‘Usergroups Can Help Members Become More Productive’

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: Usergroups, close-knit communities of technology specialists, have been an integral part of a geek’s life. They focus on online, as well as offline, interactions. How-ever, due to the convenience online interactions offer, they have become an important online tool for most members. One such usergroup is the Chennai .Net user group (CNUG), which focuses on Microsoft’s .Net technology. CNUG is the first usergroup formed specifically for .Net technology in India. The Financial Express spoke with CNUG president, M Anand, and CNUG member N Suresh, on a range of issues concerning the group and usergroups in general. Excerpts:

Can you tell us about the genesis of the group?
The concept of usergroups was rather new to India about a year back. There were usergroups in Mumbai but there were none in Chennai. CNUG was started during July 2002. We also got an information technology major to sponsor our offline activities. The offline activities also help as we get to meet personally and know each other.

What has been the response?
The response has been very good. We started off with less than 10 members. Currently, we have about 1,150 members and the enrollment is growing every day.

Can you elaborate on your offline and online activities.
In the offline meeting, we generally choose a topic and get an expert to share his views about it. It is essentially a knowledge sharing session. Also, it helps in face-to-face interactions.

In the online part, the members participate in discussions and the problems posted get a quick response. Members realised that day-to-day issues cannot be sorted out by offline meetings. Hence, the online part of the group becomes crucial. So, they post their queries to which other members respond.

Can you provide some examples of how members have benefited from the usergroup?
A lady who works for a Chennai-based software firm needed to urgently know about a particular concept called ‘clustering.’ She had no idea what it was. So, she just posted a query to the group. Members of group responded with some resources and also provided referrals to other websites. The basic idea is that not everybody knows everything. There is a huge group of people, where some people can point to you the sources of the knowledge required.