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In the mid 2002, soon after he moved to Sacramento
from the silicon valley, Manoj Keechilot was looking for ways
to network and associate with business and technology professionals.
He soon realized that there were not many forums in Sacramento
for software professionals, especially for the emerging .Net.
Things did not change much in the next two years, even though
the MSDN meetings on .Net conducted in the Sacramento area were
attended by a large number of software professionals. It was
time a .Net group became functional in Sacramento.
A Yahoo group, SacDnug started in March 2004 immediately gained
membership within a few days. Microsoft was very much interested
in a .Net user group in Sacramento and Mark Hammond, who was
the community evangelist at that time offered help. UC Davis
Extension offered to sponsor meeting space for one year. The
kick off event was scheduled for April 27 2004 with Mark
Hammond as a speaker. Work on building a .Net website at
sacdnug.com began. The name of the group was later changed to
sacnetug.org. Microsoft's evangelists Nima
Dilmaghani and Anand
Iyer greatly helped to further grow the group.
In the mean time, Chris Bilson
who was also in the process of starting a .Net user group heard
about SacDnug. He offered to drop his efforts and help SacDnug.
Later Maria Martinez joined the team who also helped the group
tremendously.
With the help of a dedicated team of volunteers,
advisors, an enthusiastic professional community and generous
corporate sponsorships, SacDotNet today is one of the well functioned
organizations in Sacramento.
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