IPMA Home | IPMA News IPMA News : May 2007

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

May 12, 2007, Board Meeting

Members Present: Thomas Bynum, Pam Derkacht, Phil Grigg, Andy Hill, Mace Maciejewski, Fran Muskopf, Christy Ridout and Allen Schmidt. Phil Coates, CFO and Jim Andersen, the Forum Events Manager were also present.

Allen Schmidt, IPMA Chair, opened the May 2007 meeting of the IPMA Board of Directors at 7:30 a.m.

Secretary/Treasurer: The minutes from the April 2007 Board meeting were approved.

The Board approved the April 2007 financial status and activities reports.

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Business and Finance: No report necessary

Forum: Jim Andersen presented the 2007 Forum Status Report:

1. Corporate Sponsors:
   • Have commitments from 23 of 27 returning sponsors. (25 participated in 2006)
   • New sponsors may include Oracle, Computer Associates, Symantec, GuardianEdge and General Micro Systems for a total of 28 sponsors for next year.
   • Twenty-two sponsors have paid their fees
   • Six current sponsors will not use their booths this year. They are Unisys, Net Appliances, Filenet, Semantic Arts, Point B Solutions and SafeHarbor.
2. Vendors:
   • Available booths was reduced from 45 to 37.
   • Thirty-one booths have been sold. (40 were sold in 2006)
   • Recruiting of vendors for booths is getting more difficult.
   • To help offset the reduced income resulting from having fewer vendors than planned for in the budget, one additional corporate sponsor was recruited for the 2007/2008 event year.
3. Cheney Room: The Cheney room will not be used this year. Space freed up by the reduced number of vendor booths will be used in place of the Cheney room.

4. Free booths: Booths have been offered to PMI, HDI, OMUG, OMWBE and DOP.

5. Forum brochure: The Forum brochure has been completed and has been sent to the graphic artist.

6. Forum Special Interest Agenda: The following organizations will have one hour sessions on Wednesday the 23rd:
   • 10:15 - 11:15 HDI
   • 11:30 - 12:30 Washington Computer Incident Response Center
   • 1:00 - 2:00 OMWBE
   • 2:15 - 3:15 PMI (tentative)
7. Forum "Success Stories": Jack Tollefson, of Coraxis is lining up the events. Tentatively HECB and DOL (Border Crossing Project).

8. Food services: There will be no food or espresso service at Forum this year. Last year patronage was low and not profitable for the vendors.

9. Coffee service: Free coffee service will be provided in the lobby before the keynote speaker. This will hopefully keep attendees out of the Pavilion until it opens at 9:00 a.m.

10. Internet service: ReachOne Internet will again offer "free" wireless Internet connectivity for all attendees and vendors at the Forum.

11. Potential Ethics Issue: A question was raised as to the propriety of state employees sitting on a panel with a vendor discussing how the vendors product was used to implement some agency initiative. Andy Hill had occasion to meet with one of the attorneys on the State Ethics Commission staff and discussed the subject. It was stated that it was a very fine line that the presenters needed to be aware of. Some type of disclaimer may need to be stated before or after any such panel presentation. Andy Hill will draft a set of guidelines that will be provided to future panel members once adopted.

Professional Development: Andy Hill reported that the Peer Mentoring seminar made a profit of about $2,000. There were about 90 paid attendees. Evaluations report that the seminar was well received.

Currently there are about 50 people registered for the Neil Whitten seminar to be held in June. Phil Coates reports that 31 have paid thus far.

The next event will be in August and will be presented by Seitel Leeds and Associates entitled "IT Engineering – Professionalizing IT."

LeaderPath: Mace Maciejewski is hoping for close to 30 people registering for the program this year. Thus far there are just two capstone project stewards.

Executive Seminar: Phil Grigg reported that the agenda committee will be meeting today to begin deciding on topics for the speakers. Registration will be opened up in June.

Communications: Fran Muskopf reported that she and Mary Ellen Bradley have been working on the development of a brochure that could be used at multiple events. Allen noted that it should be something that doesn’t need to be updated more than perhaps once a year. A schedule of events could be inserted since that might change over the year.

OTHER BUSINESS:

CIO Breakfast: Allen discussed the summary of the attendance and evaluation responses prepared by Dennis Jones. The attendees felt the event was very worthwhile and they would like to have more such events each year. Dennis proposed a second event in July. The board agreed that perhaps three CIO events per year should be planned. The schedule for CIO meetings will be developed at the November board planning retreat. For this year, the second event will be held in conjunction with the Executive Seminar. There was a discussion about the need to raise the level of topics from tactical to strategic. The board is aware that the planning and agenda development is up to the CIO’s.

Event registration system update: Fran Muskopf reported that there was a meeting of the team last Friday. The test team will continue to meet every other Friday. The next meeting will be May 18^th. It was noted that the system is working but there are still issues. One of the biggest issues is communications with the team. Team members aren’t notified when changes have been implemented to the system.

At the June board meeting the decision to use the system for future events will be made.

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

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