October 2010
User groups not going anywhere, SUGEN says
If you’re still worried about the future of users’ groups, even after seeing how long some have already survived, perhaps this will reassure you. The SAP User-Group Executive Network (SUGEN) announced in September the results of a survey that shows people crave user groups more than ever.The survey population consisted of SAP BusinessObjects users worldwide. The German software corporation has been active since 1972 and is currently the largest software company worldwide. There has been a recent push for more user group interaction by customers. The America’s SAP Users’ Group was founded in 1990, and SUGEN was founded in 2007 to improve communications between international and local groups. The recent survey was designed to further enhance user group relations. Among other things, the results showed that SAP customers still have a strong interest in interacting with user groups, and find them indispensable for expanding their knowledge of the software and its capabilities. (more…)
A primer for the Consumer Electronics Show
Everybody loves a road trip. That’s one of the reasons that the annual Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas every January since 1978, is so popular. Another is the exclusive clientele. Since the show is closed to the public, you’d better be a celebrity, an industry professional, or a member of the press if you want to get in.The January show is now the only CES of the year, but between 1978 and 1994 there was also a summer show in Chicago. Before that, the CES was held in New York since 1967. In the more than forty years since its inception, CES has provided the world with its first glimpses at notable new pieces of technology, including: (more…)
A look at APCUG
“It’s a hard world for little things,” Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) said in the 1955 film The Night of the Hunter. That holds true for little users’ groups as well. In fact, t would be difficult for many local groups to have access to the resources and technology that they do without the guiding hand of APCUG, the Association of Personal Computer User Groups.APCUG traces its roots back to the First Annual User Group Summit in 1986, which was the first step towards enhancing communication between groups nationwide. The organization itself, however, wasn’t made official until the 1987 meeting. (more…)