Users who paid to attend next month"s HP World 2005 -- which was canceled this week after user group Interex, which sponsored the event, closed its doors -- will receive complimentary passes to Hewlett-Packard Co."s HP Technology Forum in September, according to the president of one of the three remaining HP user groups.

Kristie Browder, the president of user group Encompass and the IT director at Silicon Laboratories Inc. in Austin, said her organization set up a call center and created a Web site to answer questions about HP World"s demise and offer information about how to register for the Technology Forum. Encompass officials met with HP this week after Interex shuttered its doors after 30 years in operation.

The number to call for registration information is 877-216 5400. The Web site is www.hptechnologyforum.com/participants/index.html.

Browder said she doesn"t know why Interex shut down but noted that her group will offer its members a place in Encompass. "We will reach out to them eventually. We"re trying to make sure everything runs its course as far as what"s happening at Interex with respect to them," she said.

Browder said she likes the idea of one consolidated HP user event and said the Technology Forum better suited her organization because of its technology focus.

For the first time, HP is offering users who attend that event the opportunity to train alongside HP presales engineers and HP certified professionals. "We"ve always cared about having a mass of technical people at an event more than anything because of the networking and the dialogues that go on at those events," she said.

Browder said Encompass and Interex have had common goals and in the past and have partnered on the HP events. This year, however, HP issued an invitation to all four major HP user groups to take part in the HP Technology Forum in New Orleans instead of HP World. "And we accepted that invitation, as [did] the OpenView Forum."

The OpenView Forum International (OVFI), which represents users of HP"s management software, will take part in the HP Technology Forum by helping to develop content for some of the sessions. As they had done in previous years, the OVFI and HP jointly held a separate software-related user conference, which took place last month in Denver.

The OVFI"s board initially announced that it would hold next year"s conference as part of the HP Technology Forum. But the OVFI later reconsidered that decision and voted to hold its own conference. That event, called the HP Software Forum, is set for next June, although the location and exact dates have yet to be determined.

The third remaining user group is ITUG, which represents customers of the former Tandem Computers Inc. It plans to hold its annual ITUG Summit conference in San Jose in October.

Interex, Browder said, was "invited to participate just like we were in the Technology Forum, but they chose to do HP World."

The HP Technology Forum is scheduled to take place in New Orleans Sept. 12-15.