Dear Member,
We had a great opening night turn out for the Welcome to all conference attendees. We did a demo of the ENUG site to everyone and so far we have two new members who have signed up to join. Hopefully we will continue to grow our membership over the course of the conference. I’d also like to share with you the draft of my speech to the attendees that will be given on Monday morning. I wish all the members could be here, but with budget cuts and increasing pressure on all we do, I know that everyone cannot come to the conference. Hopefully my e-mails and the conference presentation materials which will be made available after the conference will help with some of the information sharing that happens at the conference. I will send you an end of day e-mail on Monday and will follow up on Tuesday with the announcement of the Board member vote.
Thank you,
Marc Rosson - President ENUG
CTO Seattle Housing Authority
Good morning and for those of you who are from west of the Rockies like my self, welcome to 6 am, I’m Marc Rosson, President of ENUG for this year, and also the Chief Technology Officer for Seattle Housing Authority. I wanted to start with a brief history of ENUG and who we were and who we are today and what has and has not changed about our organization. In 1995, a few customers of Memory Lane Systems got together and formed the Emphasys National Users Group and started having yearly conferences, so welcome to our 11th conference. The group was formed to share information, come up with best practices, and to help what was at the time a fledging company in a niche market support a canned software solutions to the HA market. At the time MLS had only the Flex product and we as a group had a broad scope of issues to work with MLS. Everything from coming up with software escrows to getting the product to run on different platforms. Some of us still bear the scares of those early days. That said we as ENUG remained focused on the core values of our partnership with the vendor to create a better product. When MLS started their Elite development for a windows product, we were there making suggestions and sharing the issues of those early beta rollouts. Our commitment continued when MLS sold to Constellation Software and Emphasys Software was born to form the umbrella company that took the housing marketing into an era of consolidation, purchasing both MLS and CCS. ENUG choose to continue to focus on the products, form a partnership with the new vendor, and expanded to include the new company and its products. The existing CCS user group went in a different direction and formed a vendor neutral group and now focuses on HUD issues and is the technology wing for NAHRO. ENUG stayed focused on the core users and only on the products and the solutions offered by Emphasys. And we have continued to expand our focus as Emphasys has gained other products. Whether it be through acquisition of AOD as it relates to HFA software suites or through development as it relates to the web based ASP solution of “My Housing”, we have continued to grow our membership and focus on our core values of sharing information and helping to improve the products we all depend on with customer focus groups and input.
Our accomplishments for this year include a focus group on project based accounting (PBA) that allowed us to help Emphasys create agendas for the PBA meetings that they ran. We meet last May with Mike and his management team and came up with new ways to share information. Part of that is a new survey going up right after this conference which will allow customers to allocate points to new features they would like to see in the next major release. We also formed smaller focus groups, for example, Seattle is one of 17 Emphasys customers that is MTW and has some different HUD transmission requirements. So whether you are the HFA for the state of Ohio or Dan and Cheryl running My Housing up in Salisbury, MA, ENUG is here for you to help you cooperate and share information with other Emphasys customers.
If you are an ENUG member, please come to the Member Luncheon in the OceanView Room which is in the Lower Lobby on Tuesday at 12:00 pm. We have a lot to cover so please arrive on time. If you are not a member, we would love for you to join our group. You can contact Joe or Mia at the ENUG desk and sign up while you are here at the conference and then come to the lunch on Tuesday.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Joe Diehls and his company for running this conference from the ENUG side. He has done a great job for ENUG. I also wanted to thank Traci Pollock from Emphasys for running the conference on the Emphasys side, and Mike Bryne for supporting all the logistics and making available all his key staff available for this conference. Only the best software companies out there support their independent user groups in such a profound and extensive way. This is truly a great partnership that allows us to get together and share information in this way every year.
I’d also like to put in a shameless plug for my session in the vendor area later today from 1-2:15 on Document Management and Workflow using the Hyland product.
I hope everyone has a great conference, fill out your surveys and we will see you next year somewhere on the West Coast and with that I’ll turn it over to Traci.
