Re: Short survey

[Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Many if not all of these events were in existence during the heyday of COMMON when they were drawing 3 - 4,000 folks. So no - I don't think the number of events has anything to do with it - more in a moment. In that time period IBM Tech Conf ran two or three times a year - was a lot more expensive than COMMON and still drew around 1,000 each time. Also in the same period DevCon was running - in fact this is the first year after 13 (?) years that it won't run.

IBM Tech Conf is no longer IBM i specific and in fact last time I looked had very little IBM i RPG-type content and very few non-IBM speakers except perhaps those that have something to sell.

Over the years TUGs numbers have shrunk, so have NEUGC, Ocean, WMCPA and most other IBM i oriented events. There are many, many reasons. But judging from the fact that numbers are slowly coming back (or at least stabilizing) I have to believe that the economy played a major role.

I could actually make the argument that the more IBM i events there are the more the market expands. For example - when we survey attendees at the RPG & DB2 Summit, very few have ever attended COMMON. We no longer ask the question, but at one time I would say that 50% or more were saying that they had never even heard of it. Given the amount of free publicity that COMMON gets that is a surprising (alarming?) fact. For too many RPG shops eduction is just not important. They go merrily on their way coding the way their grandpa did and all is well in their world until the new broom sweeps in at the top of the IT group.

We (Summit) have seen an upswing in registrations for this conference - I hope that will be the start of a trend.


On 2013-09-09, at 5:02 PM, "John Allen" <jallen@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Back in the day when there was a larger attendance were all
> the other conferences in existence (Tug, IBM Technical,
> NEUGC, Ocean, RPG DB2 etc. etc. )?
> Maybe all these smaller conferences end up taking away from
> the larger one.
>
>
> John
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Cunningham [mailto:mike.cunningham@xxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Monday, September 09, 2013 3:35 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
> Subject: Short survey
>
> Who's at COMMON.
> Who's not.
> If not, why not.
>
> I was able to send someone for the first time in 3 years and
> he reported back that attendance was not want it once was.
> --
> 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.
>
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3222/6649 - Release
> Date: 09/09/13
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
> Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
> Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3222/6649 - Release
> Date: 09/09/13
>
> -- 
> 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.

Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com