The M&C directorship is not an easy job, and I learned just about all of it while doing it, which is why I am so proud of having developed The CHIP's award-wining format. For those of you who haven't already heard, The CHIP garnered the Best Newsletter Worldwide For Very Large Chapters Award. Very Large Chapters have over 800 members, and we were competing against 37 other Very Large Chapters (in other words, we competed against over 29,600 people to win our chapter's second worldwide award). My fellow Board members (from both the 2008-2009 and the 2009-2010 Boards), and those of you who provided content for the newsletter deserve a great deal of credit – this is your award, too.
You may be asking why we are changing when we had such a great newsletter format. The answer is quite simple: we needed an easier, faster way to publish the newsletter. As the M&C Director, I have been fortunate to have had assistance from volunteers over the past two years (in particular, many thanks to Sivakumar Natesan, Amine Hambaba, and Anuradha Deshpande); but I have also gone for long stretches of time as the only person sending out all the e-mails, updating the website, creating the flyers and conference brochures – and formatting, editing and assembling The Chip (which was beginning to run about 30 pages long).
Since I consider most of you to be friends, and one of you will become the next M&C Director, I really couldn’t hand over such a huge workload in good conscience. I also wanted to make it easier for the next M&C Director to garner another newsletter award for our chapter. Our new website with its HTML newsletter feature will make it much easier for members and registered users to submit content to the Chip, and will allow the new M&C Director to focus on content, since the layout and format will be so much simpler.
Speaking of the website, and having been the chapter webmaster, I was well aware of our old website’s shortcomings from a maintenance perspective. I was also receiving requests for Web 2.0 technologies that our old website just didn’t support. These reasons are why I requested budget to totally redesign our website this year (and I thank the 2009-2010 Board from the bottom of my heart for approving the budget request). Yes, we won a bronze website award this year; but as Mark Jansen, our website architect, commented when he first saw the website’s backend, “That is so seven years ago”. Before commencing the redesign, I reviewed International’s requirements for website awards and the other award-winning chapter websites. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I truly believe that our new website positions us to win a gold award next year, and is currently the best chapter website in the world.
While I have the bully pulpit, I’d like to encourage all of you (yes, YOU, hiding there in the corner!) to submit articles to the Chip. I’m sure many of you have picked-up better, faster ways of getting your jobs done. You may also have learned what not to do. Why not share that knowledge and get acknowledged by your peers by writing a quick article? You can also participate in online chapter life by logging in and using our new forums and polls features.
Lastly, consider volunteering. The M&C Committee needs a Chair, a Webmaster, and a Newsletter Editor. Help designing flyers and brochures would also be much appreciated. Just contact us and let us know what you're willing to tackle.
I hope to see you online!
Kind regards,
Kimberly Harbin
2008-2010 Marketing and Communications Director
ISACA Silicon Valley Chapter
