RE: User group losses (was: Boise Idaho User Group?) -- MIDRANGE-L

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Actually our attendance at our UG meetings increases when you are more
technical and less general.  Fort Wayne IN used to have several UG's:
- the iSeries based STATUS
- DPMA (Data Processing Management Association)
- BDPA (Black Data Processing Association)
- and one other one I forget the name of
The only ones left is STATUS and BDPA
We have a joint meeting once a year.  Now that it's just between us and
BDPA the quality of the speakers has gone downhill.  Honestly I can't see
encouraging coworkers to go when BDPA lines up a headhunter to speak on
resume writing.

STATUS normally has 30-40 people at a meeting.  At the joint meeting maybe
8 people will attend from our group.  I would like them to dump the joint
meeting and have a more technical topic but I can't convince the rest of
the group.  And with the wife a little frazzled lately (3 preschoolers) I
won't run for the board.

Years ago our February meeting was more general than technical.  I really
enjoyed it however attendance was rock bottom so we changed to a technical
topic.

The last 3 years we've had a one day seminar to raise money for our
scholarship fund.  Top notch speakers.  This has been really popular.

Rob Berendt
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin




Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@commsoft.net>
Sent by: midrange-l-admin@midrange.com
06/04/2002 08:35 AM
Please respond to midrange-l


        To:     midrange-l@midrange.com
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        Subject:        RE: User group losses (was: Boise Idaho User Group?)


Don,
Thanks for the analysis... it was far better than my weak reply warranted.
My remarks at the end were strictly satirical, but how many times have we
heard the equivalent to "LPAR is the killer app."?  In the Linux world,
it's
the Beowulf cluster, for Microsoft, it's .NET.  Everybody's trying to
leverage their agenda in some way.

Have you seen the successful UGs try something similar?  Adopt a specific
theme rather than the broad "AS/400" banner?  Here in Albany, NY we don't
have a UG, and haven't for as long as I can recall, so I don't have any
personal experience in that area, but other "user group" organisations I
belong to have done just that - become more specific and less general.
Sure
you lose some members, but overall a group of 20 where 15 are active
participants seems better than a group of 50 where 20 are active.

The point being that if it's possible to isolate elements that make a UG
successful, it may be possible to spread the word to all the UGs... give
them something to try.
  --buck
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