Inside ASI-AP

I visited with Rod Dalglish, the chairperson of NiUG in Asia-Pacific, to be updated on NiUG happenings, with particular focus on the Discovery conference for 2007.

It seems in my last post on NiUG I got some of the names wrong for the Board members, so here is the correct version:

NiUG Asia Pacific Committee
Rod Dalglish (Chairman) (Bus Vic), David Spargo (Vice Chairman) (RACS), Ron Bonham (Cycling Aust), Michelle Lelempsis (Taxation Institute), Clive Keylard (NZICA), Kim Keane (RACGP), David Johnson (CPA Aust), David Humphreys (AIM Vic/Tas)

Product Advisory Committee (PAC) representative - David Johnson (CPA Aust)

May and June have been extremely busy for NiUG. In Melbourne the first ever iMIS Information Day was held at AIM and attracted over 50 people, which is a great turnout. Jay attended on behalf of ASI and gave a presentation during the morning session. In Sydney, over 25 people attended, also a great result.

During the period Michelle has presented a couple of webcasts to explain the benefits of joining NiUG for all those customers that are not yet members. The majority of customers in the AP region are still not members, so please remember to remind customers the benefits of joining - it is $135 well spent!

NiUG are committing to hosting the Discovery conference in October this year. For an independent user group to run a user conference in their first year is a significant achievement for the organisation, plus also I wanted to recognise the volunteers on the committee who give of their own time to make this a reality. It really is something. Of course ASI will still be involved, we will be responsible for marketing and for providing a number of speakers, and I will be attending as well to give the opening presentation with Rod.

I also wanted to recognise Bruce from IServices for joining with ASI to become the first sponsors of NiUG Asia-Pacific. Bruce and his team will be presenting at Discovery as well.

I have copied in below Rod's message in the latest iMIS Insights newsletter which gives a pretty good update as well:

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A Message from NiUG Asia-Pacific

NiUG Asia Pacific Ltd has now successfully completed the second of its two initial Information Days, one in Melbourne and the other in Sydney. We have had requests to run the Information Day in other states and are prepared to do this but would need 25 attendees for it to be worthwhile as the logistics and costs involved in conducting these days can become costly.

Both of these days were well received by all of those in attendance and it has been agreed that we will run four Information Days in both Sydney and Melbourne. Future Information Days will be conducted in the morning and run for three hours. The first portion of the Information Days will be a report back on issues raised at earlier Information Days, followed by a presentation and concluding with an open forum session.

The NiUG Asia Pacific committee is meeting on Wednesday 27th June to set the program for the upcoming Discovery Conference. We got a lot of great ideas for topics from the Information Days and will try an incorporate all of these in the program. The focus for the Discovery Conference will be on workshops, third party products and users experiences. The program will be distributed to all iMIS users by 9st July. If you would like to register prior to receiving the program and take advantage of the Extra Early Bird Discount download the registration from here and download the accommodation booking form here.

A reminder that the 2007 NiUG Asia Pacific Discovery Conference dates and venue are: Sea World Nara Resort on the Gold Coast, October 10th - 12th.

We will be looking for people to present topics for us, so if you are interested in being a presenter, once again please drop me a line.

If you have any thoughts or ideas that you think will be beneficial to NiUG Asia Pacific we would be happy to receive them. They can be sent to Rod Dalglish at rdalglish@busvic.asn.au