Who are the volunteers behind VANTUG???

The Contact Information list below shows all the current VANTUG exective members.

Please feel free to email us if you have any questions - if you don't know who to contact - email the President of VANTUG and he/she will direct your inquiry to the right individual.

Please DO NOT track us down at our place of work as we have "day jobs" that we would like to keep - we need you to respect that this is all volunteer. Thanks in advance.

For those of you who don't know what the fancy titles mean, here is a brief description:

• President: chairs Exec meetings, runs General Meetings, establishes and maintains relationships with outside bodies such as Microsoft, INETA and Culminis, etc., and represents VANTUG on the Culminis Council for Canada
• Vice President: assists the President or committees
• Event Director: coordinates volunteers for events
• Communications: Public Relations Director: handles publicity for the group
• Finance Director: maintains accounting records and files necessary reports
• Program Director: recruits speakers, and coordinates and schedules meeting programs
• Webmaster: maintains group's website and database 
• Membership Director: registers new members and maintains membership records
• SIG Director: assists Special Interest Group Coordinators with formation, meeting locations, and publicity
• SIG Coordinators: manage their Special Interest Group, attends meetings, coordinates speakers with SIG Director as required.

Well, now that you know who we are - what is it exactly that we do?

Well, the Executive meets once a month and we discuss how we can improve and provide more value to our membership. We each have defined roles and responsibilities that highlight what we are accountable.

Some of the goals and objectives that we are currently involved with are:

• Website Redesign. The website uses Microsoft .NET technology. This way we will be able to further automate our registration process, enhance our meeting notification process, as well as provide other features like voting - so you can get involved in selecting the topics you want to hear more about.
• Public Relations. We are working on creating a program that will increase the awareness of the Vancouver Technology User Group in the community. There are a lot of business professionals, administrators and students who are still not aware of the advantages and benefits of VANTUG.
• Membership. We wish to continue to be responsive to our membership's needs and therefore we will be putting out a survey that will help us to further understand the membership's needs and help us to define and create programs that meet that need.
• Financial. We have been operating with a limited revenue stream and will be looking for other alternatives to generating the financial support that we need in order to continue to provide reasonable membership fees to our members.
• Volunteering in VANTUG. One of our objectives is to promote a positive and enjoyable environment for volunteers to donate their time, energy and enthusiasm to the association.
• Program Management. This is the part of VANTUG that most of our members see, our objective here is to produce presentations and events that educate and introduce new technologies that provide measurable value to the membership. We are trying to plan our presentations as far ahead as possible so that we can publish a program.
• Special Interest Groups. We want to foster an environment where SIGs are successful. This means that our SIG Director will be working more closely with SIG Coordinators and offering them more support than in the past.
• Infrastructure. Our objective with respect to infrastructure is to ensure the success of VANTUG longer term. This includes developing our volunteers and working with vendor community at large.
• Benefits. To continue to provide added value in the way of benefits to the membership through alliances with ATEC's and other affiliated organizations. We have secured some discounts for VANTUG members - however, we are working to expand and improve this area.