President's Corner

by David Giambra

April  2017

MUG Update

President’s Corner – David Giambra

MUG 2017 update (coming Soon)

June 2016 wrap-up

Good weather and summer has officially arrived and with that, another successful MUG season is behind us.  Elections were held this year and I am happy to report that I will begin my second term as your President.  I will tell you who the new members of the board of directors are a bit later.   It is still and always will be our goal to keep this user group running for the benefit of our members and member companies.   In order to do so we need you to support your monthly meetings.

We kicked off our 2015/2016 season with our good friend Steve Fier from IBM at one of our favorite Buffalo restaurants, Chefs.    Steve is very good to our group; he travels from out of town to share with us IBM’s latest announcements.   We all benefit from these, as well as his knowledge.

The second meeting of the season was at the Scotch and Sirloin.  Chris Burns from Gemko, who has always been a huge supporter of our user group along with Gemko presented “Where do we go from here”.    A presentation on iSeries Access.   

We had our Holiday Party in December at the Hamburg Casino.   All the members and families had an enjoyable night, including great food, great conversations and free-play money for the casino.  This was also Steve Kait’s final user group meeting, as he embarks on a new career.   I personally wish Steve all the luck and happiness in the world.  He was a huge supporter of this group for many years.  He was also a huge supporter of mine during my first year and half as your President.  I could not have done it without him.

Our first meeting of 2016 was at The Grill @ The Dome.   A friend and co-worker of mine, Christopher Dively from Cardinal Health presented “The Business Analyst Role in a Large Corporation”.   Christopher traveled to Buffalo from Winston-Salem North Carolina to present at our meeting.

Our March meeting was at an Italian favorite, The Italian Village.   We planned to talk about “Speed Networking”, but as we all know working in IT, sometimes we get called away for work.  This meeting turned into a casual networking and March Madness event.  We are hoping to reschedule the “Speed Networking” presentation this upcoming season.

Our last meeting of the season was at JP Fitzgerald's in Hamburg .   Jill Martucci and Allison Hall from the Bonadio Group gave a presentation about Security called “Current Security Threats and Lessons Learned”.   So much has changed in our world around security, this was a definite eye opener.

We concluded our year with a casual event at Buffalo ’s own Flying Bison, catered by Dinosaur BBQ, just a few weeks ago.   It was a night full of beer tasting, a tour of the brewery and some of the finest BBQ in WNY.    Everybody had a blast and I, for one, am a big  fan of Flying Bison’s Rusty Chain.        

A huge thank you to all our speakers this season.  Your time and expertise is a huge value to our user group.  

Not only do we offer everything mentioned above but we also do our part to support charities with our $50 speaker donations.  We are making a $50 donation on behalf of MUG of WNY and the meeting speaker to their charity of choice.  This year we donated $200 to several deserving charities who value our support.  As a long term member of this group, I am proud that we are able to do so.  The charities we supported this year, as part of our speaker donations were:

·         Nature Conservancy

·         Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (jdrf.org)

·         Sadie’s Safe Harbor Canine Rescue

·         Hospice Buffalo

As I mentioned earlier, this year was an election year. 

Here are the elections results and Committee Chairs:

President – David Giambra

Vice-President – Paul Urbanski

Secretary – Ralph Giambra

Treasurer – Ted Korkuc

Membership – Mike Budzich
 

Website/Newsletter/e-blasts – Chuck Giambra, Ralph Giambra

I would like to thank our board of directors, who without their drive and expertise, this group could not survive.   Thank You to Paul, Steve, Mike, Ron, Ted, Ralph, Chuck and the past years support.

I especially want to thank all our membership companies who continue to support MUG of WNY year after year.  I want to thank our members who attend our monthly meetings and see the value we offer the community. 

As good of a season we had, we need membership to attend our monthly meetings.   We will be working hard this summer to plan our 2016/2017 season. We hope to see you all again later this year. 

Keep watching the website.   We will have our schedule up before the end of summer.  

Thank you and hope to see you all at our meetings this upcoming season.

David Giambra

MUG of WNY, President

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Be sure to visit our website www.mugwny.org to stay updated on MUG activities and register for our meetings!  

See you Soon!

-The Midrange Users Group (MUG) of WNY-