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

www.philllyfilemaker.org

 

Chad Sager and Colin Keefe are also representing IT Solutions at DevCon. If you’re at the conference, be sure to say hi!

 

If you’re from eastern PA, please email me at colin.keefe@itsolutions-inc.com – we’re planning a get together for Philly FileMaker folks on Monday.  I’ll reply with the details.

Some tools to keep you connected to what’s going on:

The DevCon Scheduler (from FMPug)

http://devconscheduler.com/

This is a great planning tool that you can access on the web, on your iPhone/iPad or whatnot.  And remember that if you become a FMPug member BEFORE DevCon, you can win an iPad to view this thing on.

Twitter

If you twitter, you’ll find keeping tabs on a twitter feed during the convention is a great way to follow what presentations are worth switching to, and so on.

#FileMakerDevCon

We’re @phillyfilemaker, if you didn’t know.

See you all soon!

- Colin Keefe

 

Here’s how it works:

“Your locked in rate is based on the number of COMPLETED transactions. To avoid losing the current promotional rate” (ed: currently $50), “we urge you to complete this transaction sooner rather than later. Wait too long and it could be gone!

** YOU’RE LOCKED-IN FOR LIFE! ** Here’s where things get really exciting! By signing-up now, the promotional price is your rate for life! That’s right, providing your membership never lapses, the promotional price will be your annual FMPug renewal rate for life! Whether you’re a new member or a renewing member, you won’t pay a penny more. It’s just that simple.”

Go here:

https://www.fmpug.com/signup

Is it worth it?  You bet.  But if you need more than the product discounts, mailing lists and so on, here’s an extra perk:

The all new iPad!

Er…wait, I mean this:

I meant THIS iPad.

Yeah, that’s it.

FMPug will be giving away four iPads to FMPug members – two at the FileMaker Developer Convention in August, and two to FMPug members who couldn’t attend DevCon.  I hear there’s some kind of FileMaker GO thingy that runs on iPads now too.

 

Recap!

Two dozen FileMaker enthusiasts converged on the the IT Solutions office for the 5th Annual PFUG Year End Bonanza on December 15th.

We continued our annual tradition of vendor discussions and giveaways, of course – congratulations to Dan Stein, Todd Chronister, Walter Burns, Preston Cabe, Tim Lynott, Mike Ahern, Bryant Minard, Gale Raspen and Michael Reddy for winning bonanza prizes from our generous sponsors! And a big thanks to SolutionMakers, Ben Waldie, ProofGroup and Seed Code, Thorsen Consulting, 360Works and Real EVO for participating and contributing to our event.

Our 2008 predictions for 2009 were, as usual, mostly wrong, but I don’t think anyone can be faulted for not guessing all the twists and turns 2009 held in store for us.  We’ll have to wait until December 2010 before we can weigh in on the latest batch – though I somehow doubt “BJ and the Bear” will make it to the big screen this year (sorry, Jason).

We spent a good portion of the meeting discussing the long range focus and goals of the user group, a free-ranging roundtable conversation that included:

• How to increase monthly attendance
• How to tailor the meeting structure for better participation, away from the active presenter/passive audience model
• Better networking and support methods between members
• In general, how to make the group more useful for the members

All in all a great way to end the year – and a big thanks to Jason Fiske of FMI for providing the excellent buffet!

Goals!

Some of the takeaways that we’ll be acting on…

Meeting Structure

We’re going to move the “Stump the Chump” session from its current slot at the end of the presentation to the opening slot; e.g. after opening remarks we’ll jump right into it. Also…we are ALL Chumps.  Previously we picked folks to answer questions from members; now it’ll be a free-for-all (which it always devolved to anyway!).

Presenters will be asked to tailor their presentations for more interactivity, where possible: in other words, where it makes sense to “workshop” a topic, let’s encourage that.

