Co-operative for Authors and Software Engineers on the World Wide Web Home Details Pages You'll Need Why Dues Sponsors Join the Group Press Releases Members' Ads Speakers Roster Members Logon Corporate TrainersEducational Sware Game Developers User Groups User Groups Welcome Having been a user-group leader for several years there are three things I know very well. You're always in need of good speakers for your group. You're always in need of good "swag" to give away at group meetings. You're always looking for pizza/pop/etc. for the meetings. You're always looking for new members. You're always looking for new ways to publicize your group. You probably have one or two people in the group who would really like more exposure by speaking to other groups. If you join the CASEWWW group, you'll get some help for these problems. Let's begin by talking about speakers. Our speaker's roster is there for you to use, regardless. As time goes by and we pick up more and more speakers, you'll find folks on the speaker's roster that you can get for your group. That one fact is reason enough to visit our site at VistaBits  from time to time. Next, let's talk about "swag." Software, books, free admission to certain events, and other "stuff" free to your group with the only stipulation being that the winners write a few sentences about the item...that's not a bad deal, now is it? Let's take an example. You contact a group member and identify yourself as a group leader and CASEWWW member. Talk with them about your group and what they can give you. Then as a condition of using the product as a door prize, you ask the winner to write a paragraph about the product saying what they liked about it and email the paragraph to your vendor contact. You also agree to send the vendor the contact information for the member who won the "swag." (The member may be contacted by the vendor as part of the agreement.) Once the vendor receives the paragraph, it may be used by the vendor as part of their marketing efforts, including, but not limited to a press release about the give-away, sales brochures, etc. That's it. Next, there's the ever-popular "pizza and pop" (or whatever food is popular among your folks). Some of our sponsors will also "sponsor" one or more of your group's meetings--paying a per-attendee amount for food and refreshments in exchange for a logo on your group's site or some similar benefit. Negotiation of that will be between you and the sponsor, but by being in the CASEWWW group you'll know who to contact up front. Want new members? As we get more and more going on with the group, more and more people will be visiting the VistaBits site. So as tech people begin looking for user groups, e.g., in a new home city, there you'll be--on at least 3 different websites that have excellent search engine visibility. Hey...it can't hurt. As a member of the CASEWWW group, your user group's events, including monthly meetings, will show up on our events calendars on both the VistaBits and CASEWWW websites. Finally, there's the question of more exposure for your local speakers. While there's no real give-away here, we hope you'll tell your people who want to speak at other groups' meetings and other events to join our speakers roster. That will help give them the exposure they're looking for. So what does it cost you to be in the CASEWWW Group? We ask that your user-group page carry two pages you probably don't have right now. A "links page" where you place a copy of our link-exchange page. This will need to be updated about once a month, but we'll have it set up so you can logon to our members' "Private Sector" area, visit the LE page, copy it, and paste it into your web page--the entire thing should cost you less than 5 minutes to accomplish. The "other new" page where you place a copy of our press-release page. Again, this will need to be updated about once a month, but we'll have it set up so you can logon to our members' "Private Sector" area, visit the LE page, copy it, and paste it into your web page--the entire thing should cost you less than 5 minutes to accomplish. We also ask that you place your group's events on our events pages. At first we'll do it for you--you just mail us your meeting notice and we'll add it to our events calendar. Later, we're going to put up a page where the members of our group will be asked to enter their own events. Finally, we ask all our members to pay a $25/year membership fee--that helps us pay the expenses involved in maintaining and running the group's server, placing "stuff" on the web pages, etc. We will make an exception for your group, however, if: Your user group's website plainly states that there is no fee to be a member or each member pays $30 or less per year to be a member and Your user group's website shows no outside sponsorship and/or You assure us the group has no money, and is strictly a no-money-involved club/group. That's because we know how many free or practically free user groups there are and we want you to be part of our efforts. We're also familiar with some groups that have a thousand members and sponsorship from some very large companies...they can easily afford to pay $25/year to help us defray our costs. We're just trying to be fair to all. To keep costs lower and avoid duplication of efforts, we run the private and administrative sections on our website at  www.ITSBITS.com If you're ready to join the group (and pay $25 annual dues), please,   click here. If you'd like to join the group, and you meet our little-or-no-money requirements,  email us  and let's discuss the possibilities. You can also just contact us anytime:   click here for more information. -- Back To Top of This Page -- ITSBITS® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as the property of IHS, Incorporated.