Before we begin, we should mention that the words "au revoir" in the title are used in their literal sense of "until we meet again," and not in the high-school French sense of "goodbye." As you read this, hopefully the reason for that distinction will become apparent to you.
COMMON's 50th anniversary meeting will be held in Orlando this coming May, but despite having volunteered as speakers and in other capacities at every conference since 1988, this time we won't be there.
There are many reasons for this, one of them of course being financial, but in the end the financial aspects were secondary, merely the catalyst that caused us to re-examine our involvement with the organization. We first wrote about the planned changes at COMMON back in May of this year and have been wrestling with the situation ever since.
Had it not been for the need to examine our participation from a financial perspective, we would probably have continued on autopilot, delivering sessions along with our other volunteer duties, as we've done every time a COMMON conference rolled around. Being forced to think about whether we could afford to do that next year also caused us to think about why we were doing it in the first place and whether the time, money and energy we've been donating to COMMON represent the best way for us to help the community.
This weekend we found ourselves at the moment of truth, wrestling with the decision to either accept or decline our sessions that had been selected for the spring conference. We concluded that we still wanted to support the idea of COMMON, but increasingly it became apparent that the COMMON we wanted to support was an idealized organization that existed only in our minds. We had hoped the old COMMON could return and we worked with many other volunteers to make that a reality, but for whatever reasons COMMON's direction seems to be set. For the time being we'll remain members of COMMON and hope that things will change.
This doesn't mean we'll be giving up working with and for the IBM i community. We plan instead to take the time, energy and money we would have spent participating in the Orlando COMMON conference and steer it toward other IBM i community efforts. We haven't made any final decisions on that, but we're looking at our options.
For example, there are many wonderful local IBM i User Groups that still work hard for members and are struggling because they don't have cash reserves to carry them through the rough economic times like these. Because we support their efforts, we've always given User Groups a discount off of our standard rates. As a first step in our new approach, we've further reduced our rates for LUGs that we've worked with regularly over the years. Obviously, we can't afford to spend all of our time doing work for little or no pay, but we do now have a few days we won't be donating to COMMON.
We'll also be working more with the Young i Professionals. Now there's an energetic group that's doing really useful things for the community! And you can stop giggling--we know we don't qualify as "young," but we're both proud to be considered honorary members of the group and intend to do more with it in the future. We also hope to do more in terms of providing online resources through our own Web site and through System i Developer.
We also intend to put some of the cash that a trip to COMMON in 2010 would have cost us to work supporting the iManifest efforts here in North America. This is one of the efforts we had hoped COMMON might use its influence and position to support, so it seems an appropriate alternative use for the money.
COMMON's 50th anniversary meeting will be held in Orlando this coming May, but despite having volunteered as speakers and in other capacities at every conference since 1988, this time we won't be there.
There are many reasons for this, one of them of course being financial, but in the end the financial aspects were secondary, merely the catalyst that caused us to re-examine our involvement with the organization. We first wrote about the planned changes at COMMON back in May of this year and have been wrestling with the situation ever since.
Had it not been for the need to examine our participation from a financial perspective, we would probably have continued on autopilot, delivering sessions along with our other volunteer duties, as we've done every time a COMMON conference rolled around. Being forced to think about whether we could afford to do that next year also caused us to think about why we were doing it in the first place and whether the time, money and energy we've been donating to COMMON represent the best way for us to help the community.
This weekend we found ourselves at the moment of truth, wrestling with the decision to either accept or decline our sessions that had been selected for the spring conference. We concluded that we still wanted to support the idea of COMMON, but increasingly it became apparent that the COMMON we wanted to support was an idealized organization that existed only in our minds. We had hoped the old COMMON could return and we worked with many other volunteers to make that a reality, but for whatever reasons COMMON's direction seems to be set. For the time being we'll remain members of COMMON and hope that things will change.
This doesn't mean we'll be giving up working with and for the IBM i community. We plan instead to take the time, energy and money we would have spent participating in the Orlando COMMON conference and steer it toward other IBM i community efforts. We haven't made any final decisions on that, but we're looking at our options.
For example, there are many wonderful local IBM i User Groups that still work hard for members and are struggling because they don't have cash reserves to carry them through the rough economic times like these. Because we support their efforts, we've always given User Groups a discount off of our standard rates. As a first step in our new approach, we've further reduced our rates for LUGs that we've worked with regularly over the years. Obviously, we can't afford to spend all of our time doing work for little or no pay, but we do now have a few days we won't be donating to COMMON.