2009 was heavy on “big names”: most of our presenters had a history of speaking at DevCons and other venues, had high level topics that may have had the “just getting started” developer feeling a little left in the dark.  In 2010 we’ll be mixing things up a bit – more roundtable discussions, more group critiques of member work, more member presentations.  We’re going to keep getting whatever superstars we can, but hopefully the mix will be more healthy.

Audience Building

Up until now, who shows up at meetings has been pretty much dependent on the size and quality of our mailing list, and exposure we get through various passive advertising venues – the FMPug site, syndication of this blog, and so on.  That’s all well and good, but in my opinion our reach is limited.  This is promotion, not networking.

Since it’s in the best interest of the members to have sizable attendance, fresh faces and all that comes from a growing audience – because of the networking opportunities, job prospects, and information sharing – we’re charging you, the members, with the responsibility of spreading the word about the group.  Tell your co-workers, your clients, your consultants, and your friends.

Bring someone who has never used FileMaker before.

Bring that IT guy across the room who hates FileMaker, so he can see what it’s all about.

In short, evangelize.

We’re averaging 18 people a meeting; it would be very nice to reach 25 this year.  And it can only benefit you to reach that number.

Networking

You may recall we discussed how to encourage member communication between the monthly meetings.  At the moment we have a single mailing list, announcement only, and some of you belong to the FMPUGTalk list, which encompasses all user groups.

We’re going to look into setting up a mailing list for members to provide a localized communication resource – you’ll be able to post questions, jobs, chat or whatever you like.  That’ll be forthcoming and I should have some news on it at the next meeting at month’s end.

We also discussed the idea of member profiles on the blog or of finding some way to provide a public face for the members – for each other and to raise the profile of the group by giving it a personalized identity.

We’re going to look into this as well, though I don’t expect any movement on it before the January meeting.

That’s it for now.  I’ll be announcing the next meeting (January 26) early next week.

Happy FileMaking!

- Colin

 

http://12days.fmpug.com/

http://www.fmpug.com/

Now’s a pretty good time to support what FMPug does for the developer/user group community at large and for our own local group.

For the Philly FileMaker group, FMPug provides:

• Meeting Announcement Listings and management
• Meeting RSVP services
• Mailing List Management
• Product discounts for FMPug members
• Pawfolio pages with work samples for FMPug members
• and a percentage of every FMPug member’s annual fee goes directly to support PhillyFileMaker.

In a more general sense, FMPug provides a sense of community and cohesion to the dozens of user groups scattered around the world.  It provides us opportunities to share with each other and learn from each other outside of conventions and conferences.  I know I’ve cribbed many ideas for user group sessions from looking into the Schedule to see what other people are up to, and have often learned about new techniques in the pipeline before they make it into a DevCon presentation just by poking around the FMPug site.  It’s also an excellent way to get your feet wet before jumping into your first FileMaker DevCon.  Andy Gaunt is a great resource and asset to the community.

Why join now?  Well, the “12 Days of Giveaways” event is a big one – tons of free products from your favorite FM vendors means you stand a very very good chance of winning something – which would more than cover the cost of an annual FMPug membership (if the discounts weren’t already enough).

So head on over to FMPug and join or renew today!

- Colin

 

Visit http://ref.fmpug.com/ to download your free copy today!

 

FMPug has been posting selected presentation content on the FMPug site, available for FMPug members.  You can access it here:

http://www.fmpug.com/fmpugtv/

Ernest Koe’s ProofGroup presentation is up at this URL, as well as Jess Barnum’s presentation, both filmed at the Orlando FL FMPug chapter.  Kudos to Andy for putting this together.

Note that you need to join FMPug to access most of the content, but you can see a free 12 minute video introduction by Jesse to get a sense of how it all lays out.

If I haven’t harped on it enough, online videos aren’t the only reason to join FMPug.  Here’s a grid of benefits:

http://www.fmpug.com/join.php

A virtual membership will get you into the FMPug site and its benefits; a portion of a Chapter membership goes to support us at PFUG (since we’re a local FMPug chapter), plus eligibility for FMPug member giveaways at meetings (like tonight’s, for example).

- Colin