[UPHPU] July presentation volunteer needed

[Al Byers]

Dave,

I have a somewhat different proposal for a meeting topic. I subscribe to 
the UPHPU list because I want to stay in touch with what is going on in 
the local user group communities. Personally, I took the Perl to Java 
route and skipped PHP, but I am interested in PHP because of its strong 
user community. You see it has been my belief for a number of years that 
the IT community is not proactive enough in watching out for its own 
welfare. Sure we may do a lot to keep our technical expertise up to 
snuff and may work within our user groups to accomplish that, but we 
still, for the most part, either work for large companies and have to 
endure whatever conditions they impose or we work for ourselves in small 
companies and have no answer for the FUD factor that the large companies 
spread that forces us to keep our rates lower so that our clients will 
take on the "risk" of dealing with a small company.

I have felt for at least a decade (2 if you consider that I started 
Automation Group of Virginia in 1985) that much could be done to reverse 
this situation by simple cooperation. I am a proponent of the Open for 
Business project (http://www.ofbiz.org) and I am organizing Automation 
Groups Inc. to be a cooperative/franchise of independent IT firms all 
using OFBiz as its framework. By doing so we get access to incredible 
values in terms of free or low cost code from the OFBiz community and 
our clients have multiple options for getting support - thereby 
protecting their investment. Automation Groups provides (or will 
provide)access to many services that small businesses need such as 
bookkeeping, health insurance, marketing, lobbying  etc. so that the 
member groups can concentrate on their core competencies. OFBiz users 
are often passionate about their chosen technology, just as PHP users 
(except we are not pigheaded like most PHP users I know :0), and that is 
why I think that it is critical to organize such groups along technical 
lines. But regardless of what technology we use, all such groups need 
access to the same services mentioned above, so I saw a need for an 
umbrella entity to provide those services to a mix of technically 
aligned groups (TAG), which I call Salt Haven.

I am hoping that the sentiments expressed above might form the basis for 
an interesting meeting. I am not ready to include other TAGs into Salt 
Haven right now, but when we do, there will be conditions with which 
those groups will need to comply (such as use of a common application 
database, templating systems, entity engine and other leveraged tools) 
that may seem odd or unnecessary to you and I think those ideas are 
worth discussing.

If that does not work, we could talk about why you are such pigheads and 
what can be done about it.

Just some ideas. Let me know if you are interested.

-Al

District Webmaster wrote:

>Folks,
>
>We're looking for a presenter for our July meeting. Any and all members
>are welcome and encouraged to present on any and all topics relating to
>php programming and/or web developement (PHP, operating systems, web
>servers, databases, HTML/CSS/DOM, web browsers, usability,
>accessibility, design, etc.).
>
>If you would like to volunteer, but don't have any topic ideas, fear
>not! We have a list of suggested topics from which to choose.
>
>Dave
>
>P.S. You may also volunteer for later months.
>
>
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-- 
Al Byers
Automation Groups Inc
801.400.5111
http://www.automationgroups.com
byersa at automationgroups.com

We're "Open for Business" (http://www.ofbiz.org) 
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