Back in June 1995, Michael O’Neill, the then president of the IBM CUA (IBM Computer Users’ Association) told User View that user groups would progressively decrease in numbers as the need for separate proprietary groups, particularly in the hardware area, no longer existed. ‘I feel that from an educational point of view in the IT industry we need some kind of merger of user groups,’ said O Neill at the time. ‘Most companies belonging to these user groups are using equipment from a number of different vendors anyway. When we have our respective meetings or conferences, most of us are talking about the same technology issues and I think, therefore, we would be in a stronger position and have more choice if we joined together.’
Eight years later, O’Neil’s prediction has become a reality for his own group, which was wound up at the end of February and subsequently reformed as AIM (Association of Information Managers) Ireland. Tony Finnegan, operations manager of AIM Ireland and another former president of IBM CUA, says that the final IBM CUA committee carried out extensive work developing a framework for the new association before presenting its proposal to an EGM of the group. ‘The proposal was tailored to meet the members’ requirements which broadly indicated that they wanted a broader organisation than solely IBM. Nonetheless, the networking and social sides experienced in IBM CUA were still desirable.’
In surveys carried out by IBM CUA, people consistently stated that they had heterogeneous environments and maintained that a vendor-specific user association was therefore misplaced. ‘AIM Ireland constructed several vertical sectors of those areas that touch CIOs and heads of IT in their daily responsibilities: hardware, software, telecoms, infrastructure (networks), anti-virus, hot site/business-continuity, education, recruitment,’ says Finnegan. ‘In this first year, the board decided that six sectors would be the most that could be managed. The first six sponsors are: Microsoft, Cable & Wireless, Sharptext, System Dynamics, Gartner, Horizon Open Systems and Sun Microsystems (joint sponsorship). AIM Ireland can represent its members to any vendor — even if the vendor is not a sponsor — if there is an individual problem or if there is an endemic/pervasive problem.’
18 months
AIM Ireland is just one of a number of non-proprietary user groups to have set up in the last 18 months. The Irish Developers Network (IDN) was established as a non-platform, non-language developers group in Limerick during 2002 and was officially launched at the ICT Expo in April of this year. Providing a forum for the developer community to share information and knowledge, the group holds monthly lectures, social and networking meetings in Dublin and Limerick.
According to IDN’s Dublin and online manager, Fergal Breen, the group has generated substantial interest so far and has already attracted 800 members. IDN has big plans and is hoping that a high percentage of the country’s estimated 15,000 developers will join up. ‘We are positioning ourselves as the principal organisation to represent professional developers and programmers in Ireland,’ says Breen. ‘Nothing like this has existed so far which really is astonishing.’
Another newcomer is SAGE-IE, an offshoot of SAGE, the System Administrators Guild, which is a special technical group of USENIX. Set up last July, the Irish chapter already has a mailing list of more than 100 people, including system administrators, network engineers and security specialists. Meetings are held on the second Tuesday of every month and cover subjects such as computer forensics, Irish IT law and the system administrator, data retention and hacking. Presentations from all previous talks are available on the group’s website.
The Irish chapter of the international ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) was formally launched in February of this year after work on its establishment began last October. The international organisation has been around since 1982 and has around 9,000 members in over 60 chapters worldwide. ‘At present the [Irish] chapter has 65 members, which is well ahead of our expectations for our fifth month in operation,’ says Owen O’Connor, a co-founder and joint vice president of the Irish group. ‘The chapter is growing all the time as more security professionals hear of the organisation, and we expect to reach 100 members by year-end. We are particularly happy with this membership figure, as we have not only launched a chapter of the ISSA but have built the organisation from scratch in Ireland — when we started this process there was not a single Irish ISSA member.’
The organisation’s official aim is to ‘to promote practices that will ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information resources’. The primary activity is based around services to members, such as meetings, training sessions, discounts on third-party training or events, educational opportunities, and so on. Members are involved in securing the information of assets of many of the leading Irish and multinational companies and come from a wide range backgrounds and experience. ‘This diversity of experience gives us a fantastic pool of knowledge which can be tapped to provide educational opportunities for our members,’ explains O’Connor. Pointing out that many members may also belong to other professional bodies, O’Connor said: ‘I don’t believe many of them are involved with technology-specific or vendor-specific groups, primarily because most security professionals are now being asked to look at a wide range of platforms and systems, and we therefore cannot afford the time commitment to participate in technology-specific groups.’
