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This week, the Hewlett-Packard user community comes together at the HP Technology Forum & Expo, which is being held in Las Vegas. It's the first meeting of HP users since three of the largest user groups—Encompass, HP-Interex EMEA, and ITUG—merged earlier this year into a single 50,000-member strong organization called Connect.
Nina Buik, who was president of Encompass, was chosen to lead the combined group.
Buik, who is a senior vice president at MindIQ—an IT training company that specialize in Oracle, Solaris, Linux, and a number of HP technologies including HP-UX and OpenVMS—has been involved in the HP user community for almost two decades.
She spoke recently with CIOZone Chief Content Officer John McCormick. This is an edited version of their conversation.
CIOZone: What motivated the groups to combine into one organization?
Buik: It actually started out with some dialogue last year between the leaders of the three groups around collaborating on certain activities and creating some efficiencies. We started talking about doing a joint event.
We thought it would be great to expose members of one group to the technologies the other groups focused on. We started the planning process and we realized there needed to be some governess around that. From there it went to putting together exploratory committees to see about bringing the three groups together.
Fast forward to January, and we brought all three boards together, presented the work of the exploratory committees, voted, and it was unanimous that everyone wanted to consolidate the organizations. Then we put it out to the membership for a vote.
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CIOZone: One other independent HP group, Vivid, did not join Connect. Why?
Buik: I can't answer why. Certainly, we approached them and had lots of discussion. I just don't think they were in a place where they were ready to join. But, you know, as far as we're concerned, we created a flexible model, and they're a great community, and we will continue to work with them. Hopefully one day they'll want to join us.
CIOZone: Of the groups that did merge, what did they feel they could do together, as Connect, that you couldn't do as independents?
Buik: That we could take the best from each of the groups—what was really working well for each of them. For example, Encompass had monthly Web casts. ITUG had a newsletter. We were able to pull from each of the groups, wash away our sins, and start something new.
CIOZone: When you say "wash away our sins," what do you mean?
Buik: Well, there were some things in the groups that may have been antiquated, like older by-laws. We needed a rethink some things to make sure we could attract a younger demographic and ensure that we had a viable and sustainable model that would work for many years to come.
CIOZone: Has Connect done anything yet?
Buik: Out of the gate we launched a social-networking site, much like a Facebook or MySpace, but it's specifically for HP technologists.
We have online special interest groups where people who might be interested in migration, or might be interested in NonStop, OpenVMS, or the different HP technologies, can find a place to get content and to share ideas—but most of all to find each other.
The way it's set up, you are mapped to people who match your profile.
So someone in Lincoln, Nebraska, might find that someone in Stuttgart, Germany, matches their profile. And then they can share best practices and ideas and, hopefully, meet at a conference.
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