Only One COMMON Per Year? ISVs and Users Respond

by Mary Lou Roberts

Although nothing has been officially announced, everyone's talking about the likelihood that COMMON may pull back to having only one user conference a year--a significant change from the two-conference format that has been its custom for many years. Neither COMMON nor IBM has much to say on the subject. But it is something that a lot of people have been talking about for some time, particularly since the economy weakened in the wake of the dot-com bust and travel became a concern since 9/11.

IBM user group relations liaison Sandy Cureton declined to comment. However, Beverly Russell, COMMON president, acknowledges that the discussion is on the table. "The frequency of COMMON conferences is only one component of the larger picture, which is ensuring that the composite of COMMON product and service offerings meets the needs of the iSeries community," she explained. COMMON, says Russell, is currently engaged in a market analysis of both members and non-members in the iSeries community in an attempt to gain a better understanding of attitudes, motivators, and benefits sought. "As part of the strategic planning process, COMMON is discussing the merits and feasibility of various business models, including the one-conference-per-year model, in order that COMMON will remain a vibrant and relevant organization for at least the next 40 years," she says.

Many factors may drive the ultimate decision. Declining conference enrollments. Fewer vendors shelling out the big bucks required to participate in the Expo and, by extension, underwrite part of the conference itself. The tightening of the budgets of companies willing to pay travel and lodging for staff whose workload is simultaneously increasing and who can less and less afford to spend time away from the office.

The answer may also lie in the fact that there are fewer and fewer people interested in investing in education that supports only legacy systems, and those who are "modernizing" their applications (read "move to Java") or are moving to Linux and/or open source have other and perhaps better venues to get the training they need.

What do the users and ISVs think? As usual, opinion is mixed.

PowerTech's chief technology officer, John Earl, is also a member of the COMMON board of directors, but he would reply to the question only as a member of the user group--not in any official capacity. "I think a number of members recognize that COMMON is probably better suited to one conference a year. There are a number of iSeries events every year and only COMMON and the IBM technical conference try to hold two a year. I suspect that if you drilled into it, you would find that, with the exception of people who are volunteering at the conference, most members only pay for one conference a year, so the economic impact on COMMON would be quite positive."

Earl recalls that Al Zollar, the prior general manager of the iSeries line at IBM, had the idea for a gathering of the iSeries crowd. "Do it once a year and make it such a big and exciting event that no one would even consider missing it," Earl recalls of the Zollar plan. "I'd like to see that vision realized. There is much that COMMON, IBM, and other iSeries vendors could do to create a once-a-year, must-attend event. COMMON could lead the charge on that front and ensure that it was an open event that served all iSeries customers and was not just a product exposition."

Nigel Fortlage, vice president of information technology for GHY International, who will not be able to attend the upcoming COMMON in Orlando, Florida in September, also believes that hosting one conference a year is a very good idea. "We can really only squeeze in one a year," he says. "I don't attend COMMON to learn everything I need to know about the iSeries in one week. I go to find out what directions people are going and what I need to learn. There may even be a residual benefit from a once-a-year COMMON format: they may see a supplemental increase in education subscriptions."

Mike Warkentin, IBM alliance manager for DataMirror, supports the idea of a once-a-year format, believing that there is usually too little that is new within a six-month period to keep attendees coming to both. "Once a year is enough for my educational purposes. And, for companies that are exhibiting, once a year with a guarantee of more attendees at the Expo would give a greater return on investment." Warkentin also believes that COMMON should improve its site scheduling. "This year made no sense. Chicago in the spring. It was still basically winter--at least that's what it felt like. And Orlando in September, which is hurricane season, was not smart."

From a vendor perspective, Martin Pladgeman, president of BOSaNOVA, calculates that one show a year makes more sense. "The attendance has been declining for years, and one event may be more worthwhile for us."

LANSA president John Siniscal agrees. "Once a year would be preferable. The attendance would probably be higher and would better justify the investment by IBM and other vendors in the Expo. Twice a year seems too frequent. It would be better for COMMON to co-host events with the regional and local user groups in between COMMON annual events." Siniscal adds his opinion that COMMON should become more active in supporting the local user groups, since they reach more members of the iSeries community and touch them more frequently.

Pete Elliot, director of marketing for Key Information Systems, also agrees that one conference a year would be better. He also suggests that COMMON "lock in one location, like Chicago. Don't move it around. Chicago is in the middle of the country and is in the middle of the marketplace."

ASNA marketing executive John Ball believes that "a single annual meeting reflects the reality of the market. Attendance at the recent European COMMON was dismal. A single, annual event, coupled with important changes to the venue and purpose, might encourage ASNA to attend a future event."

"COMMON creates a good focal point for the iSeries community," says Simon O'Sullivan, director of sales for Maximum Availability. "Scaling the event back to run on an annual basis does have its merits as there are a number of major industry events that come up on the calendar, and most organizations can get rather stretched trying to cover the bases. It's quality and not so much the quantity that we look for."

To that end, Claire Stafford, North American account manager for CCSS USA, offers a suggestion: "If IBM Tech Conference and COMMON could get together and merge their strengths and push of the weaknesses, scheduling one show for the spring and one for the fall would bring out the crowds."

