Purpose: March Action Item #6: The Conference Program Ad Hoc Group will identify for discussion at the April 25-27 meeting a program that would have an obvious benefit to the participants.
Reference: IT/01-0120 Draft Conference Proposal (Mike Hogan)
Attendees: Camp, Ryland, McMillan, Richards
Absent: Winkler, Dave Thewlis, Hogan, Hill, Neuman,
Discussion:
This was a difficult session in that the content of the conference (if we have one) is cross related to the definition of NCITS and its (possibly) changed scope and purpose. The consensus of those present was that it is unlikely that NCITS currently has the external name recognition at this time to draw the desired crowd (50-100 minimum) on its own. (Even internal to NCITS, the current constituency has mixed interests and little cross interest (ex. T6 people in general don't care about L3 work) - even the TC Officer's symposium is poorly attended by NCITS members, and this is a known crowd that can be individually called up.) Further, the questions of "Who is the symposium or conference for?" and "What is the purpose?" (explicitly increase NCITS visibility, increase membership, raise funds, educate our constituency, all of the above) are difficult to answer while the issues of NCITS charter, membership and purpose are still being examined.
Recommendation #1: The adhoc recommends that the idea of a dedicated NCITS conference or symposium therefore be tabled at this time unless a specific, clearly identifiable opportunity arises.
Recommendation #2: That having been said, it is clear that we cannot wait for these issues to be finally resolved before embarking on some sort of publicity program. With this in mind, the adhoc *does* recommend that NCITS make an active effort to piggy-back existing symposia and conferences by inserting an agenda item, possibly tuned to the specific venue, which gives a perspective of how industry needs have been translated into domestic and international standards via NCITS ("Where IT all begins"). Toward this end, a well-written, well thought out, standard presentation and take-away handout should be developed (with alternate optional foils for specific audience classes developed as needed over time) for use by both staff and company representatives. This could, and should, be done in conjunction with the STL and PR efforts.
The overall idea is to disseminate the material via a wide variety of conference and symposium fora during 2002. We want to expose as many people and organizations to NCITS as a historical and current developer of Information Technology standards and a mechanism by which their industry standards can be introduced into the international arena. Piggy-backing in this fashion will minimize our costs while providing us a good deal of exposure. The goal should be for staff to make at least one such presentation per month to targeted symposia and for the individual NCITS members to give the same core presentation to as many organizations as they can. It should be noted that in addition to the presentation, a key take-away should be developed at the same time as the presentation (personally, I'm partial to a tri-fold glossy brochure).
With respect to what conferences and symposia to target, a brief search of the internet yielded the following which may be appropriate. The only criteria was whether or not they might map into one of our TC's. We want to widen our exposure in possible areas in order to provide an opportunity for people to come to us. (As an aside, I believe that we should also be willing to direct them to other SDOs as appropriate.)
Regards,
Clyde