The past year has generally been good for Irish user groups, both in terms of the events on offer and interest from members. UserView spoke to a number of the groups about some of their highlights and challenges during 2004, as well as aspirations for 2005.
The Irish chapter of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), which was formally established in 2003, increased its membership base from just over 100 to 141 over the last year. According to the ISSA’s Owen O’Connor, members were attracted by the regular chapter meetings which this year covered technical, management and general interest topics. ‘In addition to member meetings, the profile of the organisation increased through representation at other events,’ said O’Connor. In November, the ISSA (www.issaireland.org) held a joint session on security certification with ISACA Ireland and similar events are planned for 2005.
‘It is hoped that 2005 will see similar growth for the chapter, with many excellent meetings planned, including several high-profile international speakers,’ said O’Connor. ‘One initiative that the chapter will be looking at next year is closer involvement with the growing number of ISSA chapters throughout Europe.’
SAGE-IE (www.sage-ie.org), which currently has 270 members, held 10 meetings during the year, and continued to provide a forum for technical professionals to discuss system administration and network engineering issues. ‘It’s a challenge finding good speakers, but our members have graciously given of their time and work, again and again,’ said SAGE-IE’s Donal Cunningham. The group plans to move to a subscription-based membership in 2005, adopt a code of ethics and put itself on a more professional footing.
One of the highlights for the Business Software Association (BSA) Ireland during 2004 was its involvement with the NetRespect project for secondary schools. The association also participated in the European Intellectual Property conference held in Dublin in June, and provided assistance for businesses through A Software Management Guide. Businesses can now download a font licensing guide and software asset management tools from the BSA’s website (www.bsa.org/ireland). The group also received the SFA’s backing of its SAR Campaign 2005, which was launched in December. Software piracy in Ireland, meanwhile, decreased from 42 to 41 per cent, according to the BSA.
Julian McMenamin, chair of the BSA, told UserView that the continuing lack of awareness among businesses that copyright law is actually the law and not just an aspiration of the BSA and its members is one of the association’s main challenges. Next year, the association would like to see a continuing downward trend in the software piracy rate, a high response to its SAR campaign, and the adoption of codes of conduct for software asset management by an increasing number of businesses.
Developers network
The Irish Developers Network (IDN), which currently has more than 1270 registered members, is planning to increase membership this year through media relations and promotions at ICT exhibitions and events. ‘Many of the IrishDev events have a distinctly cool and social aspect to them and, starting with a press introduction to the Network, we will target mainstream media including social diaries,’ said Fergal Breen, the group’s online manager. According to Breen, 2004 was a great year for the group, with Web traffic tripling since January and membership now representing 10 percent of the software developer market in Ireland.
The group upgraded its website (www.irishdev.com) during 2004, with major enhancements to its news and calendar sections. ‘We also added a blog server and now provide all members with free blog site,’ said Breen. ‘Late in 2005 our news section will incorporate a video broadcast and it’s our hope that as developers we can come up with a system that RTE and others will envy. Strategically we will be promoting a new concept, the digital lifestyle. We want our members to make IrishDev.com a part of their digital lifestyle. Finally, if a little overdue, we will be launching a job portal.’
The Irish .Net Developers Association (INDA) was established during the summer of 2004. ‘By far the most important achievement for us in 2004—apart from the launch—was securing the internationally recognised INETA membership, which will enable us to bring world class .Net speakers to an Irish audience,’ said Marcus McInnes, a founder of INDA (www.developers.ie). The group is already planning its events for 2005. ‘One of the most fun is going to be the Guerrilla .NET 2.0 event on the 29th January. This event, which will be held at Microsoft’s premises in Dublin, invites .NET developers to form small teams, which will compete against each other to build a fully functioning website in less than four hours. The teams will have access to Microsoft’s latest, yet to be released, software, .ASP.NET 2.0 (Beta 1) and will have the chance to win some great prizes.’
‘We have also just launched our blog aggregator, B.AG, which is the first .NET blog aggregation service in Ireland,’ said McInnes. ‘Already B.AG is driving huge traffic to our website because of its ability to present the latest, categorised information about .NET and we are confident that B.AG will continue its success in 2005 to become the central location where people can find real-time information.’
Also new to the scene in 2004 was the Dublin Perlmongers user group, Dublin.pm, which held its first meeting in October 2004. The group, which has approximately 60 subscribers to its mailing list (see http://Dublin.pm.org/ for details) is now a member of the O’Reilly User Group Program. According to Dave O Connor, Dublin.pm’s manager, the group plans to hold more meetings during 2005 and hopes that one or two members will travel to YAPC::Europe in Portugal.
Open source evangelists
OpenIreland had a pavilion at the ICT Expo, where it hosted 11 talks in an open theatre. The group also presented on Open Source and Interoperability at the eGovernment conference for the EU Presidency and participated with OpenForum Europe in events with EU Commissioners and UK MPs in Westminster. The group has recently become a Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Affiliate, which will enable it to issue LPI Authorised Training Partner accreditation to training institutions. It will be trying to increase the visibility of OpenIreland and Open Source topics at ICT Expo in April and will be running briefings on Open Source throughout the year. A key challenge, according to OpenIreland’s Mel McIntyre, will be trying to increase membership during the year.
