New Euro conference aims early, again
October 8, 2008
With the backing of Hewlett-Packard, the world's largest HP user group, and a European economy stronger than the one in America, the Connect European conference of 2008 is offering early-bird discounts once more. The latest extension of early registration savings ends on Friday, the last chance to register at the lowest possible rate for the first meeting which Connect is hosting through its European ally, HP Interex Europe.
HP 3000 owners and community members will now find a familiar face leading the Community Connect 2008 speaker list: Winston Prather, who handed the 3000 its exit visa from the world of Hewlett-Packard while he was general manager of the 3000 division. Prather will speak at the event in his new role as HP Vice President and General Manager of the NonStop Enterprise Division.
Content at the conference, which begins Nov. 10 in Mannheim, includes everything except HP 3000 strategies, even the migration advice Prather and his successors have offered for close to seven years. In one bit of coincidence, Community Connect 2008 including Prather's address takes place almost seven years to the day as the HP exit announcement during 2001. Subjects include blades, HP-UX, Linux and Open Source, OpenVMS, NonStop, storage, and Windows servers running on Integrity servers.
Signing up by Friday earns a 400 Euro discount. As an added benefit, a NonStop Business Update and Roadmap session includes Prather; Neil Pringle, Director, NonStop Enterprise Division, EMEA; and
Fred Laccabue, VP NonStop Systems Development.
Extending early bird discount deadlines — this Friday will be the second extension for the new conference — is either giving a larger share of the customer base a chance to send the low-ball 1,100-Euro fee to the user group, or creating more time to build meaningful attendance. Nothing is harder than the first year of any conference for establishing attendance patterns, and the current economic meltdown can't be helping business.
Special Interest Groups will be meeting to represent Business Critical Systems (BCS) Education, Business Continuity, Integrity Migration, Linux, NonStop Operations Management, Security and SQL, SOA and Storage. BCS General Manager Martin Fink will be a speaker.
European 3000 customers doing a migration, or already arrived on HP platforms, can register online for a discount through Friday at the Connect Web site. A helpful second edition of a PDF brochure with even more session detail can be downloaded from the site as well.