The UKITA AGM was held on 28th September at Blythe Valley Innovation Centre. Around 25 people attended to elect new directors, make some changes to the constitution and hear our plans for the next 12 months. Charles Huthwaite, as retiring chairman welcomed everyone and introduced the meeting, explaining some of the changes to UKITA that had been achieved during his time as chair. Chief among these was the transition from being publically funded to privately funded through membership subscriptions and also UKITA’s work with PIN-SME which has led to our involvement in two European projects.
The changes to the constitution were passed and a brief financial report was given – as the Director of Finance, Fred Noble, was unfortunately unable to attend, questions on UKITA’s finances were requested to be sent directly to Fred by email ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )
New Directors were welcomed to the Board and voted in. They are: Phil Oakley (Outserve), Shaun Carvill (Clicking Mad), Chris Pallett (Bespoke Computing), Marina Ibrahim (Bizz Buzz) and Anna Wilde from UKITA Membership Services.
Charles thanked everyone for their support during his time as chairman and was duly thanked by a round of applause in return. A new chairman will be elected by the Board in November.
The second part of the meeting was a round-up of the year’s achievements by Anna Wilde from UKITA Membership Services. Anna explained how our mission for this year was all to do with raising the profile of UKITA to gain visibility – visibility for the organisation leading to visibility for members. We are finding that we are being approached by journalists for comment a couple of times each month, and the resulting publicity is starting to bear fruit in new members. Anna asked members to send any news stories, case studies etc to head office for us to publicise on your behalf and also mention the £99 press release deal offered to members by Be Bold PR.
Other highlights included the visit by Daniel Tubino from Fiesc (small business support organisation) in Brazil, the acquisition of Skillfair consultants’ network and the soon-to-be-launching Digital Census of IT companies in the UK, in conjunction with Coventry and Warwick LEP.
Andrew Corbett then gave a presentation on the direction of UKITA over the next 12 months. Andrew showed the new graphics for the website (cartoon-based) on why you should join UKITA and talked about the Good IT Guide and its role in raising visibility of members to buyers of IT. We are also going to be launching a ‘magazine’ part of the Good IT Guide site, and will be approaching our members to write for this. The aim of this is for non-technical people to gain an easy understanding of common IT purchases – e.g. buying a website, choosing a CRM system etc.
He encouraged members to join and contribute to the Technology Business Groups (special interest groups) which currently exist for e-commerce, business intelligence, cloud, RFID, CRM. Members who have an offering in these areas can be added to the appropriate page so that website visitors can quickly find suppliers of the appropriate technology this way, in addition to the directory and Good IT Guide.
Andrew explained that we will be adding local area ‘portal’ pages to the website, one for each of the main regions of the UK which equate to the RDA regions, plus Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These pages will feature a map of the Good IT Guide in that area, together with the UKITA IT tender feeds. There will be links to local IT events and news, and people wanting quotes for IT services will be able to submit them through the portal. These will help with UKITA’s roll-out to parts of the UK where we haven’t had the strong presence that the West Midlands has enjoyed due to our roots being here.
Andrew also demonstrated the member-to-member ‘Working Together’ collaboration pages. Members are invited to submit an entry to this through updating their profile on the website – (this profile is essential to get the most out of your membership). A member may (for example) offer other members either use of resources (e.g. programmers) or ask for expertise on a particular topic. The entries can be anonymous if preferred.
Tom Brookes, the EU Project manager for UKITA Projects rounded up the evening by talking about the RFID project. The first part, the research, is now complete – Tom has been working on this for around a year and produced a website at http://www.ukrfid.com/. SMEs are encouraged to take up RFID to help to identify, track, trace, audit, control and locate business assets. The website is an asset for all businesses who are interested in this technology, with case studies, information and links to a wealth of information which Tom’s research has pulled together.
The second part of the project which finishes next spring (2012) is dissemination of this information to SME businesses and events are being planned, to which UKITA members will be invited. Watch this space!
Charles then closed the meeting at around 7pm, though many members stayed around for longer to chat and network .
Thanks to Blythe Valley Innovation Centre for hosting the meeting free of charge.
LINKS
http://www.thegooditguide.co.uk and http://read.thegooditguide.co.uk (under development)
http://www.digitalnation.org.uk
http://www.ukrfid.com – RFID resources website.
The official minutes may be downloaded from here.