All, 1. The good news is that the U2UG board has agreed to push ahead with our incubator project this year. This will combine learning materials and sample applications aimed at bringing the platform in front of genuinely new developers who have not encountered any flavour of multivalue before. The aim will be to make it as easy as possible to get people up and running to the point where they can seriously evaluate the technology, and to showcase the best that it can offer.
No doubt we will be seeking volunteers along the road. We will be discussing exactly what we need to include, and how we will be developing these at the next board meeting (in two weeks' time). We already have a number of ideas taking shape, but in the mean time, suggestions are welcomed: just send them to me offlist and I'll keep everyone posted. Once we have a good batch, I'll add a new forum to the website dedicated to discussing and furthering this topic, since it is such an important piece for us as an industry. NOW - since we're going to be giving up a lot of time for this - we want something in return! Listen up! 2. One of the major problems has always been visibility. With the loss of the IBM name, that visibility has taken another dive. The best way to get that visibility and credibility back, is to be able to tell prospective customers and developers just how widespread this technology is. Which means, being able to tell them who is using it. I know we have top companies in every industry sector using U2. Half of them don't even know that there are other people in the same industry using it. And it makes them feel isolated and worried about the platform. We need a way to tell the world 'We Use U2'. So we are going to be launching an initiative for people to tell us that. No more than that - they don't need to tell us anything secret, how they are using it, what they are doing with it, nothing that points to a competitive advantage. Just that they are amongst the thousands of organizations that use it. So watch this space and think about how you can add your organizations names to this list. You might be surprised how many others are out there. Regards Brian _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users