The main purpose in holding it in Atlanta was to have it at the Infor
facility where the developers could be available. If it is not held at
Infor, the location is irrelevant.
I want to second this. Phil mentioned a booking rate for the room that we used
this time, and I think that would be the obvious choice of locations. It would
be hard to overestimate the value of having the guys who are writing this
software being in the room during a discussion. I think that making it easy
for XA developers to be involved will be key to the continued success of this
endeavor, and in my opinion far outweighs any time gained by meeting closer to
the airport.
Speaking of successes, I just want to echo some of the thoughts expressed by
the email quoted in Steve's first message
"Just to let you know the conference this past week was great..."
I got excellent information from other customers (including some who didn't
formally present). Additionally, about half of the presentation time was taken
by Infor developers who gave what I thought was invaluable information about
the inner workings of their products. When I arrived I knew that XA has some
performance issues. By the time I left I knew why XA has performance issues,
and how to begin to address them. That's just one of many examples of
information and ideas that I would not have otherwise been exposed to.
In order to make this group a continuing success, I think we should work on
focusing customer presentations on what the group wants to learn about. My
thought is that the more self-sufficient we can be the more successful the
group will be. Additionally we will be more likely to receive a high level of
cooperation and contribution from the Infor development staff if we are taking
some of the burden off of them to educate the user base.
To this end, I think we should set up a web interface that encourages active
feedback from the group. I don't mind working on this if there is some
interest. Maybe we could get this started with some sort of a wiki to begin
with? I would also like to see some kind of a voting system that would let
users indicate preferences easily and in a way that is measurable. Any
thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks again to everyone who made this first meeting such a smashing success.
Josh
midrange.com
