Howdy again TAGITM!

As I’m writing this message about a week before Thanksgiving, cooler temps have finally arrived in South Central TX. Sort of. Don’t get me wrong, it’ll still be mid 80’s this afternoon, but I’ll take what we can get. Even with cooler air and the holidays looming, in many ways it feels like TAGITM is ramping up. It’s wild how much activity is happening around the state. There was a cyber virtual lunch and learn that was a complete success, many thanks to Kevin Joyner for leading that effort. Midland’s tech day looked like it was a great event (thanks Jennifer!), and Scott Joyce seemingly always has something cool lined up in his area. We’re barely scratching the surface though, there is so much more!

Down my way, Mike Raute is like clockwork with our regional meetings. Admittedly, I haven’t attended in a while as a trip to Boerne takes up most of the day due to the distance….so shame on me. Eric Matthews from Allen is hosting a vendor lunch (BBQ!) with Mimecast in December. I’m a big fan and my org is a longtime user of Mimecast, for anyone unfamiliar I highly recommend attending that one. The committees, board, and the countless great leaders we have in local government IT across the state are constantly pushing TAGITM forward. If you take a step back and consider the full scope, it really is impressive how much is accomplished on behalf of the greater community. Primarily by volunteers no less. A lot of outstanding folks give their valuable time to make this shining star of an organization what it is, and I am so appreciative of everyone…thank y’all!

Along those same lines, last week I attended TAGITM’s North TX Summit in Grand Prairie. Angie and the Education Committee put on a wonderful show. Angie hosted the festivities, and of course she was awesome. I thought the entire event went pretty dang smooth. We had our schedule, but we were flexible as needed and I left super impressed with all of it. I believe the content was on point and there was plenty of time to network/catch up with friends. A big thank you goes to Keshnel Penny and the City of Grand Prairie for allowing TAGITM to utilize their beautiful facility!

Besides catching up with a few folks, the most beneficial aspect to the North TX Summit for me was the presentation on CJIS policy changes coming straight at all of us. James Gore, the ISO at DPS, was an unbelievable wealth of knowledge. I’m going to go out on a limb and state he is hardwired to be an auditor (lol). I got to talk to him for a bit after he spoke and he’s very cool, but there is no question he loves his policies! I offer that up only to say he’s scheduled to be at the South TX Regional Summit at The Woodlands. There are big changes coming with CJIS, if you can make it to The Woodlands in February it’ll give you a leg up on what’s waiting around the corner. I also want to shout out William Pham for allowing us once again to make use of one of his city’s incredible facilities…..thanks William!

One last thing I want to call out is our next major event, which is also our first ever TAGITM GIS Summit this January 16th in Lewisville. Mark your calendars folks, and please note while we are identifying high quality content for our GIS professional brothers and sisters, we are keeping in mind content geared towards those IT leaders over GIS as well. There’s so much more to share happening around TAGITM, but I’ll save a few cool tidbits for next time….so that’s it y’all! I hope everyone has a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving. Please do take advantage and enjoy the hard-earned time off with your loved ones. Until next time thank y’all for reading.