Women get’n techie
April 2002 saw the establishment of an Irish chapter of WITI — Women in Technology International. The organisation started up in the US 11 years ago as a small but dedicated email network of female pioneers in the technology industries. Today, the WITI Foundation is a worldwide non-profit organisation with 50,000 members, 200 of whom belong to the Irish chapter. ‘It works to help women develop the core competencies in demand by all levels of technology organisations, and brings women to the attention of organisations and boards looking for strong talent,’ says Annette Condon, who founded the Irish chapter.
In September 2002, meanwhile, SoftTest Ireland was set up as a special interest group for software testing professionals and for companies with an involvement or interest in this area. So far, approximately 40 individuals and 33 companies have joined up. ‘We hold a quarterly meeting where we typically have two workshops presented by testing professionals from Ireland,’ explains Simon Martin, the group’s PRO. ‘We also hold a twice yearly half-day seminar where we have typically had internationally renowned speakers presenting on key issues in software testing.’
Set up in July 2002, the Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) now has more than 100 members and is sponsored by some of the larger publishers, localisation service providers and tools developers. According to TILP’s CEO, Reinhard Shäler, the group is planning to hold breakfast meetings and roundtables and to participate at large localisation-related conferences and workshops.
Internet Society
And two years of planning finally paid off in May 2003 when an Ireland chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC) was formed. ISOC’s mission is to ‘assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world.’
Of course, some Irish user groups and associations have been around a bit longer. The Irish Computer Society (ICS) was founded in 1967 as the national body for ICT professionals in Ireland. The society says that since then it has promoted the continuous development of professional ICT knowledge and skills in Ireland by organising seminars, lectures and related activities.
The Irish Internet Association (IIA), meanwhile, is a non-profit business association for people carrying out business via the Internet. Set up in 1997, the IIA currently has 700 member companies, over 2,000 individual subscribers and more than 6,000 non-member subscribers.
The Irish Software Association (ISA), which is affiliated to ICT Ireland and IBEC, was set up in 1978 as a trade association for the software industry.
Established in 1996, the Health Informatics Society of Ireland (HISI) is an affiliate to the ICS and has around 400 members. Its objectives include developing and disseminating knowledge in the use of informatics in healthcare and promoting research and education in this area.
Vendor-specific
And some vendor-specific associations have also managed to hang in there, despite the fact that everything around them appears to be changing. DECUS, one of the old faithfuls on the user group scene, became the Compaq Users Organisation (CUO) a few years ago and will shortly be renamed HP-Interex. The meeting format has also changed — once known for a three-day multi-stream annual conference, the group now holds three or four one-day technical training seminars each year, most of which are well attended. The group’s president, Oliver Flynn, believes that the current membership of around 700 has the potential to increase again.
Clubmac still holds meetings on the first Wednesday of every month between September and May at the Merrion Cricket Club in Dublin 4. ‘Membership has decreased, I’m sad to say, in recent years,’ says David Stewart, the group’s secretary. ‘The drop in numbers occurred at the same time Apple went through a bad patch and started losing market share.’ However, Stewart believes that Clubmac has survived because of the loyalty of Mac users to their favourite computing platform. ‘We’re a stubborn bunch,’ he says.
The Irish Linux User Group (ILUG), meanwhile, currently has between 500 and 800 members. A member is defined as anyone who subscribes to the group’s mailing list. The aims of the association are to promote Linux and, by extension, Open Source software, in the Irish community. The group holds occasional meetings and has a very active mailing list.
And finally (for this list anyway), the Irish Java User Group (IJUG), which aims ‘to provide a vibrant online community for all Java users, from beginners to experienced developers’ currently has 223 members. IJUG offers an online discussion forum, Java tutorials, newsletters and open source code.
05/09/2003
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