InfoXchange
The Newsletter of the ICCA Greater Boston Chapter
May/June 2005             Volume 1, Issue 2
IN THIS ISSUE
Announcements - Contest Winner

From the Board -ICCA National Conference

Partnering For Success

Mentor's Corner - The Value of Using Project Management Techniques

Who Are We?
From the Editor:
We would like to encourage anyone to submit articles to the new ICCA Greater Boston Chapter newsletter. If you know of anyone interested in free publicity, ask them to write an article of any size or topic pertinent to our organization for submission in the next issue of our newsletter. The good news is the smaller the article, the better, since long articles are hard to read on-line.

We are very open to ideas and suggestions regarding article topics in all sections of the newsletter, including:

Local or Chapter Announcements
Articles
Member-to-Member Spotlights
Member-to-Member News
Mentor's Corner
Submit ideas or articles to:
Kim Reddington
Director of Communications
kreddington@
deluxetechnologies.com
Next Deadline:
June 22, 2005 for the July/Aug Issue

Announcements

I would like to announce that we have a winner for the Newsletter Naming Contest!! You may have noticed the new name in the header of the newsletter, InfoXchange. The Board of Directors had some discussion and voted on the name. We had several to choose from, so it was a hard choice.

The prize of one free ICCA meeting has been awarded to Ted Ngo of Outside The Box (www.outside-solutions.com). Thank you Ted for your great selection of ideas!

From the Board

Seven Reasons You Should Attend the ICCA National Conference

by Norman Daoust, President of Daoust Associates and Past President of ICCA-GBC
  • Learn from the speaker presentations
  • Learn from the other attendees
  • Potential referrals (I received two referrals from members of other chapters at last year’s conference!)
  • Network with your peers
  • Meet potential collaborators
  • Excellent opportunity to reenergize your thinking about your business
  • Spouse or significant other deserves the opportunity to shop at the adjoining malls
Come to think of it, these are also reasons for attending Greater Boston Chapter meetings!
Norman Daoust of Daoust Associates, www.DaoustAssociates.com, has
attended the past two ICCA annual conferences and plans to attend this year’s
in Atlanta, GA on June 10 - 12. Details are available at www.icca.org.

Partnering For Success

Partnering For Success: Maximizing Your Consulting Potential Through Partners

by Melinda Moses, Principal of MSM Strategic Marketing

There are excellent reasons why we have become independent consultants: we wanted to, we had to, or we wanted to be more in control of our lives, our achievements, our fortunes, and our success. We are successful as consultants because we provide a product or service that is in demand, and there is something special about us that enables us to get business from those products or services. Likewise, there are extremely compelling reasons why we should, as consultants, create partnerships with others. The most successful consultants strive to improve their business through creative strategies and services, and adding partnering to this is a very practical, straightforward way to continue to evolve. For those of you who already reap the benefits of partnering, congratulations! For those of you who haven’t tried, rest assured that it’s not as hard as you think! The benefits of partnering, even taking a few small steps, greatly outweighs the result of being complacent. The challenge? To know your business, your resources, and your goals, and to pursue partnering opportunities that help you achieve those goals without stretching your resources. As with consulting in general, creating or leveraging partnerships requires a number of things if you are to be successful:
  • Goals -- knowing what you want for your business, and using partners to help achieve them
  • Knowledge -- knowing how to go about generating a partner-oriented plan, and then getting results from that plan
  • People – knowing people who can help you, and tapping into that network to help you achieve your goals
  • Guts – knowing that change is hard, but going forward anyway
Fortunately there are some simple things you can do to get started. Or to at to least start thinking about.

Click here for the rest of this article.

Mentor's Corner

The Value of Using Project Management Techniques in Hi-Tech Consulting Engagements

by Jim Stewart, Project Management Consultant and Trainer of JP Stewart Associates

As a former network and systems engineer--and a current practitioner of project management--, I feel uniquely qualified to speak about the value of project management as applied to hi-tech consulting engagements. Strictly speaking, it isn't absolutely necessary to be a project manager or have Project Management Professional (PMP) status in order to manage an engagement. But it does help to know some of the underlying principles.

Before we continue, one caution: I teach project management and very often people will tell me that the theory is well and good but that in practice, they can’t get some of these processes in place due to customer or team resistance. If that’s the case, that’s fine. You can’t change your customer’s culture overnight. What you can do is work towards the goal of setting a certain standard. If you can discuss with the customer the type of process you would like to see in place--and why--I’ve found that they’ll listen and generally go along. Especially if you’ve already developed a certain level of trust with them.

Click here for the rest of this article.

Who are we?

Founded in 1976, the Independent Computer consultants Association (ICCA) is a national not-for-profit organization of independent computer consulting firms sharing the highest ethical and professional standards. The ICCA offers great services and benefits to its members including business and health insurance, marketing programs, a National Conference, standard form consulting and subcontracting contracts, and many discount programs. For additional information regarding the ICCA or to search the National Membership Directory, visit the national website http://www.icca.org or the Boston website http://www.icca-boston.org

Board Members

President - Vin D'Amico - president@icca-boston.org
Vice President and PR Contact - Mike Spanos - vicepresident@icca-boston.org
Treasurer - Michael Stiefel - treasurer@icca-boston.org
Secretary - Peter Dwyer - secretary@icca-boston.org
Director of Programs - Gordon Corzine- programs@icca-boston.org
Director of Internal Communications - Kim Reddington - newsletter@icca-boston.org
Director of External Communications - Bob Goodearl - extcomms at icca-boston.org
Director of Membership - Jim Connell - membership@icca-boston.org
Past President - Norman Daoust - pastpresident@icca-boston.org

Legal Stuff

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Publisher: Greater Boston Chapter of the Independent Computer Consultants Association, http://www.icca-boston.org Copyright &#copy 2005, Greater Boston Chapter of the Independent Computer Consultants Association This newsletter may be distributed without charge as long as it's distributed in its entirety. Individual sections and portions may be distributed with permission.