Gretchen,
You misunderstand me if you think I said that ASUG needs to retool itself to cater for the consultant. In no way did I imply or say that. What I feel is that consultants could be leveraged more to impart their knowledge to users at the user group. Consultants have more interaction with a variety of users which could be of great value to the user. It would be up to ASUG and it's committee to judge and gauge which consultants can impart good value and which ones are out to sell....
Having done a few of these myself, it was my personal experience that ASUG did not give adequate attention to the content being delivered. I have no idea as to the reason but that was my experience on several (actually all) occasions.
I guess the main point is this "Would you gain more from listening to a user who uses SAP Event Management to track their shipments out of their warehouse in Plano, Texas or the architect of that solution, together with 15 other similar scenarios implemented globally?" Not all companies are the same and in order to be able to get value out of if for your company you need to hear from folks that have differing perspectives.
Thank you for your comments - Greatly appreciated by the community
Kevin