February, 2010
A Dutch regional chapter of the Computer Measurement Group is starting up! If you speak Dutch, you will find additional resources at the end of this article. For the sake of this wider audience, this contribution will be in English.
The focus of the group is still to be determined in detail, so if you feel you can make a contribution, let us know. At this time there appears to be a lot of attention (and contribution) in the area of web performance analysis, stress and load testing, and capacity management. We are also in contact with a number of companies providing products and services in this area, and interested in strengthening the local ties.
Right now we need to estimate the type of interest there is in the Netherlands. Among the goals of the Dutch regional chapter would be to advance the recognition of Computer Measurement as a professional discipline. Its membership would be able to exchange knowledge about techniques, tools, models and approaches to influence customers and senior management.
A little bit about myself. I am an independent IT strategy professional with a strong quantitative background. In addition to consulting, I present, speak, and write weekly in Computable, a Dutch trade magazine. Last December I presented at the CMG conference in Dallas some measurements of the Computing Clouds of Amazon and Google. You can find that presentation (with audio) on Slideshare.
Setting up the Dutch CMG chapter really is an exciting opportunity for me to bring together this community. In the process we are also trying out various social media tools. For example the LinkedIn group NLCMG is very successful, and has attracted 30 people in a short time. If you are not already in, please register and we'll approve you. Please contribute.
There is also a Dutch blog covering the start up phase at http://cmg-nl.blogspot.com/ and a mailing list. You can subscribe to the mailing list by sending a blank message to nlcmg@getresponse.com.
Finally, I have found Twitter to be a successful medium for communicating our message. Twitter gives quite a bit of click-through to the other media.
Tot ziens!
Peter van Eijk, +31 6 2268 4939, peter @ digitalinfrastructures.nl