HPE RUGs – 2020 “season” is not likely to restart before September!

At a time when we are all rather nervously looking out the window to see what’s up, the news is looking rather bleak when it comes to gatherings of any kind. While some countries and states have extended social distancing to include ten individuals, for most of us it’s still limited to just the immediate family. For a community that simply loves to network, it’s hard to imagine such a sustained period of isolation not having an impact and yet, social media is liberally littered with instances of creativity when it comes to how best to accommodate almost no social interaction.

The latest from the BITUG committee as contained in their Spring Newsletter 2020 holds news many of us looking for some return to normalcy had been hoping to read. In the email promoting the newsletter, BITUG committee member Collin Yates informed the NonStop community of how, due to the COVID_19 Pandemic:

“We are NOT going to post any hard copies of the Newsletter out this Spring as we believe most people are working from home in UK and therefore a hard copy would just end up in their office incoming mail centers.  “As we have made you aware, we will not hold a BIG SIG this year due to the current situation. We will however be putting on our single day non vendor-sponsored Little SIG in London in December. Stay tuned for further information when we have finalized plans.”

Will other events be equally problematic? BITUG Yates responded to further requests for updates with the observation that other events will likely have to be rescheduled as well and that he “can’t foresee a lot of people travelling on planes this year – not until a vaccine is readily available.”

For those of us who received an email from Kathy Wood, the NonStop RUGs 2020 calendar looked every bit as bleak as BITUG had suggested.  If you missed seeing this latest update, it is attached below and thank you Kathy for keeping us all informed. As for HPE Discover, the big-tent marketing event of the year for HPE, it’s going virtual and although news of how exactly this will be conducted is being circulated to some parties, it’s still a bit of a mystery. Will it work? Will it attract the thousands of virtual attendees who would normally turn up for the traditional event? It will be very interesting to see how this unfolds and to what degree it influences future big-tent events should it prove successful.

One side benefit is that many of you have now become quite proficient navigating between Skype / Teams, GoToMeeting, WebEx and ZOOM (and many more variants). Many of the most recent conversations involving HPE have been conducted using ZOOM and it’s been a bit of an eye-opener when it comes to the ease with which IT professionals have adapted to sharing everything from ideas to where they can be seen having coffee and even embracing virtual beer busts. Then again, many of us a champing at the bit to just get out there, network and enjoy adult beverages in the real world.

As for the 2020 Calendar of events, here it is and you may want to check back with your local HPE NonStop team members as there may be still more updates coming in the weeks ahead.

March

• DUST (Phoenix) – cancelled 3/6

April

• NYTUG (New Jersey) – cancelled 3/9
• OZTUG webinar                               https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5316331540616525579
• MEXTUG – cancelled 4/9

May

• GTUG (Boeblingen/Stuttgart) – cancelled 3/12
• MATUG (Washington DC) – cancelled 3/17

June

• BITUG (London) – cancelled 3/26
• HPE Discover – Virtual – starting 6/22

September

• GTUG – 9/7-9 (added 4/7/20)
• VNUG – cancelled 3/23
• NYTUG (New Jersey) – 9/15 (added 3/17/20)
• ATUG (Atlanta) – 9/16 (added 3/17/20)
• MATUG (Washington DC) – 9/17 (added 3/17/20)
• CTUG (Toronto) – 9/23-24

November

• Partner Technical Symposium – 11/13
• NonStop TBC (San Francisco) – 11/15-18

And take note – it’s not too far out there to begin thinking of 2021

SunTUG – Save the date for our 2021 Sunshine Summit Events!!

Friday, 5 March 2021 – Sunshine Summit