GEM State Chapter Spotlight: Alabama GMIS
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Interview with Michael Ramm, City of Northport, AL
Where do you see your state chapter next year – growth, challenges, etc.?
We are shooting for a 20 percent increase in membership, as well as vendor participation. Some of our biggest challenges, as most have I would suppose, are the smaller less dense counties that do not understand the need for their IT personnel to network with like-minded professionals. We have members who struggle to get approval to attend conferences and even have membership in GMIS because they work for councils or commissions that do not believe that funds need to be expended for IT personnel.
What is one word to describe your state chapter members?
I think that we are a determined chapter. We have many struggles (some detailed above) that we have to overcome, but we are really working to expand membership and we are actively working with some vendors to help us expand GMIS even further into the Alabama public sector.
Tell our readers one thing about what your state chapter is doing.
One thing that we have really pushed since 2011 is disaster recovery. In April of that year, we had 59 tornadoes touch down across the entire state. Since then, we have used GMIS to get some vendors in to show off their disaster recovery solutions. A number of GMIS members have since implemented disaster recovery solutions, and many more are in process of their own implementation.
The Data Collection project is going to be going full swing shortly, which gives our members an opportunity to share a lot of information. What is one piece of information you would like to see – IT spending per capita, ratio of IT staff to organizational staff, etc.?
I have no knowledge of the Data Collection project, but we are all for anything that will better connect us with other chapters and share information that will make GMIS a better organization.
How do you grow your state chapters? What tools, techniques or magic potion do you use?
We are trying many different things to increase membership. We have been working with a couple of vendors who deal mainly in the public sector to get our name out there. When they are meeting with new customers, they ask if they have heard of GMIS and if not, they give them our information so that they can learn more about us. We have started up a Facebook, LinkedIn and standalone website (http://algmis.org/) that we are hoping to spread the word of AL-GMIS. We have a couple of new members signed up for our Summer Conference, as well as a couple of new vendors slated to attend.
