MARUG Super Tuesday User Conference and JD Edwards

The Mid-Atlantic Regional User Group (MARUG), formerly PeopleSoft MARUG, is hosting a "Super Tuesday User Conference" in October, barely a month away and has yet to finalize an agenda. Although they declare "While those other conferences are still struggling to put together a platform covering all their constituents, we’ve got ours done!" MARUG has done nothing more than publish a hollow agenda complete with nothing more than time slots.

In the past MARUG has struggled mightily to attract JD Edwards World and EnterpriseOne customers due to their intransigence on the PeopleSoft/JD Edwards/Oracle merger issue, seeking to continue with business as usual as a PeopleSoft user group. As a result of this attitude and the complete lack of meaningful sessions and vendors for JD Edwards users MARUG is essentially a non-entity, leaving the Washington, DC area and the Mid-Atlantic region without a functioning user group.

I have attended seven or eight MARUG conferences in the last five years and JDE attendance is usually in the 10-12 person range. I stopped going when presenter Tony Brackett of The iConsortium and I were the only JD Edwards users in attendance at one conference.

For MARUG to open registration and expect users to commit $100 to yet another MARUG conference that does not promise JD Edwards content is an example of why this regional user group continues to flounder.

MARUG, if you build it they will come. Start providing JD Edwards content per your Quest charter and JD Edwards users will show up.