So this guy walks into a San Diego hotel lobby…
I started thinking about this series of posts (yep, this is #1 in a series) after a few conversations I had with people at this year’s FileMaker DevCon. I’d strike up a conversation with someone at lunch or at the bar, we’d exchange stories and experiences…and inevitably the talk would shift to why people come to DevCon in the first place.
Reason number 1: for the community. Hands down. The clear pleasures and advantages of meeting other people who are engaged in the same practice as you – with whom you can share ideas, learn from and teach – always trump session topics, what’s on the lunch menu, what kind of swag you can haul back, or how many banners you can affix to the bottom of your convention badge. One of the things that’s sometimes lost when you do a hand count of how many people in the room have iPads is how many people in the room are there because of the other people.
I’m going to go on a tangent here for a moment to talk about human behavior, and will come back to those DevCon conversations a little later.
We’re advocates of Agile development methodologies here at IT Solutions. One of the core statements of the Agile manifesto is: where possible, value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. In the context of Agile development, that statement helps emphasize (and leverage) the fact that software is built by humans working together.
I happen to love that statement, though, because I believe it’s not just a statement about development workflow.
It’s an observation about what really motivates us as humans. Our monkey brains are social. Our emotional and social batteries are recharged by engaging with each other. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, IM, blogs, websites, email, Basecamp, and everything else that we use as proxies for social interaction offers us myriad opportunities to recharge those batteries, at recharge rates proportional to bandwidth.
By far, though, the highest, most optimized bandwidth available to us is face to face, in person contact. You can live stream and tweet all you like, but I can guarantee I can communicate more in five minutes with you in person than I ever could online.
This is why DevCon matters. We all know it; it’s why we go. To be with our particular sub-tribe of humans, speaking our own language.
This is also…
Why User Groups Matter
All right, so maybe I’m biased, because I run a user group. Feel free to bump the font size down a few notches in your mind. I will say that more often than not, the conversations I had at DevCon would eventually shift to what kind of local resources were available for whoever I was speaking with. Who was in their area? Who could they network with?
And especially…was there a FileMaker Developer Group nearby?
At this point the conversation went one of three ways:
- There was one, and it was awesome
- There was one, kinda, but it was an hour away
- The nearest one was in the next state or country
With the second and third responses, the tone was either wistful or frustrated. I’ve had a bunch of conversations like this in the past, and my reply has always been: “Start your own! It’s easy!”
Which probably glosses over things pretty badly. For one thing, starting anything is never easy.
There’s the risk involved with investing time and energy into something that has a good chance of never getting off the ground.
There’s the open question of whether or not anybody will be actually interested enough to come.
There’s the “qualifications” question that some people ask: “Why me? Who’s going to come to a group that I start? What, am I special or something?”
No, you’re not special. But you can start a User Group anyway.
This post is an introduction to a series of posts I’m going to put out in the next few weeks providing some key concepts and advice on how to start a group and how to grow it. I’ll be covering:
- Initial tools and frameworks for managing a group
- Finding group members, marketing the group and building a community
- Finding speakers and topics
I’ll get into FileMaker-specific concepts in places, but by and large this stuff applies to anyone looking to start a technical user group.
That’s to come. For now, if you’re really interested in starting a FileMaker User/Developer Group in your area – or finding one – your first stop should be to www.fmpug.com. I’ll be talking about FMPug as a marketing and organizational tool in a future post, so won’t go into detail here. Just take a quick look now.
What qualifies me to give advice?
I’m not special either 
But I have had some experience building communities. We’ve done a lot of hard work over the years to build Philly FileMaker into a large, robust group, and have learned some lessons along the way about what works and what doesn’t. We want to share that. And when I take off my day job hat, I run an art gallery with my wife, Mount Airy Contemporary, which has been a community-building exercise in a very similar way. And when I take off my gallerist hat, I’m an artist, and engaged with promotion and community-building around that as well. And when all of those hats are safely stowed, and I’m back at work, I promote training opportunities for IT Solutions, as well as work as a full time FileMaker Consultant.
This stuff matters to me, in short. And I want to talk about it. I want to see the FileMaker community expanded and enriched through local efforts. I want more of you folks out there starting groups today. This’ll be my little contribution to that effort. Feel free to comment along the way. If you’re a group coordinator, especially, and have your own advice to add, it would be most welcome.