We'll also be working more with the Young i Professionals. Now there's an energetic group that's doing really useful things for the community! And you can stop giggling--we know we don't qualify as "young," but we're both proud to be considered honorary members of the group and intend to do more with it in the future. We also hope to do more in terms of providing online resources through our own Web site and through System i Developer.
We also intend to put some of the cash that a trip to COMMON in 2010 would have cost us to work supporting the iManifest efforts here in North America. This is one of the efforts we had hoped COMMON might use its influence and position to support, so it seems an appropriate alternative use for the money.
We can't tell you how sad it makes us to be writing this. We firmly believe in the concept of User Groups, and feel that a national-level user group has a major role to play. We hope things may change and if so, we look forward to returning some day in the future to an organization more like the COMMON that exists in our minds.
To the many, many friends we have made at COMMON over the years: THANK YOU. Hopefully we'll find ways to meet and work together again in the future.
Jon & Susan,
One of the other blogs I follow came up with this entry today: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/11/the-why-imperative.html
Similar I think, to what you said. If I get to attend COMMON in spring, I'll miss seeing you, but also understand.
BTW, I would have never blinked at Susan being part of the YIPs, Jon -- a different story. :>)
Dave B
Posted by: Dave B | November 10, 2009 at 10:07 AM
Dave B: Jon's a kid at heart.
Posted by: david | November 10, 2009 at 10:23 AM
Jon and Susan,
Without the British wit and the Irish wit, I'll be stuck with the Half-wit!
Truly Au Revoir as I am optimistic we will see an evolution in COMMON that will bring things back into alignment.
You two are too valuable to lose and I wish you nothing but success!
Welcome to iManifest!
Mike
Posted by: Mike Pavlak | November 10, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Jon and Susan, your work with LUGs is both legendary and much appreciated. I'm glad to see that LUGs are still in your priority list.
As we grow here in the Tennessee Valley Users Group (www.tvmug.info), I look forward to being able to invite you for a visit to Chattanooga in the near future.
All the best....and thanks for the past.
DR2
Posted by: Don Rima | November 10, 2009 at 11:45 AM
Jon & Susan,
You will definitely be missed at COMMON. Certainly, I will miss the sessions and the jocular banter in between. Hopefully the "old" COMMON will be back very soon and we'll see you both there again.
In the meantime, we at iManifest are thrilled to have you and Susan join us.
- Jeff
Posted by: Jeff Olen | November 10, 2009 at 11:58 AM
I will miss you also. My sentiments are very similar as I only signed up for 1 session this year vs. the 6 to 7 I was planning before the COMMON-neglects-speakers announcement.
Has COMMON released any additional press on their direction other than what we received a couple months ago?
Posted by: Aaron Bartell | November 10, 2009 at 04:15 PM
This is truly a tantalizing post. By that, I mean that's interesting, and it whets your appetite for more information.
Posted by: Scott Klement | November 10, 2009 at 08:24 PM
Scott, I agree with you that this is quite interesting because to me it is a formal declaration for a change in direction as it relates to educating. Jon/Susan, it sounds like there was more to the decision than just the lack of speaker compensation (as you mentioned). Is there anything you can share without stepping on too many toes?
What do people think the next generation of IT training looks like? Being that I travel 8 to 10 times a year, I tend to like the local or virtual training methods, though I know that face-time is often king when it comes to really becoming enthused about a topic.
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
Posted by: Aaron Bartell | November 11, 2009 at 08:03 AM
Jon & Susan, you'll be missed at COMMON, but their loss is someone else's gain (as it always is). I look forward to seeing (more of) you at other conferences and on the Web.
Posted by: Jon Juracich | November 11, 2009 at 08:12 AM
I join the chorus in saying you will be missed. Glad there are still lots of venues where you can share your knowledge and experience. You have a special way of bonding with your audience, whether it be YiP kind of folks or good ol' RPG III veterans. I too would like to see a vision of where you would like to see COMMON go.
Posted by: Merrikay Lee | November 11, 2009 at 08:59 AM
Jon and Susan,
Both of you have been very inspiring and I really took the what I learned at COMMON '08 in your sessions and revolutionized my ideas on what I can do with iSeries development. You will be missed.
