Crystal Reports:
Getting Your Questions Answered in Newsgroups

You do have other options, too. The user group is a great one. You can go to www.businessobjects.com and sign up for a user group.

What if there's no user group in your area? What then? The answer is don't wait for someone else to start one. Do it yourself.

Some benefits:

• Boost your Crystal Reports skills.
• Network the only way that matters (by doing things with other people and for other people).
• Learn about related areas.
• Gain career contacts.
• Gain technical contacts.
• Make new friends.
• Possibly bring in new business contacts for your company.
• Possibly bring some freelance work for you; good income now, a backup if you lose your job due to the economy or whatever.

How to do it:

• Contact Business Objects and explain you want to start a local Crystal Reports User Group. They may even offer to send out someone to give a talk.
• BO will probably contact the users rather than give you their names. No problem.
• Set up a Website with info about the group. Provide this to BO. This site should also have contact information for reserving a seat at your first meeting (and subsequent ones).

Tips on holding your first meeting.

• You will need 6 to 8 months to get a venue and get people interested in attending. So don't think you can schedule something for next month. Schedule it far out from the present date.
• Keep your first meeting to half a day. The idea is to get maximum turnout. Don't do it on a Friday afternoon.
• A half day venue simplifies things, because you won't have to coordinate lunch.
• Look for a convenient, reasonably priced venue. Hotels are usually your best bet.
• Charge a little extra than the hotel's price per attendee, to cover any contingencies. Note that you will probably need to put down half in advance.
• Provide an early bird discount. Suppose your meeting is on 20JUN. You need $55 per person to break even. So charge $75 per person and make the early bird discount $60 if they register and pay no later than 20MAY.
• Set up a Quicken (or similar) account so you don't comingle funds. Yes, it is OK to actually deposit the actual money into your personal account (or that of a business you own), but you must record the money in your books as belonging to the group.
• As you continue to have meetings, you'll accumulate enough for the group to have its own account.

To keep the group going:

• Write up job descriptions (simple ones) for the Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, and Treasurer. You will do all of these jobs, for now. As the group grows, ask them to nominate someone for each of these positions.
• Write up simple bylaws. You need to establish the general rules of governance, how officers are elected, and what constitutes a quorum for executive committee meetings. See any other organization's bylaws, and adapt those but make yours simpler.
• Get a copy of Roberts Rules of Order, if you do not already have one. Learn this well. Use it for your executive meetings.

This article is copyrighted by Crystalkeen, Mindconnection, and Chelsea Technologies Ltd. It may be freely copied and distributed as long as the original copyright is displayed and no modifications are made to this material. Extracts are permitted. The names Crystal Reports and Seagate Info are trademarks owned by Business Objects.