I was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the Northwest Oracle Users Group (NWOUG). My official title is: membership coordinator, which means that I will be responsible for monitoring and maintaining the NWOUG membership database, answer members’ questions, send out email communications and follow-up on expired memberships, among other things. And, to bring it to the web 2.0 age, I have created the NWOUG mix group and wiki page.
Being a member of an Oracle users group can be useful. For example, NWOUG:
- organizes free lunch-and-learn sessions.
- organizes a yearly conference.
- prints and publishes a journal with news, information and technical articles.
- provides discounts for members on training and such; The latest is $250 off of the regular price of the PSOUG 10 day DBA Boot Camp training.
But, other than the things I mentioned above, what is the added value of joining an Oracle users group? especially with the abundance of freely available information on the Web. Whenever I think about it, I always come back to the same conclusion. I believe that the most value of being a member of a users group are the people you meet during these group events, the face to face interaction, the referrals and experience sharing.
It’s that socializing and communicating with people, who share the same interests as yours, what makes joining a users group in general, and an Oracle one in particular, worthwhile. Don’t you agree? What users group are you a member of? What do you think a users group should do to justify its existence and value to its members?
Possibly related:
- Use DBMS_METADATA to write DDL
- ATTENTION bloggers
- Infinite Scrolling at OraNA.info and New Oracle Bloggers Group
- Oracle OpenWorld Flickr Group
- Oracle’s V$ views
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There is a group on coldfusioncommunity.org as well:
December 13th, 2007, at 6:24 am #http://www.coldfusioncommunity.org/xn/detail/1439641:Group:13566
Hi Eddie,
Forgive me for asking, but I’m always leary of regional user groups since I found out that the Southeast Oracle users group was in reality a for-profit “front” for a corporation to make profits!
Is everyone a volunteer?
Does anyone get money from the for services to your group?
December 13th, 2007, at 6:53 am #@Nick: Thanks for the link. It’s good to know there is a CF community site in general and a CF Oracle group in particular.
@Don: thanks for your questions. This gives me the opportunity to clarify a couple of things. The NWOUG is not for-profit. Its board of directors is a group of volunteers. Board members do not get paid for serving on the board or for any other services they provide to the UG. Like myself, they are driven by passion to serve the Oracle community.
December 13th, 2007, at 8:27 am #I’ve been a big fan of user groups since forever (early ’80s DECUS, actually), but I have seen some local groups go through a life cycle. Some wind up getting commercialized, especially when dominated by a particular large sponsor, some go off into lalaland and become Agile advocates, some grow and prosper, some die.
I think the key to growth and prosperity is to have a core group of enthusiasts willing to take on the job, willing to donate time and do whatever is necessary to keep things going in the right direction. When done right, everyone gets back more than they put in, just like successful blogs or usenet groups. Tom Kyte mentioned on his blog one time how to get him to speak at a group - ask him!
Different people learn in different ways, and the different ways reinforce each other. The presentations and intragroup interaction supports online learning.
In a practical vein, busy DBA’s may not have time to do anything at work, but they may be able to take off to a group if there is an easy justification to management - very cost effective training sure doesn’t hurt. Personally, I find that the simple change of environment makes learning “not-work!”
A well-organized website for a group can be helpful too.
I like the LAOUG, even though I’ve been too busy to hit up the last few meetings. LA freeways don’t help
December 13th, 2007, at 4:44 pm #@joel: Very good comments, thanks.
By the way, Tom Kyte will be the keynote speaker during the upcoming NWOUG fall conference in Portland, Oregon on August 26, 2008.
December 13th, 2007, at 11:01 pm #@Eddie: good luck with your user group activities.
In answer to your question about what most people seem to get out of it, from my experience in Australia, networking is the top benefit mentioned. Seems to be a common theme that people like meeting people who are interested in the same thing.
As for the other comments here regards user groups in general, these groups are fraught with politics, pain in the butt personalities, agenda seeking organisations etc etc etc. But so what? The biggest threat to the great benefits of user groups is nah-sayers. Nothing gets done without someone throwing in effort.
Couple hints I’ll give you regards running a user group:
1) Delegate delegate delegate. Avoid burning yourself out. You’ll do a much better job long term and still be happy with what you’re doing.
2) Work to promote enthusiasm on your user group committee continuously. Find the people who are keen and work with them really hard to get things done.
3) (as follow on) Those who put in opinions and actually do something about it are worth every penny. Committees are fraught with people who are all opinions and complaints, but never do anything. Recognize early on who your talent and dedicated team members are.
4) Start looking for a number of potential successors now, and have a long term strategy of building them up for the job.
Good luck. It’s great learning opportunity and once you’re out of it, you’ll really appreciate what you’ve done. And the best bit, you might be earning big $$$$ in the Oracle arena as a money grabbing consultant (humour for anyone misreading this statement), but at least you’re putting something back into the community for nothing…. that’s a pretty special commitment. Well done.
Enjoy your Christmas and New Years mate!
CM.
December 21st, 2007, at 6:42 pm #@Chris: Thanks for the tips mate. I appreciate it. Happy Holidays!
December 26th, 2007, at 4:23 pm #