I attended the workshop on strategic marketing yesterday, organised jointly by CSI and Biz Training. It was very stimulating and well worth the time.
The presenter, Warwick McCormack of the Ad Clinic in Wellington, spoke 'free format', i.e no powerpoint etc and still had my attention at 12:00 even though I was hungry, so he did well as I am food motivated. Lots of food for thought too :-). One section of his talk was on strategic alliances. He made the point that CSI is a form of alliance and we should maximise membership of it, he made a big point about the need for and value of collaboration. He had heard lots of good things about CSI and gave a nice unprompted plug. He also suggested CSI could assist members in new ways, including through procurement deals such as discounts for members with particular suppliers. The CSI exec is looking at the next set of seminar/workshop topics. There seems to be a lot of interest in the marketing side. A recent software industry survey conducted by Massey Uni has just crossed my desk. It states that 60% of respondents identified they had a skills shortage in marketing - the weaknesses are not so much in building great products as in the ability to sell those products. The session just held was on strategic marketing - the logical follow-on would be on marketing tactics. This does not have to be a full 3 hour formal session with an outside speaker, it could be a shorter session, & it could be organised as a group session, sharing techniques that work for members, lessons learnt etc. There's various ways we could do this. Post to the csforum your thoughts on what you'd like to see organised in this area. Howard. (a CSI exec member) -------------------------------------------------- Dr Howard Nicholls Alchemy Group Limited Level 6, Royal & Sun Alliance Building Cnr Hereford St. & Oxford Terr. PO Box 2386, Christchurch, New Zealand Ph +64-3-962-0396, Fax +64-3-962-0388 Mobile +64-21-459-105 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alchemy.co.nz --> via Canterbury Software email forum: Success through Connections Email your messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Leave or rejoin the list: http://canterburysoftware.org.nz/forum.htm