"I'm of two minds on the issue," says Steve Rosen, EXTOL's vice president of marketing. "From a business development and sales lead point of view, two events yields twice the number of names and opportunities we generate from the COMMON membership. However, I believe that trying to conduct two successful events each year is more than the infrastructure can support. I suggest a single, large spring event with a university curriculum online to deliver the education and certification component; that means less travel, less time, same content. Four or five TUG/LUG and workshop programs would fill in with the face-to-face issues."

Angela Doolittle, iSeries product manager for ACOM Solutions, also has mixed emotions. The audience would probably be larger at one conference per year, she says, provided that the price was still the same for the attendees. Doolittle also observes that the audience today seems to be getting smaller and smaller. "We at ACOM used to send all of our developers, half to each show. But the classes started turning into 'ads' for IBM instead of educational offerings. The only benefit they seemed to get out of it were the labs at the end of the week. So we don't send anyone other than our booth crew anymore. It's a shame really. Going only once a year would be good for our expenses, but other than that, the exposure at two shows is good for our company. I think it might have a negative impact on the COMMON organization in that they would be giving in to losing attendees instead of trying to remedy the situation by offering new and exciting learning alternatives."

Despite the fact that the majority of the iSeries community seems to support the idea of having only one conference per year, there are some compelling arguments in favor of sticking to the bi-annual schedule.

John Matelski, chief security officer and deputy chief information officer for the City of Orlando [Florida], regrets that he will be unable to attend this year, especially since it's being held in his own back yard. Unfortunately, this year's COMMON is in direct conflict with Oracle's Open World Conference and, as an Oracle customer who has taken on a number of user group-related roles, he must be there. This is one of the reasons he has favored the two-conference-a-year schedule. "I like having the flexibility to choose between options, based on timing and locale, as to which COMMON conference to attend," he explains. "However, due to tight budgets, we are typically only able to attend one of them. This year is a good example of why having options is a good thing. Having two conferences that tend to be smaller than one larger one allows networking and collaboration opportunities to be highlighted."

Al Barsa, president of Barsa Consulting, opposes the suggestion that COMMON may pull back to one conference per year. "Doing so would make the IBM Technical Conference the dominant conference in the industry, and that wouldn't be good. At the Tech Conference, you're told the Gospel According to IBM. At COMMON, you're told the truth because the users who attend COMMON don't have to toe the IBM line. If you talk to users, you will get the truth. If you go to the Tech Conference, all you hear is IBMers reading from a script."

Barsa uses as an example the i5's Hardware Management Console and the user complaints about it that came out in the Town Hall Meeting at COMMON last year. Without user input from the floor, IBM would have said that the HMC was excellent, Barsa maintains. However, the candid (and sometimes irate) comments from the users made any such claim an impossibility. Instead, IBM had to stand front and center to explain what the problems were and what they were going to do about them. (Barsa does note that today, "The HMC has gotten a lot better, although performance is still not optimal.")

Given the tragic circumstances now unfolding in the southern Gulf Coast states as a result of hurricane Katrina, the one-conference-a-year question may possibly be moot for 2006. As conditions in New Orleans, the city slated for the April, 2006 COMMON seem to worsen, it seems hard to imagine that that wonderful city and its inhabitants who are experiencing so much pain and loss will be ready to receive visitors.

"We are in the process of assessing the situation, which is unfolding daily, and exploring contingency options, should they be necessary for next April's conference," explained Russell. "It is really too soon to know what the outcome will be, but we are closely following the developments."

Earl expresses feelings about the plight of the citizens of New Orleans that we all share. "My heart goes out to the people of New Orleans, and I know that many of us are making charitable donations to their cause. That's what we should be thinking about now. In time, we'll have to evaluate whether New Orleans is capable of hosting the conference. If they are, then we ought to honor the existing contract and do our part to help them on their path to rebuild. If they aren't, then the new COMMON board will have to figure out what the right thing for COMMON is."

Ultimately, the scheduling of COMMON conferences and, indeed, the face of COMMON itself as a user group, will depend on the fate of the platform. The days are probably past when "iSeries" and "OS/400" will automatically go hand in hand. How much education RPG programmers will need to support their applications will depend, over time, on how many new applications are being developed by end users in RPG to run atop i5/OS. Right now, regardless of the experts and diehards who (correctly) argue the value and efficiency of RPG as a development language for business applications and others who see the value of the iSeries running Java or acting in hybrid .NET-RPG-DB2/400 applications, IBM seems to be fighting a holding maneuver, trying to reconnect with a vast user base that has been largely ignored. It is hard to say if COMMON or the iSeries business at IBM are each other's leading or lagging indicators, but one thing is for sure: They are unavoidably linked. When one grows, the other most likely will, too. The converse is also true, of course, but many in the OS/400 community are nonetheless hopeful that the iSeries and COMMON can grow.

Mary Lou Roberts, a 35-year veteran of the information systems industry, is a new contributor to IT Jungle. In addition to her work as a reporter in the iSeries space, she has spent her career as a marketing and communications professional working exclusively with information technology publications and companies. She can be reached at WriterNewf@aol.com.