What happen to the User Group Forum
Saturday 4th June, 2005To the people who used to come to dangsite.com for the usergroup form, the site is officially offline.
To explain the evolution:
D.A.N.G. was formerly called Domino And Notes Group. I was one of the co-founders for the user group. The group started back in 1997 and after a rocky start there were monthly meeting with user attending. The group was serving central Illinois with members from Galesburg to Bloomington/Normal, IL, representating 15 companies.
Unfortunately I had to step down a year later from the group leadership to attend to some personal life matters. Then, in 1999/2000 I step back into the user group leadership role to try to bring up the attendance. I was elected President of the user group. The next year the economy in central Illinois area was declining in the Lotus Notes professional field. Consulting companies folded (remember MarchFirst?) and other region/local consulting companies moved their operations outside the Peoria Area. I was able to ask Lotus to help/assist me by allowing DANG sponsor/promote the Lotus IBM satellite boardcasts via closed circuit television. (Most of the financial support on these events were from my income, but IBM supported by lending me a conference room.) Membership did not grow as I hoped, and to add to the disappointment, IBM decided to limit these events to larger cities -- Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, etc -- and stop allowing the broadcast feeds to the smaller metropolian areas.
My vision for the site changed to make this user forum site for an online community. At the time I did not own the domain nor was I hosting the site. After some negotiations, I was able to acquire the domain ownership and started my own hosting service. In late 2003, I decided to change the site to become Domino And Notes Guru site. In 2004 I decide to start my own blog: DANGsite Daily Thought
To explain the evolution:
D.A.N.G. was formerly called Domino And Notes Group. I was one of the co-founders for the user group. The group started back in 1997 and after a rocky start there were monthly meeting with user attending. The group was serving central Illinois with members from Galesburg to Bloomington/Normal, IL, representating 15 companies.
Unfortunately I had to step down a year later from the group leadership to attend to some personal life matters. Then, in 1999/2000 I step back into the user group leadership role to try to bring up the attendance. I was elected President of the user group. The next year the economy in central Illinois area was declining in the Lotus Notes professional field. Consulting companies folded (remember MarchFirst?) and other region/local consulting companies moved their operations outside the Peoria Area. I was able to ask Lotus to help/assist me by allowing DANG sponsor/promote the Lotus IBM satellite boardcasts via closed circuit television. (Most of the financial support on these events were from my income, but IBM supported by lending me a conference room.) Membership did not grow as I hoped, and to add to the disappointment, IBM decided to limit these events to larger cities -- Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, etc -- and stop allowing the broadcast feeds to the smaller metropolian areas.
My vision for the site changed to make this user forum site for an online community. At the time I did not own the domain nor was I hosting the site. After some negotiations, I was able to acquire the domain ownership and started my own hosting service. In late 2003, I decided to change the site to become Domino And Notes Guru site. In 2004 I decide to start my own blog: DANGsite Daily Thought
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