The initial question is: would you attend a weekly (or monthly) virtual brown-bag lunch if I put one together.

The idea is that we would start each session with a short collection of interesting links, tips and tricks, or connect issues, and then have a presentation or discussion or script club or open-mic session, depending on interest.

Basically, this is meant to flow, on a week-to-week basis, from script-club to formal user group presentations.

Some weeks we would have presenters from various local user groups share content they had prepared for their local groups. We would encourage you to take ownership of this time, request topics, and prepare presentations (no matter how short).

Some weeks we would have an open-format script club using our private pastebin, IRC channel, and LiveMeeting voice chat. This time could vary from real-world problem solving to scripting games and “project Euler”-style challenges.

Some weeks we would have open-mic time and solicit feedback for the PowerShell team from anyone who cared to give it. I would make an effort to make sure I wasn’t the only MVP there, so you could feel that even if there wasn’t a Microsoft employee present on a given day, your voice could be heard when you make suggestions or vent frustrations …

The point is: the format would vary a bit, and we would adjust it over time to fit whatever works the best within our virtual meeting and time constraints.

So, what do you think? Are you interested?

It’s open to any PowerShell user groups or script clubs. If you’re running a PowerShell user group and want simple web-hosting with:

• top-of-the-site billing for your group (with a url like http://powershellgroup.org/rochester-ny )
• group signups
• events, calendars and event signups (including sending out RSVP emails to your group), and email reminders of events
• a semi-private group section for posting notices, wiki pages, etc.

• optional twitter notification for your posts

Just let me know who you are after you sign up on the site, and I can set you up with “group administrator” rights.

Also, if you have your own web hosting for your user group, but would like to be listed on our site, we can handle that too

This is old news and new news … but I figured it’s about time I break it on my blog, since it was mostly my doing (and since my Northeast Developer Evangelist Jim O’Neil already mentioned it on his blog).

We have created an official Virtual PowerShell Group (official, in the sense that it’s recognized by Microsoft’s User Group Support Services out of the unofficial #PowerShell channel on irc.freenode.net and have created a website to support it including a page where you can join us online via web-based chat any time you like.

Of course, this isn’t exactly headline news: The #PowerShell IRC channel has been around for years and has always been helpful and polite. What’s new is that we are officially a User Group, and have swag to give away (more on that later)! We’re hoping that this will help some of you justify joining us, and using IRC as a resource for your PowerShell learning and for those sticky questions!

And now, on with the show. On an almost completely unrelated note, I’ve been talking to Jeffrey Hicks, a fellow PowerShell MVP from Syracuse about starting a Microsoft PowerShell user group this fall … and we’ve finally got all our ducks in a row and are ready to announce it.

Our kickoff meeting will be 9/9/9 (Wednesday, September 9th) at 6pm, at the New Horizons training center in Henrietta.

The main agenda for the first meeting will be planning and organization, but time-permitting, we will also have an overview/introduction of PowerShell 2.0 which was approved for RTM yesterday and will ship preinstalled in Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 (which, in case you haven’t heard, will be available on MSDN and TechNet on August 6th, and at retail on October 22nd).

Please forward this post, and a link to the temporary user group website to any Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse developers, administrators, scripters, or mailing lists that you think would be interested … and please RSVP to upnypug@gmail.com if you’re planning on coming, so we can get an idea how many people to expect

New Horizons Computer Learning Center

New Horizons, Rochester is at 50 Methodist Hill Drive, Suite 50. It’s the first driveway on Methodist Hill Drive if you come off of West Henrietta Road (between Calkins and Lehigh Station). New Horizons is at the end of the building closest to West Henrietta Road (right where that cluster of three cars is).

Please join us on Live Meeting!

Particularly if you’re interested alternate PowerShell consoles, because not only will I be presenting my (PoshConsole), but Idera will be there to show off their latest commercial console and script editor PowerShell Plus Professional.

I’ll also be presenting some information about the PowerShell Script Repository, and about my Windows (GUI) Automation Snapin for PowerShell (WASP), and Nathan Winters will be discussing managing Exchange with PowerShell, so there’s sure to be something for everyone I’d love to see more people at this event than usual, despite the repeated rescheduling, to encourage Marco Shaw (the user group organizer). After all, it’s free!

It’s tomorrow December 4th, at noon Eastern. (2008/12/04 12:00:00 PM -05:00)

Note: this is not a rescheduling of my much longer presentation about PowerShell at my local Visual Developers user group (which is coming up on December 17th), and doesn’t cover any of that content.

Also, the PowerShell Community is running a survey about the possibility of a PowerShell convention, and what you’re interested in seeing at one… it’ll just take a moment