Anyone involved with Irish ICT user groups and organisations over the years will no doubt be familiar with the challenge of scheduling meetings so that they don’t clash with somewhat similar events aimed at somewhat similar audiences.
The recent establishment of the ICT Stakeholders Group, a sort of United Nations of user groups, may go some way to solving this problem. The ICT Stakeholders Group is an Irish Computer Society (ICS) driven initiative, which had already attracted interest from 22 vendor-neutral institutions, organisations and user groups just before its inaugural event at the end of July 2003.
Frank Cronin, CEO of the ICS, came up with the idea of creating an association to co-ordinate an events calendar after encountering scheduling difficulties when trying to organise an event late last year. He subsequently approached a number of groups with his idea and was overwhelmed by the levels of interest. A framework for the Irish Stakeholders Group has been developed over the last six months or so and the interested parties were due to sign a Memorandum of Understanding at the inaugural meeting.
Although largely based around the idea of co-ordinating a diary of events on a newly launched website, the group plans to hold four joint meetings each year and is also expected to have significant benefits in terms of networking, resource sharing and cross promotion of events. Although user groups have traditionally struggled to hold regular regional events, it is hoped that this problem will be addressed by running collective meetings. Likewise, smaller groups, with more limited resources, are expected to benefit from the opportunity to share speakers, topics and venues.
‘It will be very worthwhile if it avoids scheduling conflicts but it could be a lot more valuable than that,’ says Roy Madden, vice president of the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA). Kathryn Raleigh, director of the Irish Software Association, says the initiative is a welcome development that will add value for members. ‘There’s no point of each doing the same thing,’ she says. ‘We will all benefit from the group, whether through cross promotion of events or coming together for meetings.’
The groups due to sign up for the Irish Stakeholders Group at the end of July were: Irish Computer Society (ICS), Irish Software Association (ISA), Irish Internet Association (IIA), Institution of Engineers of Ireland (IEI), Enterprise Ireland (EI), SoftTest Ireland, Agile SIG (formally XP SIG), Health Informatics Society of Ireland (HISI), Irish Linux User Group (ILUG), XML Ireland, The Systems Administrators’ Guild of Ireland (SAGE), AIM Ireland, Ireland Off-line, Information Systems Security Association (ISSA), Centre for Software Engineering (CSE), MediaLab Europe (MLE), Internet Society (ISOC — Irish Chapter), Visually Impaired Computer Society (VICS), The Society of Computers and Law (SCL — Irish Chapter), Irish Information Security Forum (IISF), The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) and Localisation Research Centre (LRC).
For more information about the Irish Stakeholders Group, contact the ICS at: +353 (0)1-6727998.
12/09/2003
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers