I run the Windows User Group in Ireland. It’s been a great resource, learning a lot about a variety of technologies in the Windows world. We haven’t stuck to just Windows. Our typical Windows engineer needs to know a lot more, e.g. how to manage the network and provide business solutions. So we’ve run events on virtualisation, Exchange, OCS, etc. Our next event is even on OpsMgr 2007 R2.
Talking to other user group leads from other countries, we in Ireland have been lucky. The DPE team in MS Ireland has been very involved with our local user groups: helping to find speakers, funding events, providing meeting locations.
You don’t need to be local. Ireland may be small but transport is difficult thanks to an 18th century transport system. So we went online with a LiveMeeting account that we were given by Culminis. That allows us to do physical/virtual conferences. Some user groups are 100% online – there’s a successful online PowerShell group.
This video talks about starting a user group and getting some help: