Christine,

Please stop saying lies or speaking about things you do not have a clue
about. You have never been on the Board, you have been invited quite a few
times, and you were not on the conference calls, nor in the exchange between
the Board members.

Thanks.

On the subject of conferences, the bigger it is, the most expensive it is.

When you have a users group lunch, it is basically free, when the
WAIUG/SEIUG do a regional conference, price is about $100, but they have a
huge crowd of volunteers to help them, then when you organise things like
IOD or IDUG, you have more costs, because you can not rely only on
volunteers...

jgp

> -----Original Message-----
> From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-
> bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of elanleblanc@yahoo.com
> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 00:25
> To: informix-list@iiug.org
> Subject: Re: Insider #75: Highlights: IBM Information On Demand 2006,The
> Next Informix IDS Release...
>
> TBP wrote:
> > Can people pay for the number of "days" they attend?
> > Can people get "half days"?
> >
> > Would you have got 4 times the number of people if the price was 500
> > Euros? Would it have been better to just get the people in at 500 Euros?
> >
> > Still, a bit late now huh
>
> It would appear that no one is listening. IBM looks to the IIUG Board
> of Directors for guidance on the needs and desires of the community.
> The community has been clear on the issue of conferences since day 1.
> Yet, I don't recall the IIUG BoD taking these issues to IBM. On the
> other hand, IBM is a major sponsor of the IIUG (the trips to various
> venues for the BoD to meet and a myriad of justifiable, necessary
> expenses IBM quite rightly also foots); yet the IIUG BoD provides
> little support for IBM in promoting it's conferences. Such as in this
> Insider where the BoD finally deigned to mention IBM's upcoming IOD
> conference in Anaheim. They managed to do so without even mentioning
> there would be Informix content and by referring to DB2 yet again.
> They also failed to mention that this conference was designed to
> eliminate many (not all) of the Informix communities issues with past
> conferences.
>
> Perhaps if the BoD would push the community agenda and needs with IBM
> instead of it's own and support IBM's initiatives to support Informix
> (not the idiotic ones, of course), perhaps IBM would find a way to
> sponsor the types of conferences that would work for the community at
> large.
>
> In the meantime, I hope to see many of you in Washington, D.C.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Informix-list mailing list
> Informix-list@iiug.org
> http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list

Several key things here JGP.

Why is it up to the IIUG to market Informix? That is what you are implying.

Why is there no major application announcement regarding the use of Informix?

Why is there no momentum with this product?

Why isn't IBM putting some money into events and the product marketing?

It appears that this next release is doomed to another misfire in the market
from incompetence at every turn.

Jean Georges Perrin wrote:
> Christine,
>
> Please stop saying lies or speaking about things you do not have a clue
> about. You have never been on the Board, you have been invited quite a few
> times, and you were not on the conference calls, nor in the exchange between
> the Board members.
>
> Thanks.
>
> On the subject of conferences, the bigger it is, the most expensive it is.
>
> When you have a users group lunch, it is basically free, when the
> WAIUG/SEIUG do a regional conference, price is about $100, but they have a
> huge crowd of volunteers to help them, then when you organise things like
> IOD or IDUG, you have more costs, because you can not rely only on
> volunteers...
>
> jgp
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-
>> bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of elanleblanc@yahoo.com
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 03, 2006 00:25
>> To: informix-list@iiug.org
>> Subject: Re: Insider #75: Highlights: IBM Information On Demand 2006,The
>> Next Informix IDS Release...
>>
>> TBP wrote:
>>> Can people pay for the number of "days" they attend?
>>> Can people get "half days"?
>>>
>>> Would you have got 4 times the number of people if the price was 500
>>> Euros? Would it have been better to just get the people in at 500 Euros?
>>>
>>> Still, a bit late now huh
>> It would appear that no one is listening. IBM looks to the IIUG Board
>> of Directors for guidance on the needs and desires of the community.
>> The community has been clear on the issue of conferences since day 1.
>> Yet, I don't recall the IIUG BoD taking these issues to IBM. On the
>> other hand, IBM is a major sponsor of the IIUG (the trips to various
>> venues for the BoD to meet and a myriad of justifiable, necessary
>> expenses IBM quite rightly also foots); yet the IIUG BoD provides
>> little support for IBM in promoting it's conferences. Such as in this
>> Insider where the BoD finally deigned to mention IBM's upcoming IOD
>> conference in Anaheim. They managed to do so without even mentioning
>> there would be Informix content and by referring to DB2 yet again.
>> They also failed to mention that this conference was designed to
>> eliminate many (not all) of the Informix communities issues with past
>> conferences.
>>
>> Perhaps if the BoD would push the community agenda and needs with IBM
>> instead of it's own and support IBM's initiatives to support Informix
>> (not the idiotic ones, of course), perhaps IBM would find a way to
>> sponsor the types of conferences that would work for the community at
>> large.
>>
>> In the meantime, I hope to see many of you in Washington, D.C.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Informix-list mailing list
>> Informix-list@iiug.org
>> http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list
>

malcolm weallans said:

