Engage User Group

When the first IBM Lotus users, developers and administrators started blogging over 20 years ago, no one could have imagined the impact this community had and still has today. Many heroes of that same community are responsible for a lot of the content for e.g. IBM Connect (formerly Lotusphere). It's only the last 15 years or so, starting with UKLUG, ILUG and NLLUG that users (and we use this in a broad sense, as developers and administrators are users as well) started to organize themselves, and meet IRL (in real life). In 2009, the first BeLux (Belgium/Luxembourg) initiative for a Lotus User group was launched, and the very first event, in March 2009 was a big success. We wanted to use this momentum to keep the BLUG going, and decided to create a real organization, with a real structure, and a team of passionate people behind it. As of mid February 2010 BLUG was officially a non-profit organization (vzw/asbl). Our official purpose: "Improve the interaction between users of IBM Collaboration Solution Software & Analytics, and the dialog between users and vendors/partners of IBM. The User Group will meet regularly, to discuss topics in order to educate the attending members. Via mailing and a website these users will be kept up to date." Every year we try to organize a major event, and an extra afternoon meeting. Every time we are happily surprised by the number of people that show up. A positive sign for sure. In Q3 of 2012 we announced that our scope expanded to include The Netherlands. BLUG then stood for 'Benelux Lotus User Group'. When IBM decided the name Lotus was no longer viable, we followed and changed the name of the BLUG events to 'Engage', at the end of 2013. In March 2016 we finally managed to officially change the name for the non-profit organisation to 'Engage User Group'.