Dutch VMUG 2008

So some of my friends in NL had their annual event yesterday, the Dutch VMUG 2008. But this gets me thinking. What is the purpose of a VMUG? Well this was taken from the Vmware web site:

The VMware User Group (VMUG) program is designed to encourage and support communities of VMware users who want to hold regular meetings in their local area. The purpose of these gatherings is to provide a forum in which VMware users can share best practices and expertise, and VMware can in turn obtain feedback from the user community.

We actually only started a Local VMUG in Israel (led by Ben Hagai) and we just had our second meeting recently last week. The idea of having a small community of people who all use the same technology, and come across similar problems throughout their day and sharing that knowledge - that is what I would like to see in a VMUG. An intimate group of 30-50 people, meeting once every 3-4 months for a morning to discuss technology, best practices, maybe get a technology update, listen to a technical lecture and things like that. To me having an event like the one titled in this post, seems to defeat the purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure it is beneficial, interesting, and highly successful. I mean there were over 600 people who registered and participated in the event. But with amount of people I do not see how you can keep this an intimate group and therefore how this can be a VMUG??