I'm often asked, "I'm not comfortable, experienced, or knowledgeable enough to do a presentation. How can I help the Gateway JUG other than doing presentations?"

Here's your chance. The Gateway JUG is forming a standing committee to manage membership recruitment.

For purposes of targeting prospective members, assume the Java experience scale runs from 0 - 9:

• 0 = A complete Java newbie
  
• 1 - 3 = Beginning Java Developer
  
• 4 - 6 = Intermediate Java Developer
  
• 7 - 9 = Advanced Java Developer
  

This committee will focus on recruiting professional and aspiring professional developers interested in learning practical Java skills. To better align with our presentations, this committee will target prospective members in the 0 - 6 range of Java skills. However, the 0th level prospects will be Java newbies coming from other languages, not people unfamiliar with programming in general. Examples of these prospects include .NET developers, RPG/COBOL developers, and C/C++ developers.

The 5 - 7 members of this committee should be professional developers interested in growing Gateway JUG membership and participation. To get started, I will chair this committee, but anticipate a new committee chairperson will be selected once the committee is staffed and stable.

The committee will provide the following deliverables:

• An annual marketing plan. The first plan will cover marketing efforts to start in November 2007 through December 2008. In September of each year, the committee will formulate the next year's marketing plan.
  
• A quarterly review and revision report. At the start of each quarter, the committee will review the next quarter's planned marketing efforts and revise the plan based on past results.
  
• This committee will be provided with an operating budget for its meetings and marketing implementation.
  

I anticipate the first meeting of this committee will be late the third week of September depending on individual schedules. A forum will be dedicated for this committee's use, so much of this committee's work can be done online.

If you'd like to volunteer and give back a little to the group, please contact me directly at president@gatewayjug.org.