DevCon was great thread

With all due respect to Zak Metz, et. al, you are taking what I feel is 
the wrong approach when you talk about throwing out your COMMON membership 
renewal forms. There has been a healthy discussion going on in the COMMON 
discussion thread about various "opportunities", and one of the volunteers 
made the following comment that speaks directly to the point of where to 
look for education:

"Membership  and conference attendance have become all confused, too. Do 
you belong to COMMON  or do you go to conferences? Is there some value in 
the collective beyond the  information gleaned in sessions? Is COMMON all 
about education, or is there also  value in a collective influence on the 
industry, the vendors, and the culture?  But this is a subject for another 
conversation." 

Let us never forget that first and foremost, COMMON is an IBM midrange 
systems user's group dedicated to sharing knowledge amongst its members. 
Remember that each and every attendee becomes a member. Currently, there 
are over 20,000 members. COMMON is a not for profit entity. Are any of the 
other conferences? Despite some false starts, COMMON has worked to assist 
local user groups to remain viable and to prosper. If you haven't been to 
your local user group meeting lately, get off you duff and network with 
your peers. If you don't have a local user group, talk with Glenn Ericson 
or Don Rima, and they'll help you. These guys are first class.

I've been around COMMON for 23 1/2 years now, and I've been a volunteer 
for 22 1/2. A lot of the COMMON bashing being done on this list is 
justified, but a bigger percentage is not. Before you can say one negative 
word about COMMON, you need to EARN the right by actually being one of the 
people that makes these conferences happen. Only when you are part of this 
"family" can you start spouting off. Joe talks about disagreements, etc. 
for his departure from COMMON. Hell, I used to quit every 6 months about 
one thing or another. I came real close to punching out the president 
once. The thing is, though, that these people are my friends and we get 
past the problems and disagreements. Where else can you establish such a 
good relationship with an IBM developer that he or she will give you their 
home phone number, and not be pissed off when you call them with a problem 
at 10 PM on a Friday night? Don't laugh, I've done it. COMMON, warts and 
all, is still the best bang for the buck. To paraphrase American Express' 
motto: COMMON membership has its rewards.

Come back, Joe. We need you.

Paul Nelson
Arbor Solutions, Inc.
708-670-6978  Cell
pnelson@xxxxxxxxxx

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of 
others are often stiffened." ~~ Billy Graham