I was reading though my blogs and came across this entry from Scott Watermasysk discussing INETA Academic and his personal drive to get students involved in the local community.

http://scottwater.com/blog/archive/2004/12/22/INETA_Academic_And_You#Feedback

This got me to thinking about what Brendon and I have been doing with this blog and our other activities as "Atlanta .Net Regular Guys".  The two of us have been working hard to bring the local developer community closer together.  We've been providing User Group recaps so those who can't make it to the meetings aren't left out of the loop.  We've worked to... blah blah blah.  I'll just paste the comment I wrote to Scott into this entry rather than paraphrasing myself.  I'm not sure that my comment will make it to his blog b/c I was looking at a post nearly 2 months old.

"Here in the Atlanta community, we've begun to consolidate our local user groups and online gurus through the blogsphere.  One concept that I'm particularly proud to be a part of is the "Atlanta .Net Regular Guys".  I and my partner Brendon Schwartz attend all of the .Net user group meetings in town (that's seven meetings a month, baby!) and blog about the content (http://www.devcow.com/weblogs).  We are integral parts of the planning and advertising for the upcoming May 14th Atlanta Code Camp (www.atlantacodecamp.com).  We are beginning a new (to Atlanta anyway) weekly or semi-weekly column - "Tales from the Trenches".  This column will include the personal war stories of local area developers, including several area Microsoft MVPs.

All of these efforts and more are all directed at one major goal - to create a vibrant local community of developers who can turn to each other for friendship and advice.  We've created a centralized calendar.  We've helped solicit for resumes and passed those resumes we've received to those who need them most.  We've organized social outings and are now involved in the leadership of several of the user groups.

We do all of this for free.  I don't want personal fame, I just want to be part of the incredible group of people that make up the Atlanta area development community and I'm doing everything I can to bring everyone closer together.  I was lucky enough to find a friend who challanged me to keep this going, and together Brendon and I have, in my opinion, added something to the local community that was previously missing."

-- Matt Ranlett