Monday - Day 2
Well Monday is wrapped up. Mike did a great job in showing off some of the new things that are coming for each area that Emphasys now supports as well as how the Emphasys customer base is broken out. My speech was better in written form than in delivery, but at least you all got a copy.
The big surprise for many of us during Mike's presentation is that a new version of the 50058 submission will be implemented by PIC on 12/15/2006. This will require a change to be applied to all systems in order to make any submissions to PIC after 12/15/2006.
This is a big change as PIC usually made these changes backward compatible and would support both new and old formats for a period of a few months. Forcing all the HAs to apply patches a week before the Christmas holiday will cause problems for many.
I have written to HUD and asked for an explanation of why these changes to the standard submission must take place and why when we have always had some cross over months to make the move, why this installation has no cross over time.
Mike announced free registration next year for the best innovation submitted by a customer by the end of the conference. I'll be interested to see what we come up with.
My presentation on document imaging and workflow went well and I heard good feed back on many of the presentations being done by our members.
I attended some great sessions with Chris Lema the new VP of Development. He showed working demos of lots of great and wonderful improvements, products, and changes coming soon. I will highlight the slides from Chris's presentations in the post conference wrap up.
I also attended the new Executive track, which was great. Future of Public housing discussions and the challenges we all face. It was good to share experiences and discuss opportunities of sharing best business practices as well as best IT software practices.
I'm looking forward to the PBA discussions tomorrow as well as our ENUG Lunch (now in the Starlight room on the 18th floor at 12:00 pm sharp).
We will vote and I'll let you know the results soon after. I will also continue to post pictures for Tuesday.
We have raised our membership by four just here at the conference and I welcome all those that have decided to sign up.
Thanks again for the support and look for my e-mail after the vote tomorrow.
Thanks,
Marc Rosson
President ENUG
CTO Seattle Housing Authority
Tuesday - Day 2 - Lunch Meeting Results
Dear Member,
We had five housing authorities running for two board positions this year. We had 44 voting members at the lunch and we have elected Cuyahogoa Metropolitan Housing Authority in Cleveland, OH and re-elected Saint Louis County in St. Louis, MO to the board. They will serve for three years in these positions. You can find out more about them by going to the Agency Logon and clicking on their names under Agency Profiles.
Every year we have two open positions, so if you are interested in being on the board, start the process now, talk to your management and you can let the new President know that your agency is interested.
The new President of ENUG will be elected at our January, 9th meeting.
I will do my final post of pictures from today's meeting as well as pictures of tonight's event late this evening.
In addition, the change to the by-laws was passed allowing the board to do e-mail voting.
Look forward to my wrap up tonight.
Thanks,
Marc Rosson
President ENUG
CTO Seattle Housing Authority
P.S. Just a quick update on PIC. I talked with the policy group at HUD and they were not aware of the 5.8 to 5.9 PIC version issues. They will investigate and let us know what the plans are. Emphasys is making a patch available for the last MR on 1.8.7, 1.8.8, and 1.8.9 of Elite, and the latest versions for LIB/SELECT/Flex in order to handle these issues, but either way applying them a week before the holidays could be a big issue. Stay tuned.
Tuesday - Day 2 - Wrap up
Subject: Conference 2007 Update
Dear Member,
I wanted to thank every one of the 140 people that came to the lunch today to vote for board membership and discuss some critical issues.
PIC Update:
I wanted to update you on which versions will have the PIC 5.8 to PIC 5.9 patches. You need to be on one of these in order to make the PIC 5.9 transmission after 12/15/2006 unless HUD changes its mind. I’ll let you know as soon as I know more.
