The first meeting of a users group was in Montevideo, Uruguay, on September 2nd last year. This group, organized and led by members of the GeneXus community supported by Artech, got together to get to know each other, get closer and improve the knowledge of the tool they work with every day. However, and due to the great success they had, users groups have started to multiply. Rosario, Argentina; Monterrey and Puebla, México; Cuenca, Ecuador. In each city or region new users groups started to appear with the need to meet, get together and exchange knowledge.
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But due to that growth, questions start to pop up: What are really users groups? How do they work? How can I become a member in one? To answer these questions, we interviewed Armin Bachmann, who is responsible for the GeneXus Users Groups. |
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What are the GeneXus Users Groups?
They are GeneXus users from a city or region that get together and integrate local communities. The good experiences that resulted from the first meetings and the value the users are getting through these groups are being transmitted and encouraging more users to make up new groups or join the existing ones. The groups are here to stay, to be another medium through which to exchange information about trends and on which they can rely daily. That is, a tool to increase the level of knowledge of all the users.
How do these groups work?
They are created, organized and led by the users themselves. The main activity they are carrying out today is organizing regular meetings, both social and technical, where they present and share their experiences or invite other people to make a presentation about a topic they are interested in. At the meetings, in addition to learning, you meet people, have fun, have food! The truth is you have an excellent time.
These groups are supported by Artech and by local distributors; and even by local authorities. We can talk about the case of Rosario, Argentina, where their March meeting was granted municipal interest status. The meetings made by these groups are then not only interesting and generate value for the participants and the GeneXus community, but they also for the entire surrounding environment.
There is a global exchange of experiences between the different groups which speaks about the synergy of all the community.
How are they organized?
The typical process is that a user from some location gets excited with the idea and they contact me to coordinate our support for their idea. What follows is that they contact 2 or 3 friends, they transmit the initiative and thus, after inviting somebody else they get together to meet and plan the steps they will follow. Usually by the second meeting they start to have some important technical content that captures the interest of more people and thus more users from the region join, they support the organizers and participate actively in favor of the initiative.
To sum up: Visit www.gxtechnical.com/gug and see if there is a group in your region. If there is one, contact the organizer; otherwise contact me and organize one yourself. This has just started…