FROM THE CHAIRMAN (John Owen)

When I began writing this column (far too many years ago to remember) my intention was to keep you up to date with developments within the User Group. In those days, however, it was the Apollo Domain User Group (do you remember those wonderful Apollo workstations?). Mergers and acquisitions took us through various identities until we emerged as the HPUG you know today.

During those years I’ve also moved further away from the day to day operation of the Group and this is now done very ably from Bracknell by the administration team, lead by Ian Severn. Ian now has that day to day view of user group activities so I have asked him to take over the reins in writing this column.

I’ve enjoyed contributing over the years and will still be around to chip in the occasional thought, but now it’s time to hand over to Ian who opens his literary account with a report on his trip to the Connect International Conference in Las Vegas.

FROM IAN SEVERN

Well, I was one of 3817 attendees and with just 3.5 days to try to pull in some HPUG business (along with CONNECT - the worldwide HP User Community to which we are affiliated), as well as choosing which of the hundreds of technical Seminars to attend, and visit 50+ exhibitors - this was no jolly. 

Nothing replaces a face-to-face meeting of experts gathered from around the entire world!  With Health Care high on Mr Obama's agenda, HP was very keen to prove that it is there to help too and in particular - how it can help in these challenging economic times!

The key themes for the week were:

a  Green IT
b  Data Centre Transformation
c  Blade Solutions - Extreme Scale Out
d  Storage Essentials

The Keynote session from HP executives talked of blade architectures and of “where others see a form factor, HP see convergence to deliver everything as a service.”  Prith Banerjee, the Director of HP Labs Worldwide, had the audience enthralled with his views on the next 10 years of computing with even thinner and flexible monitors, faster processors, spectacles with sound and vision built in, a paperless office (well I heard that one in 1979!!!) etc. etc. 

Dr. Michio Kaku, author of "Physics of the Impossible" ended the Conference with his even more thought provoking views of how computing will not be limited by the Physics behind the technology and reinforced how HP's heritage of "Invention" will help it to stand out in the crowd.   

Here are a few pointers that might interest you:

Green IT

www.hp.com/go/greenitplan

www.hp.com/go/carbonfootprint

www.hp.com/go/environment

And one for your boss!

www.hp.com/go/cioagenda

-  Define business, management & technology priorities

-  Examine the alignment of your IT and business goals

-  Compare your business with those of others in your industry

-  Receive a personalised report with analysis and recommendations

HPUG TOMORROW

During the Autumn we are going to be looking at new ways of engaging with our members.  We are going to look at running Webinars as well as Seminars to help save both travel costs and the cost of time out of the office.  We also want to invite you to tell us what you would like to see as a possible alternative format for our Electronic Technical Journal.

HPUG SEMINAR PROGRAMME

Remember to keep looking at the Events pages on our Website to book your places early - we know that you generally leave booking events till the last minute but that does of course mean that we then sometimes make the wrong decision about cancelling it, when in fact we would have had enough attendees to enable it to run!

Take a look at http://www.hpug.org.uku/ for the Seminar Programme.

If you have ideas for Webinar / Seminar content please e-mail Dave Holt our Events Coordinator - events@hpug.org.uk

Regards

Ian Severn