I decided to attend to see how the group was doing and learn a little more about Dot Net Nuke (DNN). Meetings are held on the other side of Orlando from me, but with a 7 pm start time I missed most of the traffic and had an easy drive. The location isn't hard to find, but is also easy to miss at least at this time of year with it being dark early.

The meeting was pretty typical user group; big conference room provided by a corporate host, sign in sheet, some free magazines, and food courtesy of Vaco this time (pretty good food, though a few complained about the heat given off by the food warmers...can't win some nights!). Will Strohl got the meeting started on time and did a quick run through of group news and upcoming related events (though he didn't list my own SQL group meeting next week!). He also had a camera set up to stream the meeting--------------------

Featured speaker was Stan Schultes, well known in the Florida community and based out of Sarasota, probably about a 2 hour drive to the meeting location. He started by talking about some of the changes in the just released DNN v5, and then did a very basic install to set the stage. From there he went through all the steps needed to create and load a custom module. Can't say I walked away a DNN expert, but I did get a greater sense of the capabilities and some nice tips on DNN development (use IIS rather than the VS web host, develop on a server OS, code against a production install rather than load all the source code each time). He also mentioned one point that caught my interest; in v5 it's apparently possible to delegate sending newsletters without making the person a site admin. I can see that being handy for user groups at least, and probably a lot of other scenarios (and I need to find out how PASS is solving that issue for chapters/user groups).

Info on the user group at http://orlando.dotnetnukeug.net/Default.aspx, more info about Stan at http://www.vbnetexpert.com/.