I have decided that I love user group meetings, and I want to go to more, so please invite me to yours...

Last week Dave Giordano of TSG invited me to attend and speak at the Documentum Mid West User Group meeting in Chicago, and a fine time was had by all.  In fact I have been to quite a few user group meetings over the years both here in the US and in Europe -- and they are quite simply invaluable.  For those of you using or contemplating using software from one of the larger vendors out there I would advise you to check these local groups out. If you are on a limited budget, make sure you prioritize such groups over the yearly vendor fests that are typically held (at great expense) in warm and glamorous locations.  

At user group meetings you get the Real Story, you talk to your peers.  Whereas at the vendor's own annual event, you endure hours of sales pitches, and ecstatic announcements of new bells and whistles to come in the next release.  Of course few people really care that much about the next release; they care about getting value from the release they currently use, typically some version well behind the latest.

In this regard the meeting last Friday in Chicago was typical - the talk was mainly about EDMS, DQL and WebTop, with nary a mention of Web 2.0 and REST.  Sobering and valuable stuff. And where else than a User Group meeting would you get a quote like this one?  "We are mainly paper-based, except for the Word files the users have to create the paper with"... a classic!