a good user group. How about you? Post in the forum!