TDWI Local

Chapter Officers

Joshua Eldridge
President
Nancy Williams
Vice President
Cheryl Hannan
Chapter Secretary
Nick Perdikis
Committee Chair - Communications
Maxim Volodin
Committe Chair - Membership
Ann Summers
Committee Chair - Sponsors

Chapter Objectives and Purpose

To foster education and networking at the local level, TDWI sponsors Chapters in regions throughout the world. The purpose of TDWI Chapters is to:

• Bring together TDWI Members in a geographic area to share best practices.
• Enable TDWI Members to create strong local networks of business intelligence and data warehousing professionals with whom they can share ideas and provide mutual support.
• Educate TDWI Members about the critical success factors involved in building and maintaining business intelligence and data warehousing solutions.
• Educate the vendor community about the unique requirements of business intelligence and data warehousing organizations in a specific geographic area.
• Recruit new TDWI Members
• Promote TDWI events and programs to local Members.

TDWI Chapters need to remain faithful to the spirit and guiding principles of TDWI. This means that TDWI Chapters will:

• Deliver high-quality, vendor neutral education, networking, and training opportunities.
• Work to advance the professional development of local TDWI Members.
• Be faithful ambassadors of TDWI at the local level.
• Be “sales pitch free” zones

Chapter Meetings

TDWI Chapter Meetings should remain consistent with TDWI’s mission of providing “no hype, no fluff, no bias” education and training. TDWI encourages Chapter meetings to devote equal time to (1) a formal presentation by a Chapter Member (i.e., case study) and (2) a facilitated roundtable or panel discussion on one or two topics of interest to the group. TDWI has experience moderating such discussions and can provide tips to engage the group.

Other options include having an outside “expert” address the group, either in person or via teleconference or webconference. Members of TDWI’s research team or faculty are good candidates for outside speakers. Another idea is for the Chapter to host a TDWI onsite course exclusively for Chapter members.

TDWI discourages Chapters from having vendors deliver presentations about specific products or services, unless there is a significant interest among Chapter Associates to learn about the product. A better approach is for the Chapter to host a vendor “shoot-out” where two or three vendors demonstrate comparable products using a predefined script supplied by the Chapter.

Once again, the turnout to our chapter meeting exceeded all expectations for the wintry weather. More than 60 attendees confirmed for us the value that this chapter is adding to area professionals.

This quarter’s event was the second meeting of the D.C. chapter and took place in Hanover, MD at the facilities of the Allegis Group. The meeting convened with remarks from chapter president M.C. Sankar on the importance of the chapter, a profile of attendees and chapter sponsors.

Nancy Williams, vice president and principal consultant with DecisionPath Consulting presented “Charting the Path to Real Business Intelligence” providing examples of corporate BI success, mapping BI to ROI and a framework for assessing your company’s BI maturity level.

After the planned networking session, Alan Simon a principal consultant with Precision Business Intelligence LLC presented “Long-Lived BI”. Illustrated with a compelling case study of his experience with a very large corporation, Alan touted the benefits of a component-based architecture.

Both presentations were followed by thought-provoking question and answer periods. Many familiar topics emerged and those themes are being considered for future chapter meetings. Finally, the meeting wrapped up with the door prize from our sponsors: a copy of speaker Nancy William’s new book, The Profit Impact of Business Intelligence from DecisionPath consulting and a $100 gift certificate from Golden Gate Software.

As always, if you have suggestions for future meetings please don’t hesitate to contact the chapter officers. All of our contact information is available on the chapter webpage at the address listed below. Additionally, we are looking for more case study presentations. If you have one, or know of one that may be interesting to the chapter members, please let us know.

We are currently in the process of scheduling our next meeting and are targeting late April for the date. Further communication on the date, venue and speakers will be forthcoming.

Thank you for continuing to make the TDWI Washington D.C. chapter a success. We look forward to many more thought provoking sessions and networking opportunities.

Sincerely,

Your Washington D.C. Chapter Officers

Files:

• Alan Simon: Long-Lived BI 

• Nancy Williams: Charting the Path to Real Business Intelligence