Quick Facts About COOUG
For more information see About COOUG.

Background

The Connecticut Object Oriented Users Group (COOUG) was formed in Fall 1993 and had its first public meeting on November 11, 1993. In October 1994 COOUG adopted a Charter and By-Laws, and elected a set of officers, directors, and advisors.  COOUG is believed to be the oldest continuously operating Object Users Group in the world.

Mission

COOUG has the overall mission of promoting a more common awareness, understanding, usage, and acceptance of object technology by both the business and technical communities within the area.  Our group offers frequent exchanges of information, experiences, and strategies that help software systems to become more flexible and more adaptive to the ever-changing business climate.

Regular meetings are held in the Hartford Connecticut area and focus on presenting practical real-world information on object technology, with emphasis on concepts and strategies that can bring business value and return on investment.

Special interest groups explore object technology topics of more specialized interest.

Non Profit Status

COOUG operates as a non-profit organization per 501(c) Internal Revenue Service.

Sponsorship

COOUG has several financial sponsors who provide sustaining funding for meeting expenses, certain speaker reimbursements, and other ongoing expenses.  COOUG also has many supporters who contribute books, magazines, products, and other items of value to our attendees.  COOUG acknowledges sponsors with a "thank you" on the web page and a small amount of promotional web page space.  If you would like to sponsor or support COOUG, please take a look at our Sponsor Agreement.

Publications

COOUG publishes a web page at http://www.cooug.org containing meeting notices, events, and items of interest to the professional community. An E-Mail meeting notification is sent from time to time to those with internet addresses.

Demographics

COOUG is based in Hartford Connecticut and generally holds meetings in and around Hartford.  The monthly Users Group meeting typically attracts about 50 attendees. Special events have drawn almost 300 attendees. Of the attendees, generally a third are new people who have not attended before and the remainder are on the regular COOUG mailing list.

About 70% of the attendees come from the Hartford County area, with most of the others coming from the counties New Haven, Fairfield, Litchfield. There are a few attendees who travel from lower Massachusetts and a few from Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey.

Job Categories

COOUG attendees fall into six broad categories.

Executives include corporate upper management and small business owners.
Managers include supervisory and second line managers.
Programmers include engineers and related technical professionals.
Analysts include internal corporate consultants.
Consultants contains individuals and members of larger consulting firms.
Other includes auditors, writers, instructors, and managers of those areas.

Attendee Familiarity with Object Technology

A profile of attendees was made in Spring 1995. COOUG attendees have a normal distribution of experience with objects. This distribution cuts across the various job titles and also across the company representation

Company Representation

Electronic meeting notices are sent to more than 650 people who come from 150 employers and fourteen universities. Many of these notices are redistributed by recipients to other interested associates.

Many of the major companies represented by COOUG have an extensive investment in legacy systems which are integral to their business operations.  (as of summer 2003)

Universities

Please send corrections and ideas to cooug@aol·com