Why Join a LabVIEW User Group?

Users of all levels benefit from the opportunities that user groups offer.

LabVIEW user groups provide the opportunity to grow your LabVIEW expertise by interacting with others. Many users take advantage of resources in the LabVIEW community such as LabVIEW Zone, and OpenG. While these online resources are useful for providing technical content such as articles and example VIs, they lack face-to-face interactions with other LabVIEW users. LabVIEW user groups fill this need.

To fully benefit from other members of the LabVIEW community, join a LabVIEW user group. These groups of users meet regularly to discuss various LabVIEW techniques, technologies, application design patterns, and more.

Benefits

Participating in LabVIEW user group meetings provides numerous benefits, including the following:

• Learn from Each Other -- Each person in the group possesses expertise in some area of LabVIEW development. Take advantage of their experiences while sharing your own.
• Create a Local Network -- Make important contacts with whom you can share ideas and new approaches or just call with a question. Many user group attendees have found new clients or jobs or created other side projects with people they met during a user group meeting.
• Become a Focal Point in the Community -- User groups can quickly become the center of the LabVIEW community within the local area. When an NI engineer or developer comes to an area, they often stop by to present and discuss the latest topics and features with the user group. Additionally, they look for feedback from these groups of users.
• Meet Similar People -- User groups are a great way to find others in your area who have your same type of work and have similar interests.
• Enhance Your Skills -- User groups are one of the best ways to improve your own development skills. Seeing presentations, participating in discussions, and sharing code are just a few of the ways to improve your own LabVIEW expertise.
• Become a Local Expert -- When someone is looking for the local experts, they often want to attend a user group or seek someone else who does. Also, if your colleagues know you attend user group meetings, they consider you the resident expert.
• Round out Your Leadership Skills -- Give your own LabVIEW presentations at user group meetings to share your knowledge, develop your presentation skills, and enhance your leadership abilities.

How to Join

The first step to joining is to locate the user group nearest you using the LabVIEW Zone User Groups  list. You can visit some of the user group Web sites or browse the user group database. Email the contact for a group to find the next meeting, then just show up! After you attend a number of meetings, you might want to become more involved with the LabVIEW community. This is a great opportunity for you to give your own user group presentation. Talk with your group to decide on a topic, then research and develop the presentation. You quickly learn that teaching others is the best way to learn more yourself. By presenting to the user group and sharing your expertise, you continue to establish yourself as a LabVIEW expert.

See Also:
LabVIEW Zone User Groups

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