Oracle User Group Cancels European Conference

The EMEA Oracle Usergroup Council (EOUC) has cancelled without explanation a user conference due to be held in Amsterdam next month.

EOUC2007, scheduled for May 3 and 4 at the RAI conference center, was to have given users a chance to hear about new product developments from Oracle Corp. staff, and to meet other organizations using Oracle, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel software.

Poor attendance may have been to blame for the cancellation, said a spokeswoman for the Association of French-speaking Oracle Users, AUFO, one of the member organizations of EOUC.

"Very few people had registered, and with only one month to go, they preferred to cancel the event," said Sylvie Combet.

Around 50 members of AUFO were signed up to attend the Amsterdam conference, far fewer than French organization's own event on March 21, which attracted 200 participants, she said.

National Oracle user groups received no warning of the cancellation, announced in a short e-mail Wednesday afternoon. The same message was posted to the event Web site at http://www.eouc2007.org/ on Thursday.

"It came as a surprise," said James Haslam, general manager of the U.K. Oracle User Group.

It was a bigger surprise for Summit, the Dutch company handling registrations for the event, however: staff there were still taking reservations on Thursday morning, unaware that the conference had been cancelled. According to Summit's Web site, bookings for the two-day conference can still be made at a special price of €600 (US$800) excluding tax through April 19, and €700 after that date.

Three representatives of EOUC contacted for this story declined to comment, saying that all communication would be made via the event Web site.

At the U.K. Oracle User Group, Haslam said he had no idea why the conference had been cancelled, but speculated that users preferred to attend events nearer home. The U.K. group's own event, held in Birmingham, England, in November, attracted 2,600 participants. The group bills it as the largest Oracle exhibition in Europe.