[NCLUG] IT Samaritans General Meeting, Oct 21 2002

[Michael J. Mikelson]

Hi all!
 
As always, our meeting is from 6:30 to 8ish, with the first half hour
being social time, meetings start at 7pm.  The location is Stella's
coffeehouse, 1476 SOUTH Pearl Street, Denver CO.  Due to T-rex messes,
your best bet is take the Broadway Exit, and turn east on Arkansas Ave.
Either that or take Colorado Blvd and turn west on Evans, then north on
Pearl.  Do us all a favor and help the owner, Stan, by buying a drink!
Stan fully supports our group and offers the room for free, since he
likes what we do!
 
Wow, I've got to say that incredible things are happening with IT Sams.
We have a lot of volunteer opportunities right now!  Karen Floyd did us
all a huge favor and passed on information about IT Samaritans to a
friend who is the Associate Director of Community Shares of Colorado; an
organization with 96 member 501c3 organizations!  I've been inundated!
I've got a few people who are willing to go out and take the lead in the
business development arena here, but to move some of these projects
ahead, I've found I need the driving force of good project managers!  If
you're a PM who'd like to pad your resume, send your resume along and
we'll figure out the opportunity best for you!  For those on Josh
Zapin's PIM Mile Hi yahoogroup, please ask Josh how this will help you
if you have doubts; he was one of our best and brightest volunteers last
spring!
 
In the last few weeks, we've finalized the service contracts on a few
projects.  We've got some projects upcoming that are going to be great
opportunities for any of you to participate in!   Some of these
connections are truly going to help us out.  To help us out further, Ken
Bingenheimer has graciously offered to head up a press campaign.  This
will send out word of who we are, and what we are doing, but more
importantly, each press release we put out will publicize the names of
the volunteers who worked on a project.  This hopefully will give you
some broader exposure and "notoriety" for your next job interview.  I
need 3 volunteers on this one, 2 writers and spokesmen, and a project
manager (you must have PM experience).  
 
In addition, we're going to institute some further speaking engagements
like the one I arranged for our last meeting.  I have contacted several
recruiters (headhunters and company recruiters) to come in and
participate in a "roundtable" discussion where they freely discuss what
hiring trends they see, what means they are using to weed through
resumes, and how to make yourself a better candidate to get through the
screening process.  I need some people who are willing to help me follow
up on this to make it  a reality.  This also will be a great press event
and those arranging it will have their names prominently in front of
recruiters and news organizations.  I need a project manager for this
one too, and again - you must have PM experience! 
 
Additionally, I've found out some info on a Denver County Program called
Quick start.  While this particular one is through Denver county and for
Denver County residents, since it's through Coworkforce that means
there's a comparable version of it in all counties.  It's a program
where laid off workers can get up to $3000 for certification programs
that are 18 months in duration or less.  I've invited the head of the
Denver program to meet with us, probably at our first meeting in
November.  If you can't wait, then contact your local workforce office
and ask about it.  keep your eyes open for opportunities like this, and
post them to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/itsamaritans, please?  Join
our yahoogroup for other meeting info, as we don't always post
everything to other yahoogroups!
 
Here's our biggest news!  On Thursday October 24th, we will have our
very first branch affiliate meeting in Colorado Springs!  Richard Byrd s
a highly experienced Project Manager and Business Analyst who has
offered to run things down in Colorado Springs.  Richard has a PMI
background, which means that he drives things to make it happen;
critical to get this organization moving ahead!  If you're in the
Springs and been wanting to attend, here's your opportunity!  In
addition, we already have had 2 Colorado Springs non-profits contact us
with projects!  the details of the Colorado Springs meeting will come
out in a separate email immediately following this one, so please look
for it and attend if you're from the Springs!
 
Well, we've got a lot of stuff going on at our regular Monday October
21st!  Here's our agenda:
 
overview of projects upcoming
status reports of current projects
CO Springs IT Sams-intro Richard and two opportunities
press Campaign
website revamp
 
Michael J. Mikelson
Founder, IT Samaritans
Denver CO
MJMikelson at yahoo.com
303-388-8555
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.nclug.org/pipermail/nclug/attachments/20021019/e6529c92/attachment.html>