A Difficult Change of Plans Regarding SkiLUG

Bill Malchisky  January 16 2013 09:00:00 PM

This is the blog entry I never thought I would have to write. With apologies, SkiLUG 2013 is cancelled for this year.

My team and I started planning SkiLUG 2013 during Lotusphere 2012 and garnered a lot of interest in what we were planning for the community. People from multiple time zones were excited. From that basis, we started immediately with finding a location and proceeding with all of the action items that one does when planning such an event. Things were going along well, until... Hurricane Sandy decimated the southern most part of my town and the New York City metro-area as a whole. A week later winter storm Athena hit the same area. Several local business that were interested in co-sponsoring our event were hit hard. Then the fiscal cliff issue started and some companies needed to pause on early Q1 expenditures until their new January financial picture revealed itself. The financial risk became too great. My mother taught me a sound lesson when I was young -- never engage in business matters on assumed income. I've seen too many people, projects, and companies get hurt over the years by not following this advice.

In the end, out of ethics, I am unable to provide an offering to the community that would otherwise disrespect your investment of time and resources. I feel that you must get something out of your time away from the office to warrant your commitment. I have such a great admiration for the IBM/Lotus community and want to have those relationships remain in good standing. At this point, my team unanimously decided that we need to pause this year's event. We will revisit this and plan something soon. Thank you to all the attendees for showing interest as well. I appreciate your understanding, as we are all quite disappointed, but know it is the correct decision.

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