COMMON: What to do?

[Don <dr2@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think David discontinued the COMMON@xxxxxxxxxxxx listserver, so David,
if you want this moved please suggest a venu.

There's been several good questions and concerns posted today.

Clearly COMMON needs to regroup.  What I would suggest immediately is 3
items:

1.  Reduce the number of sessions/tracks to a more "core" curriculum.
Also, allow for the scheduling of BOF's and non-core sessions BEFORE
conference.  This will allow BOF's and non-core sessions to be part of the
overall session agenda, thus allowing for people to more properly schedule
their time.   And, that these sessions be held in the evening time slots
after 5pm.  The rooms are already paid for, but definately under used.
And,  if there's enough iterest, the sessions will fill as is appropriate.
Further, I think they should allow for sessions in the CUDs environment.
The historical concern here is alcohol leaving a controled venu.  SO,
broaden the size of the controled space and allow for some meeting rooms
within the control space.  I'm looking for more space utilization here.

2.  Reduce the conference to once a year until such time as market demand
says the market is ready for twice a year again.  I would HOPE this is a
short term stop gap.  It should also give Chicago, the CBOD and committees
time to regroup overall.  But, frankly, I don't see where the market place
is proving enough critical mass for 2 conferences a year.  And, since IBM
won't let Malcolm do interesting things like play his video vignettes on
prime time TV,or do any other major marketing endeavors,  I don't see
overall market perception and acception of OS/400 based solutions changing
their current declining trend.  Notice I said OS/400...NOT iSeries.
You'll find out why next spring.

3.  Diversify thier offerings withing the OS/400 based marketspace.
COMMON is a hardware/developers niche conference that's OS/400 centric.
They can't goto other O/S's as all the rest of the popular (IBM)
environment already have their "COMMON"...and Windows and linux/unix have
more than enough already.  COMMON needs to immediately and actively appeal
to the vendor space to bring THEIR user group community as an inclusion in
the conference experience.  This was amply detailed in the CBOD/CMC
presentation I did in Baltimore.   Face it folks, the fact is that one of
the biggest reasons folks are leaving the OS/400 environment is that they
don't feel they can find affordable, state of the art, software for their
applications that's OS/400 centric.  By bolstering the user community and
the OS/developers community, some serious synergy potentials exist.

Now, it's time for my kid's bath...:)

Don in DC