We started off our end of year meeting with our standard networking meet and greet. It’s going smoother, people are getting to know each other and so also are getting back at making new people feel welcome. Nothing special, just asking everyone to try to meet anyone new, and to talk to people they haven’t talked to recently.  About 20 people present.

From there Jack Corbett took over as MC, using the chapter deck that PASS sends out each month to get things started. Jack, Kendall, and myself were the only ones present that went to the 2009 Summit, we each took a couple minutes to talk about our experiences – and all agreed that the people aspect of it really made the event more interesting and more compelling. It was interesting for me to watch Jack and Kendal talk about it, one time at the Summit and they are the best spokes people we could ask for – just honestly enthusiastic. Jack plugged the discount rate for the 2010 Summit, and Kendal talked about going on a minimal budget. Good stuff.

Jack also discussed that for 2010 we’re finally going to move to monthly meetings. We’ve been bi-monthly for over two years since re-launching, and that has worked well, keeps the pressure to find speakers down and also doesn’t feel like a chore…yet, we think it’s hurt our growth by not being more metronomic. It’s one of the great changes coming from Jack being co-Prez. We’re still going to focus on in person speakers, but we do expect to use Live Meeting to supplement, so we’ll be out learning the hard lessons on that probably at the January meeting. As far as not making it a chore, we’ll see how that turns out!

Pizza arrived at 6:45, so we took a break for food and more chat, finally getting started right at 7 pm. Our featured speaker was Gus Gwynne from Tampa (GSquared on SSC), doing a presentation on auditing/logging. Presentation went pretty well, you can tell Gus does this stuff and gets the range of options available (check www.opass.org for the deck in the next day or two). He drove up from Tampa, many thanks to Gus for making that long drive!

We stayed after the meeting officially ended for about another hour, talking a range of issues from managers not knowing what employees have accomplished to more discussion of the soon to be launched South Orlando PASS Chapter. As I’ve said before the after meeting discussions are often the best part, and tonight was no exception.