So what is Community?
A couple of days ago, Vlad put up quite a post about the loss of community: http://www.vladville.com/2007/06/why-are-we-losing-these-great-community-resources.html and perhaps a seepage of skills out of the community.
Interesting, and I see where he's going with it. This leakage can be stopped, but it takes involvement and commitment. With kids out of school, and the summer heat, it can be real difficult to get out and contribute to the community. But let's make it a point to participate in the next couple of months, if not for the community, then for your business. There's an upcoming DFW-SBS users group meeting next Thursday @ Microsoft, in Irving. We'll be having a business meeting @ 5:00 pm, Dinner around 6:30 pm, and technical content @ 7:00 pm. The technical content will be provided by Stephanie Doakes from Microsoft and she'll be discussing Systems Center Essentials.
Other upcoming opportunities include the SBSC Symposium the day before WPC in Denver, Microsoft Across America (including TS2) in early August in San Antonio and Corpus Christi (we did Corpus last summer it was GREAT), as well as events in Little Rock, AR on June 28th, and more. There are also online events to attend. Practically weekly, Charlie Ramirez hosts events on Wednesday mornings (8:00am). That's just some of it, there's also content and events on various Yahoo groups, there's a Sharpoint User Group here in DFW, and a ton of other ways to get plugged-in-to the community. And let's be clear, the SBS Community is all over the world. Through the technology we are intrinsically linked from Ireland to Indonesia to Indiana. It occurs to me that bridges I cross have been crossed before somewhere, by someone, and will be crossed again somewhere by someone. That's when I look for support, and why I actively participate in Users Groups, Yahoo Groups, Open Source Communities, and Newsgroups.
There's so much opportunity to plug-in, so get involved. Post a blog, ask a question on a forum, answer a question, send Vlad a suggestion about Shockey Monkey, on second thought, post a feature request on support.ownwebnow.com. Call a competitor and go to lunch or have a coffee, talk shop.