Re: COMMON Virtual Conference

John,

There are so many myths propagated in this community, and I see you have
bought every one.

When you say "it has a reputation for high-cost membership, high-cost
events", you are helping propagate a strange myth. This years Annual
conference will cost you a standard rate of $1695. The recent IBM Power
Systems Technical University cost $1995. COMMON had 4 days of intense
education, PowerTechU had 5 days - of which almost every session was a
repeat - to make a total of 2.5 to 3 days worth of education. PowerTechU
is always in a high cost city, while COMMON works hard to keep the hotel
costs down - I know it was more expensive to stay in Vegas at Caesars than
it will be in Austin. The value for money is the story you should be
telling, and COMMON wins that hands down. Spreading the myth does not help
the community.

You also say "restriction of useful information and resources to members
only". What is wrong with that? COMMON is a member organization, and while
it supports the community with lots of useful information, free webinars
and so on, COMMON would be unable to continue if it gave everything for
free. The commercial sites in our industry will require you to join and
pay for much of the content, so why are you holding COMMON accountable to
a different measure? Seems like another strange myth that is a personal
beef that makes no logical sense.

As for us being sorry that you do not pay attention to what is happening
in the industry, whether it is COMMON or not, it is a real shame.

Trevor



On 1/7/13 10:29 AM, "John Yeung" <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:38 PM, Sam_L <lennon_s_j@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If you hadn't told me, I would have assumed that this cost money, and it
isn't until you are well into the registration that you actually find it
is free.

The link Pete provided goes to a page where right up top, in big
letters, is "FREE to EVERYONE". I don't know if they put that up
extremely recently (in response to reactions like yours?) or if you
happened to have gone to much less clearly marked pages (it sounds
like maybe you knew about the existence of the conference before Pete
gave the link, and perhaps looked into it via some other route).

And I missed any publicity about it. Presumably I got something in an
e-mail, but I've gotten quite a few recently and assumed it was about
early bird registration and probably ignored it.

I don't remember seeing anything whatsoever about this until Pete's post.

I am not a COMMON member, and I long ago tuned out anything having to
do with COMMON since it has a reputation for high-cost membership,
high-cost events, and restriction of useful information and resources
to members only. I am not saying COMMON isn't worth the cost. I am
just saying I am used to everything COMMON costing money, and I (like
many others) work in an environment where it is extremely difficult to
convince the decision-makers to spend money.

So it's a real shame that this free, virtual, open event was not more
heavily promoted. There are probably people who would have been able
to make a case to their management that carving out some time in their
day for this conference is worth it, had they known about it a couple
of weeks ago, but now it's too late and their time is "already
accounted for".

John