APEX SIG

Question

Hi all,
For those of you not already aware, the newly formed APEX SIG (Special Interests Group) has now announced the leadership and officer positions. The positions are as follows -
President: Steve Howard
Vice President: Dimitri Gielis
Web Content Coordinator: Doug Gault
Web Master: Tony Jedlinski
SIG Officer: John Scott
SIG Officer: Scott Spendolini
SIG Officer: Vikas Agnihotri
I'm sure that most (if not all) of those names are already familiar to you if you've used these forums for any length of time. The amount of Application Express knowledge and experience of each of the other SIG officers and leaders is definitely going to be an asset to the SIG as a whole. Now that the positions have been formalised I'm very keen to be working alongside such a capable and enthusiastic group of people.
The purpose of the APEX SIG is to provide a centralised, cohesive resource for anyone and everyone involved with Application Express. There are already lots of plans as to what areas and forms this resource will cover, however one of the key areas that I'm very excited about is that the SIG will effectively become a single unified channel through which we can give Oracle feedback about APEX and the direction that we (as users) would like it to head in. I'm sure everyone reading this probably has a feature they'd like to see implemented in APEX, or perhaps doesn't like the way something currently works, or has found a bug they'd like to see fixed. Well through the SIG, we will be able to pass those ideas/concerns/bugs etc directly through to Oracle team.
Now, what has this got to do with me I hear you ask? Well it's simple, the entire purpose of the SIG is to represent the users of APEX, so if you don't get involved we won't be able to represent your views. There are already lots of plans being made about what we can do, but ultimately without the support and involvement of everyone on these forums (and outside of them) then we won't truely be able to act on your behalf and in your best interests. There will be more announcements soon about ways in which you can help, so I'd urge everyone who is an advocate of Application Express and is keen to make this tool better and more widely adopted to get involved.
As some of you may know I already host the Unofficial Apex Wiki (http://wiki.shellprompt.net/bin/view/Apex/WebHome), as part of the centralised resource plans we will be migrating the Wiki so that it falls within the APEX SIG, now obviously it makes sense to 'eat our own dogfood' and use an APEX based Wiki so we may require some volunteers to help with that migration.
On a final note, I want to stress again how important it is for us to have your involvement in this, if you've ever sat and thought "I wish APEX did this..." or "I hate the way it does that...", then please get involved with the SIG, let's all make APEX an even better development environment because we'll all benefit from that.
The APEX SIG Website is at -
http://apexsig.oracle.ioug.org/
Thanks for reading.
John.

Answer 1

Thank you Carl, Arie and Colin,
As Jes explained brilliantly, the seven of us driving this user group are more than ready to get going and make the SIG and website more than wishes and promises.
Based on the extra effort and involvement you and many others display daily on this forum, I have no reason to expect the APEX community will be any less involved in building the SIG. However, I second Jes' encouragement to the community to participate and the warning that whatever great things we do to create a structure and format, we seven can only create so much content. It will be the active participation by the SIG members that will really add value.
Steve