There are some major changes that are going on with the Cleveland User groups that we announced today. We have had the Adobe User Group and the ColdFusion user group for the longest time now. We treated these groups as totally separate groups for awhile and only recently started combing our meetings. I have had the privilege of serving as co manager of the ColdFusion user group for almost 2.5 years now under manager Brian Meloche.

Both of us and the guys who run the Adobe User group came to a conclusion a little while back that we are just not getting the attendance we want having separate groups. It is also a lot of working coming up with fresh content that users can really get excited about. We decided that instead of having two groups we would combine them into a single web design and development user group. I think this gives us a much broader audience to target and yet still have presentations that revolve around the Adobe community.

Tonight was our first meeting of the year so we decided to make our announcements tonight. I will be taking over the group and Andrew Maurer will be taking over as co manager. While these are title changes I fully expect Brian Meloche and Mike Cooper will stay on and contribute as much as they can. These groups would not be where they are today without them so I think I speak for Andrew & I when I say what an honor it was to serve as co managers under them. We are taking this very seriously and hope to grow this group into something that we can all be proud of.

Finally I would like to say a few words about my mentor Brian Meloche. This guy has been probably the single most important person in my development as a programmer and as a ColdFusion community professional. I remember meeting Brian back when he was leading the Adobe user group. He took me under his wing and told me what to do as a developer to get recognition from my peers. He gave me the confidence to speak at local user group meetings which would eventually lead into ColdFusion conferences. I would not be the developer I am today and aspired to be 5 years back if it was not for Brian. So with that Brian, I thank you for everything you have done for me and I am happy to take the reigns from you. Hopefully I will be able to inspire others as you have inspired me.

 

This entry was posted on February 8, 2011 at 11:36 PM and has received 2657 views. Comments 1 | Print this entry.