Last month I had the absolute pleasure of being able to attend the Upper Midwest Open Text User Group annual meeting. For the last several years I had heard the stories, heard of the fun, and heard of the great exchange of information within this predominantly eDOCS focused User Group. Well, in this case reality lived up to the hype.
The UMOTUG actually holds its meetings on the Mississippi River. That's right, on a paddleboat!! Diane Bowers of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank is the group chair and did a tremendous job as MC. What made this meeting so 'unique' for me was the conversationalist atmosphere. In recent years I think interactions between vendors and customers has become far too formal and structured. On the boat we had no PowerPoint, no slide handouts, etc. Just people discussing their ECM strategies, the direction of eDOCS, the direction of Open Text.....and the beautiful weather. All in all I'd say that there were probably about 30 or 35 customers representatives present and I felt that a lot of good information was shared throughout the day. In addition to myself, Cheryl McKinnon and Lani Jacobs were able to join from OT discusssing Social Media and Legal items respectively.
Finally, a very big thank you to Bryce and Jerry of ADV Document Systems for their sponsorship of the event. I could think of nothing better than to see more regional user groups using this format in 2009. Hope I get an invite for next year because I'll certain return :-)
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