Although I cannot prove it or even measure it, I believe that Richard Campbell is the most famous speaker we have ever had at the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (aka GANG).

This is quite a claim, as GANG has been around for ten years and numerous excellent speakers have presented here.

Richard spends a large percentage of time traveling the world and speaking at major technical conferences; he has written books and magazine articles; and he is the co-founder of an Internet company. But he is most famous as a podcaster. Richard is the co-host of .NET Rocks, RunAs Radio, and Mondays; and a regular guest on Hanselminutes.

The reason I pursued Mr. Campbell for our user group is because he is an excellent storyteller and because he can speak on a wide range of topics: from software to hardware to networking infrastructure to fine scotch whiskey to barbecue to the history of Nepal. Share a glass of scotch with Mr. Campbell one evening and you are bound to learn something.

In September, Richard traveled to Michigan to speak at three user groups in the area: Tuesday at the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group in Toledo, OH; Wednesday at the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (GANG) in Southfield, MI; and Thursday at the Greater Lansing .NET User Group (GLUGNET) in Okemos, MI. The GLUGNET group moved to Okemos from its usual home in East Lansing in order to accommodate the larger crowd that Richard drew.

I attended all three presentations - each a variation on his "Scaling ASP.NET Applications" talk. At each venue, the audience was impressed and engaged. The questions were many and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Following the Wednesday and Thursday evening meetings, we headed to a local pub, followed by many admirers who wanted to ask more questions of Richard. I lost some sleep this week but gained some knowledge about web site scaling and an appreciation for how much a good speaker can do for a development community.

All in all, this was one of the most successful user group tours we have ever had around here.