Finances are finances and you have to make ends meet and be financially sound in these times. No one can afford any losses. I applaud you for doing what is right.
I too am concerned about COMMON and over all about the i - Community. I appreciate all the time that you two commit to helping us in the trenches everyday do our jobs better and really be craftsman with our skills.
Thanks also to Aaron Bartell and Scott Klemment if you are reading. We got to stick together.
- Mike Moegling
Posted by: Mike Moegling | November 11, 2009 at 04:29 PM
You could say that the organization has come to treat its speakers with unCOMMON disregard...
Posted by: Ken | November 12, 2009 at 07:23 AM
Scott said: "By that, I mean that's interesting, and it whets your appetite for more information."
Aaron said: "Jon/Susan, it sounds like there was more to the decision than just the lack of speaker compensation ..."
Since these two posts seem to ask the same question ...
I think in the various posts we referenced (as well as this blog) we covered most of the points.
It started off being a financial consideration - or so we thought. Could we afford the extra $2,000+ in a tight economy for very little personal benefit. We hoped that COMMON might review their decision - they didn't. We hoped the market would turn round - it didn't. So we had to look long and hard at whether we should continue to do it.
(I always found it amusing that attendees at COMMON always assumed that all the speakers were being paid)
When we actually thought about it (as opposed to running on auto-pilot and just anteing up because it was time for COMMON again) we came to the realization that if we attended we would be significantly out-of-pocket in order to support something that we no longer believed was fulfilling its mission.
Simply put (from my perspective - Susan may not agree with me) - COMMON today is focused solely on existing because it exists. It doesn't know _why_ it should continue to exist, or whether it has a real role in life. It has taken on the characteristics of a life-form, intent on fighting for its survival just for the sake of it. As a result, in its desperation, it has developed a nasty tendency to attack its biggest supporters.
As to the future of the organization - Personally I have said many times that I believe that one route forward for COMMON is to convert to a trade organization (it long ago ceased to a User Group in anything other than name)--i.e., representing the vendors in the marketplace. Let the vendors vote for the board (the voting for which
has been badly broken for years) and run the main conference as a trade show. Maybe that trade show travels and occurs three/four times a year - maybe in partnership with other conference organizers or User
Group consortiums - or ... Alongside the trade show maybe run a real User Group event offering low-cost education. COMMON's real role would be as the vendor's trade organization - thereby giving vendors a real voice with IBM that most of them lack right now.
Hope this clarifies a bit.
Posted by: Jon Paris | November 12, 2009 at 07:47 AM
Jon & Susan,
I agree with you completely. I myself am taking a similar road. I hope we meet along the way.
Posted by: Ron N | November 13, 2009 at 10:01 AM
Jon and Susan,
it is really sad not to meet you next year at Orlando. Even though I understand attitude.In either way I'll miss you next year in Orlando.
It is even harder for us. Since IBM decided to no longer send any speakers to the European COMMON Conferences on Country Level. The last years there were several speakers from Rochester and/or Toronto, such as Alison Butterill, George Farr, Claus Weiss or Jarek Miszyzk and not to forget Frank Solits, who told us the latest news and the further plans. This year nobody will be sent from there! We'll only get some general summaries from IBM. Even though there are several really good speakers here in Germany, nobody is as close as the IBMer's or you (Jon and Susan) to the development in Toronto and Rochester.
In this way several of us decided to participate in the USA COMMON Conference next year to get more information and better education than here in Germany.
The German COMMON Conference will take place tomorrow on Monday/Tuesday November 16th/17th 2009. This year I'll expect even less participants than last year, which was IIRC the smallest number of participants a German COMMON Conference ever had.
BTW even though I'll held several sessions at this German COMMON Conference, I'll get any money for it, but have to pay 250 € (the reduced attendee fee for speakers) instead.
I feel, COMMON will get weaker and weaker until it will be disappeared all over the world.
... and with it will IBM i(Series) and RPG disapear?
Birgitta
Posted by: Birgitta Hauser | November 15, 2009 at 09:53 AM
Jon and Susan, you guys talked about the "old" COMMON. I'd like to hear what is your definition of the "old" COMMON.
ps: I know you guys have been very supported of the system i as I see it too.
Posted by: Robert Arce | November 18, 2009 at 12:22 PM