The Association of Information Managers (AIM) Ireland managed to increase its membership during 2004 as planned and now has 141 members. The association was also very involved in eliciting more direct feedback from members on future direction and on subject matters to be discussed at meetings. Brian McLoughlin, AIM Ireland’s president, told UserView that the association plans to deliver a full programme of meetings in 2005, increase awareness of the AIM Ireland brand, grow membership to at least 200, and continue to seek ways to improve its relevance and value, both to members and within the broader IT community. McLoughlin said that all CIOs and IT managers should be members of the association. ‘They will, unquestionably, obtain some benefit through their membership,’ he said.
Women argue their case
The Irish branch of Women in Technology International (WITI) hosted a number of well attended events during 2004. The group also ran an event on International Women’s Day at the Digital Hub with The European Biometric Forum. Anne Carthy, chair of WITI Ireland, told UserView that the Irish organisation is taking a new look at how it will best respond to the business community and key business issues and support practical change during 2005.
‘A refreshed networking group plans to go to market in January 2005 to reflect this new focus for change,’ she said. ‘We recognise that the audiences attending events in 2004 were looking for change in areas such as work/life balance and childcare, and practical advisory input to choice-led career progression for women in all sectors.’ To this end, key focus areas for 2005 will include policy input and participation at national and European level and delivery of some practical programmes to assist women in their careers. Activities will include mentoring and coaching workshops, access to advice from key women leaders in Ireland, and an integrated conference with participation from other effective working groups in this area.’ The group plans to increase formalised membership to between 400 and 600.
During 2004, the Visually Impaired Computer Society of Ireland (VICS), was involved with progressing the DAISY (Digital Access Information System) format, which is being adopted by publishing companies. As part of the European Year of the Disabled, the society also took on a project to try to encourage publishers as well as Rosmini College for Blind and Visually-Impaired students to produce published material in DAISY format which could then easily be converted into braille. The group’s website (www.vics-ireland.org) was rebuilt and officially launched during December. And, according to VICS’ chairperson, Michael Lavin, the group’s working group for Web testing standards is liasing with the NCBI (National Council for the Blind of Ireland) on new website developments.
The European Spreadsheets Risks Interest Group (EUSPRIG) held its fifth annual conference in Austria during 2004. The group also collaborated with the ECDL Foundation to create a new syllabus of best practices for spreadsheet development. This is expected to emerge as an ECDL certification product in 2005. EUSPRIG’s website of costly spreadsheet mistakes (www.eusprig.org/stories.htm) also helped to attract more visitors.
Patrick O’Beirne, chair of EUSPRIG, said that although awareness of the spreadsheet problem is increasing slowly, the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley, and the publicity around auditors commenting negatively on internal controls on the use of spreadsheets in financial reporting, resulted in a dramatic increase in members joining the group’s discussion list in late 2004.
One of the key highlights for the Localisation Research Centre (LRC) in 2004 was the successful completion of the EU funded project European Localisation Exchange Centre. The LRC also ran the first ever localisation conference on Open Source localisation, with a keynote by Paul Gampe, RedHat’s director of technology. Continuing problems, according to director, Reinhard Shaler, are the lack of recognition by the Irish Government of Ireland’s leading role in localisation, and lack of support for centres like the LRC. During the coming year, the LRC will launch the Global Initiative for Local Computing in 2005 (GILC). ‘Mainstream localisation efforts currently concentrate on licensed software for ‘rich’ markets and ignore to a large extent the needs of developing economies and the open source community,’ said Schaler, adding that GILC will coordinate the efforts and pool the resources of worldwide initiatives to make computing facilities available to people in their own languages.
The launch of the Certified Localisation Professional (CLP) programme in September 2004 and the accreditation of an academic and a professional localisation course provider were key activities for The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) last year. In 2005, the group is hoping to accredit more course providers and certify localisation professionals around the world. Membership of TILP is currently just under 400 but this is expected to grow significantly during 2005 following the implementation of the CLP programme,.
HP-Interex Ireland, formerly DECUS Ireland, ran three successful training seminars during the year and managed to increase the number of Irish respondents to the 2004 Worldwide Survey of HP Customers. In 2005, Oliver Flynn, the group’s president, is hoping to further increase the number of respondents to the survey, encourage more members to react to the worldwide advocacy programme, and increase the number of training seminars on offer, including some focusing on HP Unix systems. ‘We currently have 750 members, mostly in the VAX space,’ he said. ‘I hope that we can attract more members in 2005 by addressing the traditional HP UNIX space.’
it @ cork (www.itcork.ie) currently has 140 member companies and is hoping to increase that number significantly during 2005. ‘We also wish to continue to stage quality events on a monthly basis,’ said the group’s secretary Catherine Wall. it @ cork organised 12 events in 2004—including our annual conference and a summer barbecue—and we hope to increase this number in 2005 and revisit some of the topics we covered in the previous 12 months. One of our aims for 2005 is to set up a sales and management forum and run events in this area also. We also hope to introduce a free graduate membership for graduates from third level institutions.’
The Irish Society for IT in Agriculture (ISITA) ran its annual workshop during November. Details of this can be found at www.isita.com. The group, which currently has 40 members, is planning to run an annual conference or workshop during 2005. It also intends to promote the formation of a national committee for ICT in Irish agriculture.
24/01/05
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