News from the connect.IT Management Board

On Monday, February 15, 2016, the first full board meeting of connect.IT in the new year took place on the premises of Heilbronn University, which was attended by seven board members as well as representatives from the board of trustees and other invited members.

After being welcomed by Deputy Chairman Frank Dörrstein, Prof. Dr. Kreuz introduced the advisory board for the Business Informatics course at Heilbronn University, which was founded at the end of 2008, and invited the connect.IT board to the next advisory board meeting for the purpose of mutual introduction and exchange with regard to cooperation. The Executive Board will gladly accept this invitation in April 2016.

In the following agenda item (TOP) "Projects and ideas for promoting young talent and recruiting members", Philipp Küller provided information about the planned "IT Job Shuttle" campaign sponsored by IT-Bündnis BW, which will offer a tour for young people to interesting employers in the Heilbronn-Franken region and a final event. Similar programs are already running successfully in other regions. In the subsequent discussion, the participants were in favor of offering this campaign primarily for university graduates in the second half of 2016.

Daniel Humboldt then presented an offer for the target group "school pupils/students interested in IT training". Together with member Jens Goldberg, he developed measures aimed at pupils/students aged 15-25. Together, Humboldt and Goldberg want to answer questions about the IT job profile in a chat session, promote IT training at schools with flyers and the connect.IT banner and develop new formats for the young target group. A forum is also to be set up on the connect.IT website. The Executive Board is happy to support this commitment and has pledged broad support and the necessary budget.

Under the Connect2Know skills database heading, Philipp Küller then announced that the skills database has been available for beta testing since February 15. Our institutional members can now enter their company/job profiles and events at www.beta.connect2know.de . Philipp Küller presented the communication plan, which will now be implemented by Steffen Jung & his team until the successful go-live, as a basis for further marketing and the integration of members.

Frank Dörrstein then informed the participants about the events held and planned for the first half of 2016. He also suggested that, in addition to the regular free Scrum and IT regulars' tables, a paid "Business etiquette in Germany and Asia" event by expert Brenner from Leingarten should be tested to charge seminar fees to cover the speaker's fee. The participants agreed to this proposal.

Wolfgang Kraus then reported on the successful IT regulars' table meetings at Pearls & Diamond in Heilbronn. He also put up for discussion the idea of finally renaming the IT regulars' table group in XING to connect.IT, which was gladly accepted by the participants after a lively exchange.

Steffen Jung reported that the platinum and gold sponsors for the barcamp at Fujitsu TDS had been found at the end of April and that the next talks with the organizing team and the platinum sponsors would be held on 18 February in Neckarsulm.

Frank Dörrstein then presented the current status of the forums. In 2016, the IT regulars' table will continue to be moderated by Wolfgang Kraus and the scrum table by Daniel Wierbicki; Daniel Humbold and Jens Goldberg are to be added to the "Young talents" forum. The "Talents", "Students & Graduates" and "Hands ON Developer" forums are currently still being planned and developed.

At the end of the meeting, the participants agreed to think about an internal member event in 2016 and to forward ideas to the Management Board.

Finally, Frank Dörrstein provided information about the next Board meetings and encouraged the participants to start thinking about their future involvement in the Board and the new election at the Annual General Meeting on July 11, 2016.

Are you also interested in making a difference in the Heilbronn-Franken IT region? Then come along to one of our events or support our work with an active membership!