Travel to train on leisurely November weekend
October 30, 2006
Why travel to train? It's a throwback, but a rich one. Long after the days when trains were the best way to travel, people still crave the experience. Room to roam. A different pace. Seeing what the airlines cannot show you.
In much the same way, in-person user conferences deliver an experience of yesterday that makes it easier to get through your tomorrows. In Houston in less than two weeks, a conference with the 3000's transistion in mind wants to pull you out of your seat and office and down to the Gulf Coast for a few days of extraordinary in person education.
We're excited, even if we are just up the road in Austin and so nearby we can drive. Alfredo Rego, who has become a rare speaker indeed, gives the keynote next Friday morning. Gilles Schipper and Paul Edwards will show you how to manage the 3000 resource for homesteading, whether you're staying a long time or just marking time until the Unix or Windows system gets finished. Then there's Bill Hassell, who's offering the best HP-UX and Unix training you'll get.
Last year, the community and its vendors said this kind of conference sounded like a good idea. It's a reality now, but it needs your support.
And the price? Outrageously inexpensive. Would you believe $175, with $60/night rooms still available at the likes of Extended Stay America (my address for that weekend)? Then there's the beach, just 30 minutes away in Galveston, for stellar walks in the moonlight to help mull over what you've heard. With other users, talking in person and bringing their experiences from the migration trail. People are moving by now; you can ask them the hard questions in person.
The conference only demands one workday away from the office, though you want to get to the Univ. of Houston Clear Lake campus early on Friday, so as not to miss Alfredo's talk. Vendors and sponsors are coming. The conference needs you, the user, to add networking and that train-travel glee. Have a look at the agenda for the Nov. 10-12 meeting. Registration forms are available online, too. At the door signups are just $200. GHRUG has already scoped out the nearby hotels, too.
In-person training and networking is a superior, old-school IT practice. Companies that rely on the 3000 for a little while longer until migration, or a long time to homestead, can do no better than the Gulf Coast weekend coming up.
Leading off the homesteading track is Gilles Schipper, founder of the GSA support firm for HP 3000s. Schipper will speak in two successive sessions on "Easy and affordable enhancements for the HP 3000 homesteader." A migration track kicks off at the the same 9 AM start, led by Michael Marxmeier training on Eloquence migrations of IMAGE data and Speedware's Dani Knezevic on data migrations.
Alan Yeo travels from the UK to Houston present on the migration track. There's even a talk on how to migrate HP 3000 IMAGE data to MySQL.
This is the first conference of its kind in many decades, and the first of several to come. You can be a part of making your community richer. Hit the Web page and download the registration form, and tell Michael Anderson and the GHRUG volunteer's you're on your way. Set up the Southwest Airlines Ding! service on your PC -- Hobby Airport has lots of flights and is less than 15 minutes from the campus.
For those customers who wanted a low-cost, low-hassle, high 3000 content conference, this is it. Let's see you on the Third Coast the weekend after next.