Proceedings of the 37th annual ACM SIGUCCS fall conference: communication and collaboration

Abstract

Thank you for joining us in the Gateway to the West, home of the 1904 World's Expo and first US Olympiad. It is here in St. Louis that new discoveries such as peanut butter, 7-Up and ice cream cones were invented. St. Louis is the birthplace of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This city personifies the frontier spirit, and it is with this indomitable spirit that we bring you this year's conference. Attendees from all over the world, such as Canada, Japan, India and the Bahamas, have joined us here today along with our national colleagues to share and learn. Every year many of us return to see old friends, network with colleagues and make new contacts. We come to be inspired and energized. This year's program theme is "Communication and Collaboration" and the planning committee has worked extremely hard to thread our theme throughout this year's conference. Our keynote speakers' topics emphasize and compliment our theme through their presentations of Smart Service - Customer Service Excellence and Leadership is Everybody's Business. We have stepped outside the box this year and created a unique and interactive conference that we hope will both stimulate and inspire you. New program changes include bringing the much beloved "Birds of a Feather" format directly into the conference by adding a DiscussIT track, which offers attendees more opportunity to network with colleagues on topics that interest them. Our new LeadIT track was developed from suggestions that our past attendees offered. It is a venue not only for aspiring IT leaders but also one for those managing IT teams, to learn from colleagues. It brings a focus of our Spring Management Symposium on leadership training to our conference. LeadIT sessions will be facilitated by institutional leaders; these sessions will give attendees an opportunity to discuss various leadership and management topics in a very informal and comfortable format. We invite you to come and share your hopes, experiences, and encourage you to bring your questions for our talented team. All of our program sessions provide priceless networking opportunities with peers, but this year we kicked our ability to communicate up a notch. To make sure that you have the chance to become fully engaged during the conference we invite you to ExperienceIT by utilizing social network accounts that we have created for the conference on Twitter (#SIGUCCS) and Facebook (SIGGUCCS Fall Conference 2009). During this challenging economic time we have all experienced budget cuts, especially in professional development and travel, so it is with great appreciation that we extend our gratitude to you for picking our SIGUCCS conference to spend your resources. Please make sure when you get back to your home institution that you thank the individual who cared enough to send you here to enhance your professional development.