How has the demise of Interex affected your membership? Our community is at 10,000. We'd like to increase membership over this next year. Primarily, the way we're hoping to address that is to embrace former Interex members. We've extended free membership to any former Interex members to March 2006. We have been growing our local presence within the local user groups.

How many of the 100,000 former Interex members have joined so far? A ballpark 150 members have joined to date. We plan to grow our membership by 25 percent. We are continuing our outreach efforts to the Interex community. In addition, Encompass is working closely with the HP Certified Professional Program and has extended offers to that group.

Are former Interex members a bit jaded about the group's treatment by HP? Not the ones I'm dealing with. I could understand it. We've all gone through times where we've gone through disappointments, especially in a volunteer position. I can't say we're immune to it, either. Encompass has had its moments.

What are your plans for the HP Technology Forum this year? The Technology Forum is going to be held in Houston during hurricane season. We had roughly 4,000 people at the Orlando event, which we were grateful for, considering that the event had moved [from New Orleans because of the effects of Hurricane Katrina]. We expect to see double the attendance [this year].

How have Encompass members reacted to Carly Fiorina's departure from HP and the leadership of Mark Hurd? We typically don't get involved in the business politics. We're primarily focused on the technology. Mark did show up at a [users] event in Orlando. He was very well received. It was a different presence than we'd seen in the past. He was very focused and results-oriented.