Update from the Chair

Jim Morrell - CUNA Technology Council - Chair
March 9, 2005

The first quarter update for the CUNA Technology Council starts with sharing a monumental event from the last quarter of 2004: At the BAI Retail Delivery Show, our council was the first credit union organization to present a pre-conference workshop to this event. The subject was the “Strategic Seven” technology trend the council wrote about in the December issue of Credit Union Magazine. The audience consisted of 75 people, including bankers and credit union folks from seven different countries.

The Conference Committee has been hard at work preparing for the Tenth Annual Technology Council Summit this summer in San Diego, California. The event will be at the Grand Hyatt Hotel from August 3-6, 2005. This year our keynote speaker will be Ron Nice, president and CEO of Nice Enterprises, who will discuss why the CU environment is changing. He will also talk about the changing role of the technology officer, how to be a more effective leader, and how to be more inspired to become one of your organization’s key strategy implementers. Other highlights of this year’s conference will include the Best Practices Awards. If you are interested in submitting an entry for program, you may do so at: http://www.cunatechnologycouncil.org/awards/bestpractices.html.

The Communication Committee has also been hard at work preparing upcoming Technology Council webinars for 2005, which include secure e-mail (May), storage management (August), and patch management (November). Be looking for specific dates and times on the council website soon.

Finally, the strength of the Technology Council is in our membership. We are the only organization that is exclusively member driven, not allowing vendors to participate or listen to Listserv discussions. All of us probably know of at least one other credit union technology professional who is not a member of the council, and therefore the council is less one more intelligent resource. It would be phenomenal if each of you could encourage one other person to join. The value of membership includes the Listserv, a discount ($100+) for the annual conference, the file library, white papers, $100 discounts on the webinars, the job center, and regulatory resource information. You may direct people to the Join/Renew link under the Membership tab on the council web page at http://www.cunatechnologycouncil.org.