BDPA is a national organization. Introduced by their Northern Virginia Chapter, the CollectiveX service is now used by other chapters as well as BDPA Chapter Presidents. Chapter committees wanted to be successful with a user-friendly collaborative solution -- and, were required to tie it in directly to a top business objective. (For instance, BDPA's Washington, D.C. Chapter's goal was to publish a monthly newsletter while concurrently leveraging "ezine," or "electronic magazine" formats).
CollectiveX helped them do it. Here's the full story:
"When members and new users rediscovered their chapter's news, events, photos and newsletters through Groupsites powered by CollectiveX, the viral creation of branded Groupsites and subgroups was underway. We found that CollectiveX supports online communication requirements while leveraging social networking technologies and economies of scale across chapters and their respective committees.
Now our teams have seamless access to a very robust collaborative solution. The value of Groupsites to BDPA chapters grows as the breadth and depth of our industry data is successfully harvested and shared by our members."
- Perry Carter, Vice President/CIO Mid-Atlantic, Tec-Masters, Inc. and President of BDPA's Washington, D.C. Chapter
National BDPA (NBDPA), formerly known as Black Data Processing Associates, is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit organization founded in 1975 to advance minorities in the data processing career field. Today, NBDPA together with its local chapters, is an organization that serves as a catalyst for professional growth and technical development for those in the information and communications technology (ICT) industry and those in related ICT industries transcending vertical markets.
To meet and exceed emerging online collaborative member services requirements, CollectiveX-powered Groupsites were introduced by BDPA's Northern Virginia Chapter to NBDPA during a quarterly Chapter Presidents' meeting in 2007. Groupsites were also reintroduced to those in the National Capital Region (NCR) last year during an impromptu small business round table. After both presentations, local BDPA chapter Communications Committees wanted to be successful with user-friendly collaborative solutions. These solutions also had to directly be tied to one of their chapter's top business objectives. Locally, BDPA's Washington, D.C. Chapter's goal was to publish a monthly newsletter while concurrently leveraging "ezine," or "electronic magazine" formats.
The local chapter also needed to upgrade existing newsletters while providing ICT industry news, events and related legislation from a single source emblematic of a "Washington ICT News Bureau" for its stakeholders. When members and new users rediscovered their chapter's news, events, photos and newsletters through Groupsites powered by CollectiveX, the viral creation of branded Groupsites and subgroups was underway. Today, NBDPA maintains published calendars of events from each participating chapter, RSS feeds from the ICT industry, RSS feeds from BDPA's Education and Technology Foundation (BETF), and discussion forum announcements for new and current members in BDPA's Groupsite. BDPA Chapter Presidents maintain a private Groupsite for global ICT industry-related issues, opportunities, and NBDPA matters.
"Groupsites provide a very intuitive interface for the Washington, D.C. Chapter's Welcome Centre and the chapter's interactive newsletter Groupsite," says Perry Carter. "Our teams fundamentally believe they now have seamless access to a very robust collaborative solution. We found that CollectiveX supports online communication requirements while leveraging social networking technologies and economies of scale across chapters and their respective committees."
It's great to see the power of Groupsites in action. Thanks, Perry! We're excited to be a BDPA partner and see Groupsites valued and adopted across your distributed organization.