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Tim Penhey: Benefits of ACCU

Posted by: Tim Penhey on 05 July 2006
What do you really get out of being an ACCU member?

Community

I think that one of the biggest benefits is being associated with a large group of like minded people. ACCU members tend to be IT professionals who really care about the quality of the work they produce. ACCU members are the type of people who go out and spend their own money on books from which to learn new languages or techniques.

The accu-general mailing list is the main conversational list of ACCU. There is no specified topic for discussions. It can go for days with few posts, but then someone may ask a particular question or make a controversial statement, then there can easily be 50 to 100 posts a day. Due to the variable nature of the flow for this mailing list I really suggest not to get it in digest form. I did originally and never really read it that much as it is hard to identify the interesting bits in it.

I lurked on the list for several years before ever posting. Don’t feel as this is a requirement though, others started vocally from the day they joined and haven't stopped.

Magazines

ACCU publishes two magazines every two months, CVu and Overload. Both contain quality articles that often stretch the mind of the reader.

Learning

Getting exposed to the ideas of others is a great way to learn. New things are rarely created from scratch, but from standing on the shoulders of giants. There are many giants (both metaphorically and physically) in ACCU from which you can learn and expand on their ideas.

Conference

The spring conference in Oxford each year is fantastic. It is relatively small as IT conferences go with attendance limited to around 300 – 350. The size though also gives it a much more community feel, where you can easily chat with the speakers during breaks. It also gives you a chance to catch up people you haven’t seen for a while, or to put a face to the emails of people on accu-general, or to meet with the author of an article that you particularly liked reading.

Getting Published

Both of the magazines produced by ACCU contain articles from members. The writers of the articles receive no money or special benefits from writing the articles other than the kudos of being published. There is though great satisfaction to be had when someone emails you out of the blue to thank you for writing the article, or to have someone tell you at the conference "I really liked that article that you wrote". Writing articles is a great way to cement ideas or to learn new things. Writing for ACCU also gives the feeling of being more a part of the community rather than an observer from the outside.

A Statement of Intent

Most Greenpeace members will never chain themself to a railing, and RSPB members don't run round actively protecting birds, and unfortunately most ACCU members won't write articles.

However being an ACCU member is as much a statement of what you want to do and be perceived as, as it is about directly advancing yourself.

So what are you waiting for?

  • Join ACCU
  • Get on accu-general
  • Participate on accu-general
  • Write for the magazines

If you are going to stop at any particular step, at least do the first two.