Letter from the President
We
have all had some time to recover from the CODI conference in Salt Lake
City and reflect on how good it was. I want to thank Greg Nelson, CODI VP,
for the excellent job he did. He and his committees produced an
outstanding conference under some trying conditions, at times. The
programs were really wonderful and my hat is off to Susan Johns, Program
Chair, and the many presenters who shared their expertise.
As
you know this was the last CODI only conference. The next conference will
be in November of 2002 and will be the first joint conference with the
Horizon Users Group. As a member of the Joint Conference Committee I can
tell you that we have some exiting plans in a great location. Please make
your plans to attend this exciting conference.
Since
the joint conference will be in November rather than March, as we are all
used to, you may have to plan ahead. If your library is like mine, the
travel funds get a bit tapped out by the end of the year. Be sure to have
your business office put aside enough funds for you to attend this most
important conference. In the interim you should plan to attend your
regional meeting. epixtech will be sending representatives
to present programs.
If
you attended CODI you will remember that we discussed the International
Summit at our membership meeting. For those of you who were not there, the
leaders of the users groups worldwide and senior representatives from epixtech
attended what was the first of a planned annual international meeting to
discuss important issues. Among them were communication, support, and
development. We are in the process of preparing a detailed report for the
memberships to read. It will be posted to the secure sides of the various
user groups web sites. Please take the time to read it carefully. I can
tell you that without a verbatim transcript it is very difficult to convey
the sense of seriousness and collegiality that we experienced at the
summit. It was a very good experience and we all came away with at better
understanding of the problems we face and some solutions to them.
Another
initiative undertaken by the Federation was a request for a formal report
from epixtech on the state of support. Though this issue was
discussed at the summit we asked for a separate annual report on this one
issue. Ty Brown, Vice-President of Operations, has responded with a
document titled 2000 Annual Operations Report. This document will
be available on the secure side of the epixtech web site. In
the words of our HUG colleague in the UK, Brian Hackett, it “contains a
number of very positive improvement initiatives.” Please take the time
to read this document.
As
you can see, the CODI Board has been hard at work for you the members. We
would appreciate it if you would give us some feed back on the two
documents mentioned above when you read them. Without your input and
support we cannot hope to accomplish any of the initiatives taken up on
your behalf.
Thank
you,
Eileen R. Kontrovitz
CODI President |