Letter From The President - February 2014
Hello AUGI Member!
As I write this message this month I’m actually poised to leave San Francisco after a short visit to Autodesk at One Market Street. I was on the west coast for my day job so I popped on over to visit with our Autodesk liaison, Ray Eisenberg, as well as a handful of other “autodeskers”. It gave me a chance to start new conversations about AUGI and Autodesk working together, as well as continue a few discussions begun at AU2013. Anyway, I just find it quite amazing how I seem to be traveling at the very moment I have to pen these little gems…anyway…moving on!
So what is happening in the AUGI community? We are staying busy for sure! One hot topic is Autodesk University content. Our Forum Administrator Richard Lawrence has been working with Autodesk U staff to get the final bits of data for AU2008, 2009 and 2010. So very soon I expect to be able to promote that we have all but the last 3 years of AU content, available for free on AUGI.com. Look for it!
Our publication AUGIWORLD is still going strong and getting a little plumper too! The upcoming March issue is going to be 56 pages! We have added a CAD Manager column, as well as author submissions on a number of topics. If you have not taken a peek at AW recently you really should pick one up and see what you have been missing!
Our monthly newsletter HotNews is continue to push out the very latest and hottest information all the while we tweak the presentation and content. One of the newest additions is a listing of AUGI member blogs. Do you have a blog that AUGI members should know about? If so, please consider letting us know! The other day I took a look at our membership database. We have over 360,000 members… whoa!
Next up to speak about is the AUGI Executive Team. We have had a few changes in roles recently. It began with Desiree Mackey being appointed to the role of Vice President. She is joining VP Scott Wilcox who was appointed in January. Then with Dezi changing, Donnia Tabor-Hanson was tapped to assume the duties of Treasurer. Meanwhile Melanie Stone-Perry has been given a reprieve in that Michael Smith is assuming the role of AUGi Secretary. The net effect of all this is allowing volunteers to move about in what they volunteer for and give other directors a chance to lead within the executive level in the organization.
Moving onto the website, AUGI.com is getting a needed upgrade in capacity in the remaining days of February. We moving to another provider and changing server technologies along with data hardware solutions. This is all being done for what we are paying now so it is a win-win. The hope is that when we launch a new magazine or service that we don’t have to do it in the middle of the night avoid server overload.
And finally the AUGI Resource project I mentioned before is in final testing and looking really good. Once we go live we will then need a little time for vendors to contribute their information into our database system. But I would guess by end of March that to be pretty solid and filled with helpful information. Look for more on that soon.
And with that have a great February and see you next month!