NSITSP Update: Elections, Vendor Partners, Logo Contest, and more . . . A report on the big meeting

 I'll repeat this and more on the NSITSP blog (https://www.nsitsp.org/news/), but this blog has more readers, so reporting here makes sense.

The National Society of IT Service Providers had their big quarterly meeting this week. You can view the meeting, read the transcript, and catch all the shared chat links at https://www.nsitsp.org/meetings/.

The place to start for "all things NSITSP" is the web site at www.nsitsp.org. Resources you'll find there include:

• Volunteer opportunities
• Meetings (recorded)
• Committee reports - minutes from various committee meetings
• Founding documents and history
• Forums
• Mission, vision, values

I point out the obvious landing page simply because we are constantly changing it to keep up-to-date with changes in the organization. A few current things to keep track of include:

Logo Contest

We have a logo. It is literally something I came up with as a "placeholder" last year. Some people like it. Some don't. The Marketing Committee has therefore come up with a contest! All the details are on the contest page: https://www.nsitsp.org/logo-contest/.

We want to gather as many design ideas as we can. The Committee will selection three options and those "winners" will each win some prize money. As for the vote, we'll have a two-part vote. First, we'll ask the question of whether to keep or replace the current logo. If "replace" wins, we'll then count the votes for the contenders.

All of these decisions must ultimately be accepted by the Board. For details, see the contest page.

Elections

One of the big announcements from the meeting is that we have agreed on an election process and timing. Elections will be held in September, and campaigning will take place in August. Details will be published on the NSITSP site and blog as the pieces of the process fall into place.

Here are a few notes about the election, as defined by the Governance Committee (formerly the Formation Committee):

• To the extent possible, the process for Board and Committee elections will be as similar as possible to each other
• The fall elections will be officially announced on July 1st - with all the details
• Candidates will file for office during August 
• Each candidate may run for only one office
• Voting will take place in September
• Some members will be elected for two years, some for one year
  (Note: After this initial election, all elections will be for two-year terms.)

Again, the pages are being built out and we'll keep you informed.

Vendor Partner Program

We are about to post a page for the Vendor Partner Program. In order for our broader community and this organization to thrive, we need vendors to be involved. The Board has been very clear on this point and we have worked hard to get vendor members onto various committees.

But we also need larger contributions in order to grow faster and reach our longer-term goals.

Vendors need strong partners. And, at the same time, vendors have legitimate concerns about how their operating environment is affected by state and federal legislation and regulation. We would love to have vendors come to us and work together so that all members of our community can work together to build a strong ecosystem. This includes manufacturers, programmers, distributors, MSPs, tool companies, and all the many combinations out there.

It's no exaggeration: We are in this together!

Stay tuned for an announcement. We'll put together a Vendor Partner Program "launch" webinar with a short presentation and lots of time for Q&A. In the meantime, you can always email me at [email protected] if you wish to schedule a call. I'm happy to talk to anyone about this program.

. . . That's the Tip of the Iceberg!

Our committees include Legislative, Governance, Finance, Marketing, and Membership. Most of them are seeking new members and all of them are building volunteer lists. See the web site.

PLEASE join as a professional member! It's only $100 for the year. If you're in this industry, you can afford that. And we honestly need every member. We need dollars to stay alive, and we need numbers so that we can honestly claim to represent IT Service Providers. See the web site.

. . . If you missed that meeting, please make time to view it . . .

And join today!

:-)