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Special Report: The State of OS/400 User Groups, Part 4 by Alex Woodie Three years ago, the relationship between COMMON and local OS/400 user groups left something to be desired. Leaders in the user group community say COMMON was difficult to talk to, showed little respect for their operations, and wouldn't think twice about scheduling conferences that conflicted with user group activities. Then things began to change, and today user group leaders are starting to praise COMMON for its new user group programs.
COMMON is, of course, the largest group of OS/400 users in the world, an international, nonprofit organization that boasts a membership of more than 23,000 people. Like the local OS/400 user groups, COMMON's primary goal is education. The semi-annual COMMON conferences feature more than 800 technical and non-technical sessions and attract about 3,000 people. A good way to conceptualize COMMON's relationship with the more 95 OS/400 user groups in the country is to put it into terms everybody can understand: If COMMON is the major league baseball team--The Show--the numerous user groups are the minor leagues--the farm system. This analogy holds when you consider that some of the best and the brightest OS/400 educators often start their public careers presenting at local user groups and eventually find they can reach the widest audience if they teach at COMMON. Sometimes, when you're running The Show, it can be tempting to think you're king of the mountain, and that pretty much sums up the attitude that COMMON's leadership showed user groups several years ago, said Don Rima, an iSeries consultant, president of the Washington Area Midrange user group, and an advocate of all user groups through his E-server User Groups Web site. The unfortunate message that COMMON was giving to the user groups was, "We're big COMMON; we do what we want," Rima said. The relationship was an adversarial one, and there was little communication between COMMON and the user groups. Then, at a COMMON conference in 1999, things began changing, and both sides started to make stronger efforts to work together and build each other's organization. "Was the relationship cultivated from both sides?" Rima asked rhetorically. "Three years ago, no. Now, it's really, really improved. Things are looking up nicely." Recent moves by COMMON indicate that the group is making strides to share with the user groups the resources they need to keep their education efforts and their organizations viable in an increasingly difficult user group environment. Here's a rundown on the three most visible new projects that show COMMON is reaching out to OS/400 user groups:
The ideas for the Speakers Bureau, and for opening up COMMON's contact database, came from the user groups, most of which have seen participation steadily decline over the years and struggle to recruit quality speakers to monthly meetings and the occasional mini-conference. The fact that COMMON is sharing this valuable data with the user group community says much about the national user group's commitment to maintaining a solid grassroots base of AS/400 and iSeries users. It's a smart move. After all, does a major league baseball team that doesn't cultivate its farm system have a hope at all of getting to the World Series? Within COMMON, the person credited with driving much of the improvement in user group relations is COMMON president Charlie Massoglia. "Charlie is very pro user group," said Pete Massiello, a COMMON board member and the president of OS Solutions International, a Connecticut software vendor. "He's cognizant of the relationship and improving what we both offer." Likewise, Massiello and Rima have also worked hard to build the new relationship. The syndicated "COMMON Corner" newsletter is a good example of improving relations, said Massiello, who is also the president of his local user group, Fairfield AS/400 Users Group. "We were dying for stuff for our newsletters, and [COMMON's] marketing said, 'We can do this.'" From COMMON's point of view, helping to sustain user groups by sharing valuable information is beneficial for a couple of reasons. First, in order to benefit from the information that COMMON is offering, a user group must first become what is called a "member user group." To become a member user group, a user group must pay COMMON a fee (currently $395 per year), and in return all of the members of that user group automatically become members of COMMON and are eligible for other discounts. There is little hard information on the subject, but several industry sources estimate that probably about two-thirds of the 95 or so user groups in the country are also COMMON member user groups. If COMMON can collect more fees like this, it wouldn't have to raise conference rates quite as often. The collaboration between COMMON and user groups also helps to boost the educational offerings of both parties. By opening up the barriers between COMMON and the user group community as a whole, the hope is that more ideas about education will flow between them, improving the price and quality of the education for both parties, Massiello said. There appears to be little doubt in Rima's mind that user groups and COMMON are getting more out of each other, and that the realization that they have very similar goals is driving them together. "If we do it separately, we both lose. If we do it together, we both win," he said. At the recent COMMON conference, in Nashville, Rima hosted a meeting of OS/400 user groups. At every conference, the user groups get together to compare notes and address the COMMON leadership, but what pleased Rima so much about this one was that 55 representatives from user groups across the country attended the meeting--the most ever. "I was happier than a pig in slop," he said. Now what Rima would like to see--and what appears to be the direction in which COMMON and the user groups are inevitably headed--is to bring OS/400 software vendors more into the fold. Many user groups and COMMON have historically discouraged software vendors from giving sessions or presenting at meetings because they feared the companies would favor their own products or make a sales pitch. However, the knowledge and potential education harnessed in software vendors may be too great a resource to ignore anymore. "They [COMMON] are beginning to realize there are synergies here. They're moving in the right direction," Rima said. "There's always room for improvement, but things are moving forward very nicely."
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