Power to the people?
- Article 40 of 77
- Information Age, June 2002
Are user groups impotent talking shops or viable pressure groups?
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The group has also been able to intervene on behalf of users who have received bad treatment from Oracle. “Members accept that Oracle has a large sales force. The quality of sales staff can vary. Sometimes customers aren't listened to. We've helped users who have felt they haven't been treated properly and Oracle has addressed those problems.”
Geographic information systems vendor ESRI has a whole series of special interest groups (SIGs) with varying degrees of power and influence. The petroleum user group (PUG), with its large membership of internationally powerful companies, is the most powerful of all the SIGs; ESRI's president and founder Jack Dangermond admits that PUG has more influence on ESRI's development efforts than any other group. However, ESRI is privately owned and Dangermond is an avowed evangelist for geography and GIS software - he wants to make the software as useful as possible and can do so at the sake of profits without having to satisfy the demands of shareholders.
Other IT vendors have a reputation for being far less accomodating. Personal systems vendor Apple, which has many thousands of user groups and which regularly request feedback from them about their products, has a reputation for ignoring what most of its users want and giving them “what it thinks they should have”. As a result, Apple user groups are little more than help forums for users facing difficulties.
Actuate user group chairman Needham advises checking any potential user group to see who runs it and what they are hoping to achieve. “Don't let the vendor use the group to sell its products. Don't get involved in a bug-fix forum. User groups should look at strategic issues.” Miles of the UK Oracle User Group says the most important thing is to make sure the user group is independent of the supplier so it can get matters that are “genuinely important” to users on the agenda.
User group quality and influence varies. The more members a group has, the greater its influence. But even the most powerful is seemingly only as powerful as the vendor allows it to be.
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