IPMA News : April 2006

Note: At its February 2006 meeting, the IPMA Board decided to discontinue this newsletter. Board meeting summaries will continue to be published.

March 9, 2006, Board Meeting

Members Present: Mary Ellen Bradley, Thomas Bynum, Phil Grigg, Sheryl Hall, Andy Hill, Andy Marcelia, Fran Muskopf, Christy Ridout, Darrel Riffe and Shelagh Taylor. Phil Coates, CFO, and Jim Andersen, Forum Events Manager, were also present.

Andy Marcelia, IPMA Chair, opened the March 2006 meeting of the IPMA Board of Directors at 7:35 a.m.

Approval of Minutes:

The minutes from the February 2006 Board meeting were approved.

The minutes from the January Board Planning Meeting were approved.

Secretary/Treasurer’s Report:

The Board reviewed and approved the proposed 2006 annual budget.

The Board approved the February 2006 financial status and activities reports.

Committee Reports:

Executive Lunch: Phil Grigg announced that Washington State Auditor, Brian Sonntag has agreed to be the luncheon speaker. Initial invitations will be e-mailed to CIO’s shortly encouraging them to save the May 16th lunch date for the event. It will be followed up with a mailing of tickets in April. Actual registration will be handled on the IPMA web site.

CIO Lunch: After some discussion about the potential impact on attendance of having this event scheduled just three weeks after the Executive Lunch, it was decided to reschedule the CIO Lunch to some later date.

2006 Executive Conference: Phil Grigg asked for Board members to volunteer to help with topic development.

2006 Forum: Jim Andersen presented the following status report:

Corporate Sponsors:
- Commitments from 22 of 27 returning sponsors.
- New sponsors include Seitel Leeds and Siemens
Vendors:
- Sold 24 of 47 booths.
- Last year at same time 29 booths had been sold.
- DOP and DRS have accepted the offer of “free” booths.
Extra Sponsor Booths:
- Four sponsors will not be using their booths this year: Point B Solutions, Danube, SAS and SafeHarbor.
- Point B has donated their booth to Project Management Institute (PMI).
- Suggested organizations we can donate booths to include: .Net Users Group, and the Olympia Microcomputer Users Group (OMUG).
Corporate Sponsor Recognition: The committee has designed a sign that will be posted in all sponsor booths to acknowledge their sponsorship of IPMA.
Forum Committee:
- Have agreed on and are proposing the perpetual theme for Forum, “Where Government and Technology Meet.” The board approved the theme proposal.
- The schedule for the breakout sessions has been completed.
- Working with sponsors to capture their session descriptions.
Forum flyer: Ready to go to print this week.
Corporate Sponsor Donations: The board reaffirmed it’s decision that financial donations by Corporate Sponsors to help fund IPMA attendee gifts are approved. Attendee gifts provided by a sponsor are not.
Forum Attendee gift:
- The Forum planning committee recommends full sized portfolios rather than the mini that has been given most recently. The board approved.
- Portfolios will be Black and Silver
- Will order 1,300 so they can also be used at the August PD event and the Executive Seminar.
Birds-of-a-feather: The Cheney room is available for other events. The Forum committee has suggested offering the room at no cost to interested groups and/or associations. So far PMI has reserved one hour.
IPMA Booth: Fran Muskopf will coordinate the staffing of this booth for the duration of the Forum. The portfolio attendee gifts will be distributed from this booth again this year.
Espresso stand: Still no luck in finding someone to place a stand inside the pavilion. Only option seems to be having a truck outside the pavilion. Jim will continue to explore options.

Professional Development: Sheryl Hall reported that the announcement for the March 23rd event on “Use Cases” was just released and it is now open for registration. A survey will also be included with the registration.

Andy Hill reported that the April 19th event titled "Surprise, You're the Project Manager" is coming along nicely. Andy also reported that Sandra Smith has been selected to be the speaker for the August event. Sandra asked Andy and Sheryl to poll the board for the top 3 challenges and priorities in the state government work place so she could tailor her presentation. The board identified Change Management and High Tech High Stress as 2 possible areas. Her new book currently with the working title “How to Get What You Rally Want and Ignite the Energy and Motivation to do it” will be hot off the presses and be distributed to seminar attendees.

LeaderPath: Mary Ellen Bradley reported that she met with Dennis Jones, Allen Schmidt and a representative from DOP. They reviewed the last LeaderPath cycle. It appears that the next step is up to DOP. DOP is going to meet internally and determine how this program fits into their plans and how much they can assist the IPMA. They also want to get input from participants in the current class.

Issues to be determined are frequency of program offering, how should class projects be changed.

Communications: Christy Ridout announced that the newsletter has been suspended.

Business & Finance: Mary Ellen Bradley reported that she, Allen Schmidt and Phil Coates met to review the IPMA investment portfolio to discuss a consistent approach or philosophy. Allen suggested that it should have a strong Northwest flavor.

We looked at the existing portfolio and decided that three underperforming holdings should be sold and redirected. The next step is for the committee to meet with our Merrill Lynch account representative to get his input and suggestions. We may elect to have him meet with the whole board at some future board meeting. The committee will them prepare a proposal and present it to the board.

Status of Special Planning Projects:

Registration Process: Andy Hill reported that he met with Phil Grigg and Darrel Riffe to clarify their requirements. He also got a copy of the IPMA data base and talked to Bob Monn about how it is used. He has been contacted by one of the vendors checking on IPMA’s progress on the project. He will be continue his investigation and report back next month.

Web site re-design: Christy Ridout reported that she and Shelagh Taylor have pulled together elements from the January board planning meeting and work previously done on the marketing plan to develop high requirements for the IPMA web site. She has been in contact with a couple of people who do web design work as side jobs in an attempt to get an estimate of time required and cost.

Marketing Plan: Shelagh Taylor reported that she met with Dennis Jones to determine if he was interested in contracting with the IPMA to help develop the marketing plan. Dennis indicated that he was interested. Per a request from Andy Marcelia and Allen Schmidt, she developed a statement of work for that contract. She distributed a copy of that document for board review in terms of content and format, not approval. This document will be used as a model for future contacts.

Shelagh developed an outline of the marketing plan based on the previous work done last fall. Dennis then developed a first cut at the marketing strategy part of the plan. The strategy is made up of three parts, the events plan, the communications plan and the infrastructure plan. All the elements of the plan will not be implemented this events year but will be a staged process over time. She asked that board members review the documents and send comments to her or Christy by March 23rd so an updated document may be presented at the April 13th board meeting.

Choice of Logo: Christy reported that there was a tie between both options sent out to the board last week. The final choice was the green diamond with the capital IPMA.

Other Business:

Corporate Sponsor lunch: 52 sponsors are signed up to attend the lunch on March 14th. Andy Marcelia went through a draft of a Power Point presentation that will be presented at the lunch.

Storage Unit: Phil Coates reported that he has acquired a storage unit. Keys and codes are available to those who need access to it.

Next Meeting: 7:30 a.m. Thursday April 13, 2006, at the Shipwreck Café.

The meeting was adjourned at 9:00 a.m.

IPMA, P.O. Box 1943, Olympia, WA 98507-1943