User Group Independence

I see that Mogens Nørgaard  has a couple of interesting blogs this week.

The first touches upon user group independence, a subject that's close to my heart. The entire blog is a serious, entertaining and forthright read, but just to give a flavour of it

"My point is that user groups should be fiercely independent of vendors in order to be – well – user groups for its members. Users shouldn’t expect mouth pieces and sanitized marketing PPT’s from a group of users (a.k.a. a user group)."

I've had good friends in the user groups for some time and I'm well aware of Oracle's attempts to control the user groups down the years with various carrots and sticks but I'm also aware of the sterling job that many of those same people do in holding the company at enough of a length to be independent, whilst getting as much support from the company as possible.

In the end, I think Oracle Corp. would benefit if they backed off sometimes. I think they sometimes fail to see that some of the people who can occasionally be very critical of Oracle actions are incredibly passionate about the company's products, some of it's strongest advocates and perhaps they would sell less product if there wasn't such a strong user community? If all that tumbles from someone's mouth is good news, then I start to become suspicious and then slowly tune out. Opinions without honesty are just noise.

When Mogens asked if I'd speak at the Miracle DBF and offered to pay my expenses, I almost said no. Because it was Mogens who I just happen to know is a very generous chap and because I knew I'd be free to say what I wanted, I decided to say yes. In general, though, I'm always a little suspicious when anyone offers me money to do anything (apart from my job, obviously!) because they normally want something in return. I'd be very loathe to advertise anything on this blog, except to praise things I happen to like loads (like DUDE) and maybe support a mate who's starting a business (Thomas Presslie, for example). But make no mistake, if I disagree with those people, you'll know all about it. Look at what poor Peter Robson had to put up with when he gave me a free book!

Independence is an essential part of my being and independent user groups are part of the Oracle community's being. Censoring presentations (other than on the basis of them not being very good or not in the correct subject area) is a slippery slope.

As for the other blog, he's on about RAC again (Actually, he's on about independence and honesty again)

Good stuff, Mogens. Strong, but good.