Welcome to 2006
Helena & I just got back from a three week trip to China so I'm back at the desk & into it again. The main purpose of our trip was to meet my in-laws who are fantastic but we also spent a bit of time sight-seeing & I was totally blown away by the whole place. Beijing was amazing - it's historical sights including the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven & the Ming Emporer Tombs are a must-see. Helena's family live in an inland city named HuiZhou which has a population of ~1M & is to them rather like Bendigo is to Victorians - a big country town. It's a beautiful place - with ornamental lakes, temples etc as well as a vibrant local community. In the three weeks I was there I didn't see a single westerner the entire time & all the locals seemed to have something wrong with their necks because every single person craned around to check me out as we were walking around. Must be what it's like to be a super-model (c:
My new years' resolution is to keep this blog more up to date, so I'll start off with a few thoughts about what we can do about this website to spruce things up a bit. First, I knocked together a jobs system so that job advertisers (recruiters & employers) can list their SQL Server related jobs on our website for members to view. Like everything else associated with this user group, we're not charging for this - jobs are just another facet of our SQL Server community that are worth disseminating here. I've called a few recruiters & some of they're all interested in the idea so some jobs should start flowing through in the coming weeks.
We've been sending out meeting invitations via a very manual process until now & I'm working on a back-end system for our meeting organisers to use which should come out in a few weeks or so. Hopefully this will improve communications a little & let the local meeting admins keep more in touch with their local members.
Another thing I'd like to see on our website is a list of training opportunities as training is also a little part of our ecosystem. Nothing's been done ain this area yet, but perhaps in the coming months we can get something organised.
Rob Farley's been doing an amazing job with the Adelaide group lately & I've been blown away by the way he's organised webcasts of his recent meetings. Charles Sterling's been helping a lot there too so thanks Chuck. I'm going to try & bring Melbourne into the webcasts as well this year & hopefully upload them to our site as well for off-line viewing for members who can't make it to the meetings.
There are lots more things we can do to spruce this place up - these are just a smattering of ideas & I'm sure there are plenty more out there. If only there were more hours in a day!