During a celebration of volunteerism, advocacy and professionalism Wednesday night, three of Toronto’s IT industry associations said they will be joining forces to increase the value they provide to their membership of local enterprise technology users.
The Toronto chapter of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) will be working more closely with both the Toronto SQL Server User Group as well as the IT Pro Toronto User Group. The announcement was made during the presentation of the IT Certified Professional (ITCP) Awards by CIPS Toronto in the heart of the financial district.
Details of the partnerships were not specified, but CIPS Toronto president (and IT World Canada contributor) Cam McKay suggested the associations would share some resources or collaborate on projects in which they had a mutual interest.
Steve Syfuhs, president of the Toronto SQL Server User Group, said on stage that his organization was interested in developing better governance, and “CIPS is all about good governance.” There was a lot of potential in forming an alliance, he told ComputerWorld Canada afterwards.
“We’ve talked about having some of their people join our board of directors, and having some of our people join their board,” he said.
As its name suggests, the Toronto SQL User group is a non-profit technical forum for people who work with Microsoft’s SQL Server product and share information about usage and best practices. The Toronto IT Pro User Group, meanwhile, focuses more on operating systems and networking rather than developer-oriented topics. It is not officially associated with Microsoft, but many of its members are active users of its products.
CIPS, which was founded in 1958, is best known for developing standards and certification that help promote professionalism in IT, and represents thousands of members across the country. In his opening remarks, McKay reflected on the association’s history and brought up a picture of how IT professionals in the early days pictured a home computer in the year 2003: A mammoth, entertainment unit-sized piece of equipment with a wall-mounted TV set, dozens of controls and levers and even a steering wheel.
“I’m still not sure what the steering wheel is for,” he joked.
Despite a recession that had many IT professionals struggling to provide five “nines” of reliability on a shoestring budget, McKay noted that cloud computing, virtualization and other technologies have brought exciting challenges to those who want to make a difference. In his own case, McKay recently joined the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation of Canada, where his work will help end a disease.
“Why am I telling you that? Because I am an IT professional, and I love my job,” McKay said.
More than 30 people received their ITCP certificates Wednesday nights. CIPS Toronto also handed out awards of merit, including one for IT professionalism that went to Adam Cole, a judge in ComputerWorld Canada’s recent IT Leadership Awards. This was the first time the association has handed out the awards as part of a live event.