This month we are excited to introduce the new members of the itSMF USA^® 2008 Awards Committee.  Chair Dennis Ravenelle (former BOD member and past President’s Award winner) will be assisted by the Members Services portfolio Board Member (Me), Past President Leah Palmer, Lifetime Achievement Award winner Ken Wendle and last year’s Member of the Year, Kirk Holmes. Additionally, national Board member and former LIG President, Jay Stuart, plus one as yet identified LIG president and an Advisory Board Member will eventually round out the group. We are looking forward to receiving award nominations for this year’s planned awards in the very near future:

• Lifetime Achievement Award
• LIG Excellence - Team
• Rookie LIG of the Year - Team
• Member of the Year -  Individual
• Project of the Year
• Industry Knowledge Contribution
• President’s Award (discretionary – selected by President)
• Fusion 08 Best Presentation Award (recipient to receive award post Fusion 08)

There are a tremendous number of achievements in our association that go unrecognized every year. We are starting the nomination process a little earlier this year in order to give you more time to submit the names of deserving members, companies and LIGs. Forget modesty and nominate yourself or a colleague! Remember that nominees must be itSMF members in good standing and the quality of the submission should be as high as the quality of the nominee.  The criteria for the awards will be posted on the website at www.itsmfusa.org very soon.

In reviewing the previous award winners we wondered whether members were aware of the significant contributions of this impressive group:

As a result, one of the objectives of the member services portfolio this year will be to create a Hall of Fame website which will provide bios and achievement highlights. Information for last year’s winners are currently available at: http://data.memberclicks.com/site/itsmf/RELEASE_2007_Award_Recipients.pdf

A new Member Services Sub-Committee has been created to serve as the “voice of our members” to the Board of Directors (like “voice of the customer” for all of you Service Management geeks). Our chairperson, Stacy Prescott, is a founder and President of the Central Virginia LIG, recipient of the 2002 ITIL^® Practitioner of the Year Award from Pink Elephant and has twice supported our Conference as a track chair. Joining Stacy are Dave Howard, President of the Los Angeles LIG, and Scott Jaeger, Membership Chair for the Central Virginia LIG and itSMF Fusion 08 Program Track Vice-Chair.  If you are interested in being part this committee please contact Stacy at stacy.prescott@yahoo.com

Finally, yours truly has been elected as vice-chair of the IQAC Executive Sub-Committee for itSMF International. This sub-committee’s mission is to monitor, support and enhance Service Management qualification and certification schemes. We’ll focus more on this topic in the next issue but in the meantime, contact Debra Deganhart (debrad@us.ibm.com) if you are interested in hearing more. She chairs a sub-committee for itSMF that has done some great work providing continuing education recommendations for IT Service Management professionals.

If you need something, have a question or an idea, please feel free to email me anytime.

Warm Regards
Richard Berg
rberg@itsmfusa.org

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