Re: The relevance of COMMON

Bruce,

Well, we agree and we disagree (comments follow)...

In a message dated 9/1/00 7:51:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
bacollins@twitchellcorp.com writes:

> How many COMMON conferences have you attended? Have you volunteered to help
>  COMMON? If you do not take an active part in the organization then please 
do
>  not criticize it. This list is wonderful and if you did attend COMMON you
>  could put faces to some of the names on this list. COMMON is where you can
>  meet people, talk to the developers and build friendships. You can go and
>  talk to vendors on the exhibit floor and get ideas of how the hardware or
>  software could enhance your company and your skills. The have many hands on
>  labs and sessions with excellent speakers. You get out of it what you put 
in
>  it.   IMHO

I hear that "you get out of it what you put into it" talk all the time at 
COMMON --  Bravo Sierra.  Conferences _USED_ to be that way.  Meeting Al 
Barsa and various members of the lists hosted at midrange.com have been the 
biggest benefits of attending COMMON for me over the past several years.  
Let's face it, if your company is paying in excess of 3K USD for you to 
attend a conference, doing anything other than after hours work is stealing 
from your company.  If you're _fully_ involved and attending pertinent BOF's, 
you don't even have after hours time.  The best you can do is key session 
evaluation sheets during hours when no interesting (or nothing but repeat) 
classes are all that are available.

Talk to the developers?  You'll get more positive response here.  Build 
friendships?  A few, but mostly business cards with numbers that have "been 
disconnected or are no longer in service".  Talk to vendors on the exhibit 
floor and get a better idea of how their hardware or software can enhance my 
company or my skills?  No, but I can get more junk faxes, e-mail, and s-mail 
than I can shake a stick at.

Labs are good.  People like Susan and Jon teach them.  Labs are mostly 
populated by people who participate because they want to, not because they 
wish to gain something.  A former member of this list generally takes care of 
the hardware at the labs.  Some of the other sessions (mostly given by list 
members) are good as well.  Most of the other presentations are touting some 
service or product from a vendor (yet _WE_ can't hand out business cards 
under the laughable "Code of Ethics").  Speakers are generally outstanding if 
not from a vendor, but just try to hold a vendor's speeches to the actions of 
their company...

>  P.S. David is a champ for hosting this list and it does cost him money to
>  run it. I you would like to send him gold bullion I do not think he would
>  turn it down.

Agreed 200%.  Write to david@midrange.com to find out how to donate to this 
list.  Just estimate the amount of money you've saved with it over the past 
year...

JMHO,

Dean Asmussen
Enterprise Systems Consulting, Inc.
Fuquay-Varina, NC  USA
E-mail:  DAsmussen@aol.com

"If you're arguing with your 14 year old over how she's raising her children, 
you shouldn't be allowed to vote." -- Anonymous
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