Colin
Coordinator
Philadelphia FileMaker User Group
Hey, Mr. Colin!
Thank you for starting this blog series on FileMaker User Groups! .
The Phoenix FileMaker User Group (FMPug, Arizona Chapter) has been going and growing for about two years. We share the same three challenges you identified for new groups when starting up (tools for group management, growing the membership/community and finding speakers and topics).
I’m really looking forward to your next blog on this topic! We have a lot to learn and share!
Audrey ❦
From a “good” waterfall perspective, that favorite statement might morph into something like …
“where possible, value individuals and interactions with the best of processes and/or tools”
What can I say, I dearly love scratching things off of a good to do list. (grin)
Great Post! Dwayne
I recently got interested in Filemaker after looking at it for the past year or so. My company develops shrink wrap accounting applications and even though Filemaker is not suited for these types of applications, I’m still a fan. In fact, I’ve started developing some applications, sorry, solutions with it. I am simply amazed at the productivity that I can achieve with it.
So one of the first things I do when I start to get interested in a development platform is look for community support and resources. Unfortunately, there is no Filemaker User Group in Nebraska (I’m in Omaha).
I used to run a CPA Computer User Group in Omaha a number of years ago and it was pretty successful. It got to the point where I (or my staff) were doing all the work and we just let it die.
The thought of starting a user group in Omaha is provocative, but like you said in the article, “will anyone come?”
It would help if I could get some demographics on Filemaker users in Nebraska. Have you ever heard of Filemaker releasing this kind of information?
I, like you, would like to use my talents to develop Filemaker solutions for the accounting community. I’d even teach them how to use Filemaker to manage their own accounting practices. You see, even though I can’t (currently) see a way to use Filemaker to develop our accounting applications, I can see a HUGE advantage to using in for our own internal use. I’m already planning on re-writing our ETS (Enduser Tracking System) software that we use to invoice and track our users.
I wrote it about 5 years ago and made some cardinal mistakes in the relational design. Since I started using Filemaker I’ve learned proper techniques for ensuring that the tables are related correctly to improve productivity and efficiency.
Excellent post and it definitely has me thinking…
Hi Colin!
Right on! I feel inspired after reading this blog.
Cheers!
Chiyoko
Hi everyone! Thanks for the great responses.
John, I want to address this comment specifically to you.
My first impulse was to search the FileMaker consultant listing for Nebraska, which, of course, I did.
Nothing. Wow. Google? No joy. FMpug.com? Nope.
I think a good next step would be to get in touch with the sales rep for your region. I don’t know offhand who at FMI handles Nebraska, but he or she would definitely:
a. know people you could get in touch with to either partner with on a user group (or cajole into starting one so you don’t have to
)
b. have a vested interest in seeing a user group started.
There are business reasons from FMI’s perspective for fostering the growth of user groups, and that means that as a prospective new chapter, you have potential resources to tap in the form of FMI sales reps and systems engineers. We bug ‘em all the time. Don’t be shy. (Sorry, FMI staff, in advance. But really, we have your best interests at heart
)
There are also solid business reasons for a consulting company to host user groups (as does my company), so finding another FileMaker firm in the area and convincing them it’s worthwhile to start one is another great avenue to pursue.
You should also definitely send Andy Gaunt at http://www.fmpug.com an email, asking if he’s ever been approached by other Nebraskans about starting a chapter. If anybody would know of prior efforts, he would.
Anybody know who represents Nebraska? You can contact me or John offline/email.
@Audrey:
Yes, this is actually meant to be a sharing experience, so while I’ll spew a bit in subsequent posts, this is a conversation first and foremost.
If anyone has anything they’d like to share on the topic in a post format (rather than comments) contact me via email.
John,
I don’t know if this will help or not, but I know that Skeleton Key, a FileMaker consulting company in St. Louis is planning some training sessions in Lincoln, NE next month. They may be able to help stir up some interest for a group in your area.
My limited geography of your area led me to Google where it looks like Lincoln is an hour away via I-80. Check out Skeleton Key’s schedule at http://www.skeletonkey.com/events_calendar and don’t be shy to reach out to Jason Thomas at jason.thomas@skeletonkey.com. They’re great guys and may have some leads. They would also have info on who your reps are in that area.
And, no, FMI doesn’t (in my experience) release customer info.
Jason