Hello everyone -

Yesterday, I attended an excellent 3/4 day meeting at our local BWRUG
(Baltimore Washington Regional Users Group).  It was on LAN switching
and gigabit eithernet vs. ATM.  Very helpful for our shop since we have
over 2000 PCs that connect to five HP3000s, seven HP9000s 13 Novell
Servers and our first NT server comming up really soon.

What I'm trying to say by that is we are not just an HP3000 shop and I
suspect that most of you are the same.

So what does this have to do with my subject, The future of RUGs?

Only 12 or so people atteneded this seminar.  Four were from my
organization.  Even though this makes for an interactive prentation, it
isn't good for longevity of the RUG.  Attendance has gone way down even
though we have had really good topics and speakers.  A couple of
meetings ago, George S. from HP (I don't want to misspell his name, you
all know who I mean) spoke.  I wasn't at that meeting but three or so
others from our organization were there including my boss.  He told me
that again, there was a very low turnout.

So do other RUGs have similar problems?  Or how has anyone gotten past
this hump?  I made the suggestion to Nick Demos (our RUG chairman) that
we might want to consider hooking up with the local HP9000 group if one
exists.  Considering we have more HP9000s in our shop than HP3000s (but
our HP3000s carry the lion share of applications), that would be
bennifical for us.

Nick told me about the RUG listserv that Interex provides and I plan on
subscribing.  I think that is a *really* good way to get the word out
about meetings and to get some instant feedback.

So any ideas?

/alan
Alan Ambers
Frederick County Government - IIS

p.s.  Thanks to Nick Demos, Suzanne Perez and Tom Benedict for getting
an excellent speaker.