Elite: 1.8.7, 1.8.8 or 1.8.9 latest MRs
Flex: 6.44
LIB: HE 5.3 patches -1-17, S8 5.3 patches 1-14, TA 5.3 patches 1-7
Select: 7.13, 8.13
ENUG Lunch Meeting:
We had a great day with many great opportunities to share information and network with other users. Our ENUG Lunch went well, other than our gifts were not available, so they will be mailed to those that came to the lunch. Be sure to turn in your form in order to get the gift. I gave the treasury report. Our balance is $62,000 and we have a pending invoice of $32,000 to pay for the conference, so we have about one conference in reserve. We need to drive for membership. I have set a goal of increasing our membership by 50 by the next conference. There are 150 HA Emphasys customers that are not currently members. If we increase by an additional 50 paying members, we might be able to reduce the dues with board approval.
The new board member page has been updated. Note I have a correction to my previous e-mail. Board members serve a three year term not a two year term, but elections are every year for two board members.
http://www.enug.net/M0-Visitors/M0-Menu/M0-Contact-Us.htm
ENUG By-Laws have been updated per the vote to accept the change to e-mail voting.
http://www.enug.net/M0-Visitors/M0-Menu/M0-Bylaws.htm
We are a strong group and will have a much greater importance as Emphasys is on the verge of a dramatic change in its ability to deliver solutions and quality all at the same time.
SURVEY Participation:
To that end, Chris Lema, the new VP of Development for Emphasys http://www.emphasys-software.com/announcements/vp_prod_dev.asp will be depending on our membership to provide them input into which products and features of those products they should invest their time in developing. To that end, a new survey will be going up on the SharePoint site soon in order for members at each HA to contribute to the solutions. Anyone you setup as an individual user under the Agency logon will be able to log into the SharePoint site and vote on these new features and products.
FOCUS Groups:
In addition, as part of our focus group effort, we will be formalizing our focus groups with names and member distribution lists as well as getting Emphasys to assign a member of their staff to each focus group.
Currently we have PBA, Documentation, and MTW. I would like to create a Document Imaging and Workflow group as well as a special Mid-Market Focus Group. Each of these focus groups will have a discussion group setup on the SharePoint site so that everyone can discuss issues associated with each one.
In addition, if you have suggestions on what other focus groups we should be creating and wish to be a member that would be great. Please let me know.
CONFERNCE Wrap-up:
My afternoon after the lunch was spent listening to Chris Lema discuss the future of Emphasys products in the next 6 to 9 months. It was exciting to see so many new and valuable changes coming out of Emphasys’s development group.
At 6:40 pm, over 200 of us walked across the street onto the 130 foot yacht to cruise up and down the canal along the beautiful Miami Beach. We had dinner aboard and had a great opportunity to network with our members and discuss what’s next for Emphasys and our group.
Mike Byrne announced the winners of the Awards Program as well as the Conference winners for best ideas (See pictures)
http://www.emphasys-software.com/sub/awards_program.asp
Pioneer Award went to Cincinnati Metropolitan and Missouri Housing.
Innovation Awards went to Fresno, Mobile, and Tlingit-Haida Regional housing authories.
Conference Best Ideas Awards and free registration for next year’s conference went to Youngstown Metro, N. Y. Housing Preservation & Development, and Glendale.
Wall of Champions awards were given out to Art Cate from Knoxville, Carol McCall from Myrtle Beach, Ed Phillips from Tlingit-Haida Regional, Reema Ruberg from Cincinnati Metro, and Donna Cramblit from Ohio Housing Finance.
All the pictures of today’s lunch meeting and the cruise are on the web site.
Click on the 2006 Post Conference Updates to review all the letters and pictures from the conference. We will work to get more presentation slides and materials published to the membership ASAP over the coming month. In addition, as part of our conference wrap up, all the surveys from the conference will be shared with ENUG so that we can review the sessions and conference. Most importantly, results for the Next Year’s Conference Location Survey will also be announced by the January 9th, board meeting so you can start to plan.
I look forward to seeing some of you next year at the conference and we will work together to make this group valuable to you and to Emphasys in cooperation to accomplish all our goals.
Thank you again and it was a pleasure to be President for this year. You will receive another e-mail from me after the January 9th board meeting giving you the e-mail address of the new president. They will be sending out their first initial letter shortly after that.
Thank you,
Marc Rosson
President ENUG
CTO Seattle Housing Authority