IT Professionals Community in India

Day after day, one thing that bothers me is why isn't there a IT professionals community. i can think of various answers, not knowing the correct one:
1. IT Pros are trained to be sceptical and paranoid. they are told not to trust users asking for more rights to their desktops - look for any suspicious activity :)
2. they are too busy with their work to think about anything else.
3. Sharing to them means letting out company secret. after all they hold the secret of any organisations infrastructure architecture - the first thing a black hat wants to know.
4. In India, we don't have sense of community to start with.

probably the reasons are at a psychological level and totally baseless too... but u know the critical mind..

what can we do to improve the situation?

1. Get a public community website?
Available at: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/default.mspx
Has interesting sections like:
1. Most Active IT Pro Newsgroups
2. Most Active IT Pro Discussions
3. IT Pro KB Articles
4. Top IT Pro Downloads
5. Links to webcasts, webchats, seminars etc.

2. Have a community user group locally
IT Pro Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were launched in variuos user groups around the country in the past 3 months or so... some useful links to see if you are in India and are an IT Pro:
Bangalore User Group
Chennai User Group
Mumbai User Group
Hyderabad User Group
Siliguri's Windows Support User Group
Coimbatore IT User Group
Delhi IT Pro User Group

and there is an umbrella group for all IT Pro user groups in the world:
www.culminis.org
And they are offering annual membership fee waived if you join before July 1st, 2004.
i really like their membership criteria of at least 12 months of operation as an official organization and 50 or more registered members.. additionally, they have thought of membership level on the size of the user group... the question that i would like to put is - Does the number matter or it is no. of active members?
i have my reservations on the benefits that a US based organisation can provide in India. Do we need an Indian chapter of the same? Any takers here?

3. we even have a cool logo for the IT Pro Community in India:


Now if someone can throw in a cool suggestion to heat up the scene..

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Comments

Ron Gandiza said…
The number of IT professionals in the world, including India, is growing rapidly. The problem is that the rate of technology innovation continues to outpace the ability for IT professionals to learn and implement the new technology. In order to decrease this "learning curve," and increase the rate of adoption for new technology in the marketplace, IT profesionals must adopt a philosophy already leveraged greatly by the developer community - collaboration. The question is - who will start the collaboration? Culminis has had a few small groups from India apply for membership in the Culminis Alliance, an organization that has 450 member organizations representing over 280,000 IT professionals worldwide. However, to develop a self-sufficient support structure for IT Pro User Groups in India, it is imperative that IT professionals in India first create founding groups that are large enough to create an active community. Culminis does not support individual IT professionals. Culminis assists IT Pro User Groups with resources and guidance so that they can support their local IT professionals. This model is scalable, but it requires the commitment of a few core IT Pro User Groups. Who will step up to the challenge?
August 13, 2004 at 11:35:00 AM GMT+5:30
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