I think thuis brings us back to the old discussion of the ESUG date. It is in the summer holidays, and that is somewhat a problem for a corprate public IMO. Another problem might be that it's often hard to get an allowance and budget to travel out of your home country. You often have to uzse the education budget for such trips.

But people mostly came from Germany (where it took place), Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. So I see quite some interest in an industry oriented event. But IMO an indsutry oriented event needs to meet a few criteria:

* It should be during normal working season, not in the summer or winter holidays

* It must take place in a country where many businesses use Smalltalk. There may be people from other countries, but few of them. If we want to meet people from several countries, we need a little road show that travels to two or three countries in Europe.

* It must take place on a weekday between tuesday and thursday. Only Geeks stay until like to travel home on friday evening or even stay until saturday morning.

* Speakers have to provide relevant (from the point of view of a Smalltalk legacy project) content. It doesn't necessarily have to be new / exciting content, but relevant to today's Smalltalk projects. In big corporations, these often need to catch up with technologies that were considered bleeding edge 10 years ago. But still they are relevant for these projects. This is not to say that newer topics should be kept out of an industry conference, but they should be introduced in a way that put them in perspective of such a project.

ESUG is a great, interesting and exciting conference, and I really would advice everybody to go there if they are interested in Smalltalk. But it does not meet many of the above-mentioned criteria.

Smalltalk projects in the industry are legacy projects in most cases. Those that aren't are mostly unknown. It would be great if we could change that at such an event.

But, please, ESUG, don't take that as a criticism of the ESUG conference! It's a great place to be and meet people and learn what's hot in the Smalltalk world! I would miss it if it wasn't there any more!

"Stéphane Ducasse" <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> hat am 29. Januar 2012 um 12:38 geschrieben:

> We are trying each year. Remember at Barcelona.
> Now if people do not send business talks we cannot invent them.
>
> Stef
>
> On Jan 29, 2012, at 11:35 AM, Janko Miv��ek wrote:
>
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > To attract more business oriented people back to Smalltalk, let we
> > organize one day of ESUG conference for business oriented content. For
> > start let we name it simply as an ESUG Experience day. So that its
> > intention is clear and attractive for those people. And let we do some
> > marketing in this direction too.
> >
> > And all in one day, those people cannot afford a whole week for a mostly
> > technical conference.
> >
> > I know from my experience that presentations of real Smalltalk systems
> > convinced me to Smalltalk back in 1995, when I visited my first ESUG in
> > Utrecht/NL. It was at the IBM building and much more business people
> > around. This gave me an impression of seriousness of Smalltalk. Also
> > content was half technical half experiences/business oriented.
> >
> > Also from talks with those people you actually get a feeling what tool
> > is considered professional and accepted for more business oriented
> > development, which is a stated goal of Pharo, for instance. Getting
> > those people together with Pharo development team can really help.
> >
> > For presenters is also a plus because they come in contact with
> > potential customers, even some long standing business partnership can
> > start at such an opportunity.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Best regards
> > Janko
> >
> >
> > --
> > Janko Miv��ek
> > Aida/Web
> > Smalltalk Web Application Server
> > http://www.aidaweb.si
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Esug-list mailing list
> > Esug-list@lists.esug.org
> > http://lists.esug.org/mailman/listinfo/esug-list_lists.esug.org
>
>
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