ESILUG's History

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History

ESILUG has been around since about 1979, under different names over the years as the field evolved.

The following points offer some highlights from ESILUG's history. It's accurate as far as we know, and definitely incomplete.

• 1979 or early 1980. The DCVAXLUG was founded as a DECUS Local User Group. The organizational meeting was held at Georgetown University. Lou Rotolo was the first LUG Chair.

• ????. Phil Miller stepped into the LUG Chair role.

• ????. Dave Keller became the LUG Chair.

• ????. DCVAXLUG was renamed to the Capital Area VAX/VMS LUG.

• Jan 1987. Ed Herold began supporting the Capital Area VAX/VMS LUG as the LUG's DEC Counterpart.

• Mar 1987. The LUG held a "DEC Day" featuring Grace Hopper as the keynote speaker.

• May 1988. Ed Herold was awarded the DEC Counterpart of the Year award by DECUS.

• Sep 1988. Longtime LUG Chair Dave Keller stepped down from the post. Steve Altemus then took the reins.

• 1990-1994. Susan Doman, Audrey Byrd, and Colleen Pearsall served as the LUG's DEC Counterparts during this time.

• 1990? Sherrian Finneran became the LUG Chair.

• Nov 1994. Ed Herold resumed his role as the LUG's DEC Counterpart.

• May 1995. DECUS held its Spring Symposium in Washington, DC. This was the first DECUS symposium to feature a track on the World-Wide Web. There was a 30th-anniversary celebration of the 36-bit platforms.

• Sep 1995. Sherrian Finneran stepped down as LUG Chair.

• Nov 1995. Jim Becker began as LUG Chair.

• Feb 1996. The LUG Steering Committee decided to rename the LUG from the Capital Area OpenVMS LUG to ESILUG, in recognition of the fact that few IT people dealt with single-platform shops any more.

• Nov 1996. The first "SuperLUG" meeting was held, a joint meeting of three DECUS LUGs in the Baltimore/Washington area: ESILUG, DILUG (Desktop Integration LUG under Debbie Driesman), and the Baltimore LUG.

• Mar 1997. ESILUG distributed its last printed newsletter (LUGnotes). All subsequent ESILUG news went out by e-mail list (ESILUG-LIST).

• Apr 1997. SuperLUG II, combining ESILUG and DILUG, featuring John Loether and Jeffrey Harrow on the future of computing.

• Oct 1997. SuperLUG III, featuring Jim Rainville and Joe Mahan on OpenVMS/NT integration, and Mark Minasi on Windows NT 5.0.

• May 1998. SuperLUG IV, featuring John Smith and Ed Herold on NT integration, and Tony Scanga on multiplatform management tools.

• Jun 1998. Compaq Computer Corporation acquired DEC. DECUS became a Compaq user group, and the DECUS LUGs followed suit. Compaq had acquired Tandem the year before.

• Sep 1998. SuperLUG V, featuring Terry Stowers and Thad Anderson. This was the last LUG meeting billed as a "SuperLUG" meeting.

• Mar 1999. ESILUG members took a ride on The LUG Boat. This was a Potomac River cruise sponsored by Compaq as a gesture of customer appreciation. Roughly 150 people participated. The featured speakers were John Loether and Terry Shannon, but the cruise began with a live singer, Mike Reeher, who sang the LUG Boat song.

• Nov 2000. The DECUS U.S. Chapter incorporated under the name Encompass, the Enterprise Computing Association. DECUS LUGs became Encompass LUGs.

• Mar 2001. Compaq OpenVMS Engineering Presents: Technical Update Days was a two-day event featuring many speakers from OpenVMS Engineering. The meeting was held in partnership with ESILUG.

• May 2002. HP acquired Compaq. Encompass became an HP user group.

• Aug 2004. The Encompass Board of Directors presented Ed Herold with its 2004 HP Recognition Award. This is an annual award from Encompass for an HP employee who has shown great service and support to Encompass and to the customer base.

• Oct 2005. Ed Herold, after many great years as a LUG Counterpart, took the early retirement option from HP. ESILUG wishes Ed all the best!

• 1996-2005. Looking at the 10-year period from 1996 through 2005, ESILUG held 44 meetings, featuring the following topics:

  • 15 meetings: Windows
  • 13 meetings: OpenVMS
  • 13 meetings: servers
  • 8 meetings: networks
  • 6 meetings: multi-platform management
  • 4 meetings: security
  • 4 meetings: storage
  • 4 meetings: Unix (Digital/Compaq/HP flavors)
  • 3 meetings: Linux
  • 3 meetings: customer dialogue with Digital/Compaq/HP
  • 3 meetings: industry trends
  • 2 meetings: Internet, WWW, e-mail

  (Some meetings featured multiple topics.)

• Jul 2006. Walt Saiko of HP became the new HP ESILUG Counterpart.

• Sep 2007. ESILUG held its final meeting at our longtime meeting place, HP's COP (Capital Office Park) office building in Greenbelt, Maryland. Appropriately, our speaker was John Smith of HP, a longtime friend and supporter of ESILUG, and also one of the speakers at the first meeting under the ESILUG name (1996).