User Groups

User Groups are usually volunteer-based, informal organizations, that congregate around computer technologies. Wikipedia has a more generic description.

A large number of UGs are based on open source technologies. Usually languages and open source products, things that can be promoted or that attract a lot of interest. UGs are usually a child of a small group (sometimes of one) of strong willed individuals, that decided to take on their own hands the promotion of a technology they like. This requires the technology or product in question to have some strong importance to a specific community, otherwise, there is no reason for someone to form it to begin with.

User Groups need to be seen as "advocacy" organizations. They usually don't produce code nor create products, although many will engage in different projects that they are interested. Activities done by a UG will usually involve presentations, discussions, events and other advocacy activities. Some user groups are known to influence the directions of the technology/product they focus on. This usually happens because the UG represent the users of a particular technology, and can then "speak" for those users to vendors, companies, standard organizations and even governments.

User Groups usually thrive when they have a specific focus, that is not extremely narrow. UGs that have a very broad focus (like "Free Software", "Open Source", "Software Development") usually have a very mixed set of advocacy goals, and end up being too generic to really do many activities. Sometimes they will thrive by doing a large, encompassing event. On the other hand, UGs that have a too narrow focus, like a single product, usually survive only with the support of that product company, and can disappear really quickly, unless their organizers can reach out for companies that are using the product for support and funding.

An interesting example of mixing those two sides is the Google User Groups that Google have been pushing. They suffer from being too broad (focusing at the same time on all Google products) and too narrow (tied to a single company, and as such, many times unable to get support and funding elsewhere). The success of this has been tied to Google's efforts, and we need a few years to judge. An example of a successful user group focus has been the Java User Groups (JUGs), that at first sign could be seen as "too narrow", but because the Java ecosystem is very broad, with many vendors, even when Sun ignored and didn't support JUGs for many years, they grew and succeeded with the support of other vendors.

Because UGs are usually loose, informal organizations, never forming a legal entity, it is very common that this small group, or even a single person, is literally what keeps the group going, and usually when this person gives up, the group cease to exist. Because of that, the most influential UGs are the ones that have survived for a large period of time, and those tend to be more organized and have gone through a rotation of "leaders" along their history, and sometimes even becoming a legal entity. This is usually very rare: as an example, among the more then 500 Java User Groups registered worldwide, there are less then 10 known to be legal entities.

Trying to create "Open Source" user groups is probably a futile exercise, because they would be too broad. But, engaging with and supporting UGs of open source languages and products is a good idea, and OSI can reach out to a large audience doing this. Promoting open source, specially to UG based on open source grounds, and even more UG focused on languages, is something that they will be interested in doing. A lot of UG already give preferential treatment to open source products and projects (during events, tech talks, etc).

User Groups would love to do "hands on" activities, like workshops on participating on open source projects. They also enjoy teaching activities. UGs will probably shy away from license discussions or other more "philosophy" type of activities... Also, choose a license kind of things are less interesting to because most UGs are formed around a technology space, and usually those communities have already chosen a licensing schema.