Tim Vander Kooi's Blog

I have been working with (and in) the IT community for many many years now, currently working with Culminis, a Microsoft user group support organization. I have pushed within the Culminis organization for a more open and embracing attitude in an effort to move beyond the scope that Microsoft would have us limit ourselves to, so that we can truly be about community as a whole. Unfortunately, these requests have fallen on deaf ears.

To be perfectly honest, this is not just a Microsoft/Culminis issue (I know there are plenty of people out there who love to see anything that Microsoft does not do perfectly and immediately brand them as evil), but rather a shortsighted nature that seems to be quite prevalent within the IT culture as a whole. Every IT company that I know of has set up “community” sites as a means of support, yet as soon as a person’s needs go beyond that company’s product line the “community” quickly shuts them out. You will not find a link on HP’s community page to IBM’s “community” page, not a link on Apple’s “community” page to Microsoft’s “community” page. They are indeed communities, but they are very small sheltered communities. These limited viewpoint pages had a time and place, but I would argue that the time for them has past. It is time to step outside the control of the corporate heads who care not about communities and support other than as a means of making and proving an ROI.

As a result of this, myself and a group of friends from many areas of various IT communities have launched a new a site: www.itcommunityportal.com which is built to truly be by the IT Community for the IT Community. We do not discriminate based on if you are an administrator or a developer, we do not care if you use Linux, Mac OS, or Windows, we care only that you are a member of the IT Community at large and that you have a desire to help us learn and grow.

Please come over and check us out: www.itcommunityportal.com . If you have web site creation skills we would REALLY love to have you drop us a line as we are trying to improve the functionality and capabilities of the new site as quickly as we can.