Finally there's a user group in west central NJ and the first speaker, Miguel Castro, knows his stuff. Hopefully we can sustain this group... apparently there are some good people involved (Scott Watermasysk being one of them). The first meeting is next Thursday February 9th... the topic is ASP.Net 2.0 features - a good place to start.
As an aside I'll mention there's another group that I was involved in, NJEVBUG, that has changed its name to NJDNADUG and has moved its attention toward architecture. Kent Brown has taken the reigns and has great vision for the group. Their next meeting is Monday February 13th with the topic being Generics. Now, I'm not sure if there's an architectural slant to this discussion but I do know Kent is actively polling current members for topic ideas - Enterprise Integration, best practice discussions, patterns, etc... so if you're interested hit the web site and send him some ideas. NJDNADUG is also an INETA member, meaning they'll get primo speakers a few times a year and free stuff!
And one more.... along the lines of NJDNADUG there is now something called the NYC Connected Systems User Group. Kent and some other .Net rock stars (Andrew Brust, Stephen Forte, and Bill Zack) got together and formed this group. Their mission statement says "uniting individuals in the greater NYC area interested in design, implementation, deployment, and support of Enterprise Integration solutions using the Microsoft Connected Systems product stack". The inaugural meeting for this group is Thursday Feb. 23rd at the NYC Microsoft offices.
Note to wife - will be home late Feb 9th, Feb 13th and Feb 23rd. Add the NYC Code Camp to that list and February is a busy month!