> The challenge we all face is how to persuade the powers that be that we
> are
> making a good investment by paying for somebody to attend a conference.
>
> What are the benefits of the conference compared with the cost of
> attendance?
>
> The benefits are that you get to sit though lots of presentations which
> might be relevant to your job function. (I would defy anybody to convince
> me that all marketing presentations are that relevant to the audience but
> that's the cynic in me speaking). From my experience of attending many
> worldwide user conferences, local user group conferences, and Infobahns
> the
> %age of relevant presentations is at most 40%, and is often much less.

Each conference is different, and it's only prudent to be very clear what
the business / technical value of the content will be. I would never
advocate ANYONE to sit down and pay to hear a marketing message, nor do I
believe that it's fair for anyone to ask you to pay to be sold at.

> Even the Chat With The Labs series of webcasts is becoming difficult to
> justify with so much time being spent on the marketing message and so
> little
> time on real technical issues.

Well, then, I think you should make your concern heard. I agree entirely
with what you are saying, and if the lab chat is turning into marketing
BS, then they are wasting your time.

> OK so you can take certification exams - big deal! What is that worth in
> reality.

Agreed 100%.

> OK so you can listen to some of the experienced people talking about the
> product - that is fine for the speakers but if all they do is to
> regurgitate
> information then it is not that beneficial.

Sometimes that can be useful too.

> OK so you can network with other users of the product.
>
> And what about the costs:-
>
> Generally a 5 day conference is now around $2000. The cost of travel and
> accommodation is roughly the same amount unless you are prepared to catch
> flights at ungodly hours and stay in ungodly hotels.
>
> There is also the question of the time away from work. Currently I am
> sold
> out to clients at a rate in excess of $1000 per day.
>
> So a five day conference is realistically going to cost in excess of
> $9000.

Yep.

> I did make enquiries about going to the conference in Vienna, and the
> upcoming one in Anaheim. I was told that if I wanted to attend the
> conference I could do so at my own expense and by using my holidays. I
> can
> see my wife's reaction if I tell her I'm taking a week off to attend an
> IBM
> conference and it's going to cost $9,000. (Those of you that know my wife
> can guess at her reaction). My only alternative is to publicise the name
> of
> my company by doing a presentation. (Wake up David Williams!) But so far
> I
> have submitted a possible presentation to three conferences and had them
> turned down. After all I wanted to talk about the realities of how to
> survive disaster recovery and outline some of the reasons why we have
> failed
> to recover from disasters with the promptness that a customer should
> expect.
> (It really is surprising how many things can go wrong when you try to
> recover - I can spend many hours talking it if you would all like)

And I think it's a pity you haven't had a chance, but keep trying, you may
be lucky some time.

<SNIP>

> The quality of the conference and the relevance of the conference to the
> attendees varies according to the type of organisation that runs it. If
> the
> conference is run by VARs it will be more relevant to people who work for
> VARs. If the conference is run by IBM then it will be more relevant to
> the
> people who work for IBM - and possibly to people who like hearing a
> sanitised message from the supplier. If the conference is run by a group
> of
> enthusiastic amateurs it won't have the same razzamatazz but it might be
> more worthwhile.

Ah! But what you REALLY need is the enthusiastic amateurs, and it seems
that Lester Knutsen seems to have a near-monopoly on those.

> We all have to make the choice and vote with our attendance. If we don't
> attend IBMs conferences they will still run them as some people within IBM
> have budgets to spend, but if we don't attend IDUG/IIUG or local user
> group
> meetings they will inevitably fold.

That is true. But think about the converse: if 100 people (or 100's of
people) attend the IIUG conference (or some other conference with
significant IBM impact), would that not send a stronger message to IBM
about the user community's regard for Informix than a million whingeing
posts on CDI?

> I don't think the BOD should be telling us to attend the IBM conference -
> although I have seen no publicity for it other than from IIUG - but we
> should really consider if the user organised conferences are what we need,
> and if they aren't then let's make them so. But one message I would send

Key phrase, there: if users feel that user organised conferences are what
users need, then users should stop being keyboard warriors and start
organising conferences.

> to
> the IIUG BOD is that any conferences in Europe are expensive for the
> average
> attendee. Unless the csts are reduced the benefit will be outweighed by
> the
> costs of attendance.

I can't disagree with you.

> So, that was my two pennorth - feel free to shoot me down in flames if you
> will.

"Ah am Jean-George, ze fighter pilot and ah alwez go down in flams!" )

--
Bye now,
Obnoxio

"... no bill is required as no value was provided."
-- Christine Normile

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