Re: Did ITJungle say Common was a waste of time?

There was a lot more going on at Common than just the Town Hall meeting.
I would agree the open mike period had a few good points made within
an extreme amount of repetitive blathering. Many in the hall were disgusted
with our side of the meeting.
I did get a lot of value from this Common, and found IBMer's more

or better than previous. The facilities in Minneapolis were great.

were added to v5r4 and read Mike Cain's (IBM) whitepaper.

Jim Franz

To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, April 03, 2006 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: Did ITJungle say Common was a waste of time?

COMMON is a user advocacy group.  Whether or not it is successful in
that endeavor depends upon whether or not one's own issues are being
addressed.


Among other things COMMON has re-instated the Requirements process.
Actually, re-invented would be a better description since on the old
model one had to attend the conference to enter a requirement.  I think
that has been removed.  In fact, if I heard (and remembered) correctly,
even non-COMMON members can enter them.


I attended the Town Hall meeting last week.  I got ticked off and left
after the 10th person during "open mike" griped out "changing the
name."  Once was more than enough, plus it was addressed *before* the
"open mike".  My point here being that this was a great venue to say
something useful to Mark Shearer that was mostly wasted.


* Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
voice
615.995.7024
fax
615.995.1201
email
jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Steve Richter wrote:

Is, should COMMON be a user advocacy group?

from http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh032706-story01.html

"...As I prepare to fly out to Minneapolis to attend yet another
COMMON iSeries user group meeting, I find myself pondering how iSeries
shops could bring their collective weight to bear on IBM to compel it
to behave in ways that the user community desires. Because the iSeries
does not have direct competition, IBM doesn't price and package the
iSeries in a way that many of us believe it ought to so it can compete
against Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms. While IBM has a large
customer advisory council, COMMON, and regional user groups all
feeding in requirements and offering advice to Big Blue on how to
improve the iSeries, that is not the same thing as having the power to
actually compel IBM to change its behavior. ..."

"... Like many people in the OS/400 community, if I have an argument
at all, it is almost never with IBM's Rochester labs, where the OS/400
platform is created and manufactured, but rather with IBM's Somers
offices, where the marketing and sales plans are hatched and where the
pricing and packaging decisions are made. Getting Rochester to listen
is easy, since the techies aim to please. Getting Somers to listen is
hard, since the marketeers aim to make as much money in the shortest
term with the least possible amount effort. They do this because
that's what marketeers at public companies do.  ..."

--

This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L) mailing list

To post a message email: MIDRANGE-L@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: http://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/midrange-l
or email: MIDRANGE-L-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at http://archive.midrange.com/midrange-l.