View from the Chair

Brad Minnis, CPP

View from the Chair

Fellow members of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter:

I can’t believe its May already! There are many things happening within ASIS and the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter. The question is, where do I start!

Naomi Fine,
April Speaker

The April membership meeting was held at Sun Microsystems in Santa Clara on the 17th We had a wonderful speaker, Ms. Naomi Fine, President of Pro-Tec Data in San Leandro, who delivered a great presentation on Intellectual Asset Management. If you happened to have missed it, a copy of her presentation will soon be available, and you can find other past meeting presentations, for download from the Members Only area on the website.

Some of you may have heard that our neighboring chapter to the east, the Mt. Diablo Chapter, has been officially dissolved within ASIS. Last week, I sent a message to all of the members of the Mt. Diablo Chapter, inviting them to join and participate in the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, and I can report that the response has been extremely positive. There are a large number of talented individuals from Mt. Diablo who will be joining us, and their contributions will be greatly appreciated. This also means that the territory covered by the SFBA Chapter will increase substantially, and the rest of the Executive Council and I are committed to making it as easy as we can for members to participate.

Speaking of membership, I typically receive membership updates from ASIS HQ on a monthly basis, and this month, I received a rather large list of 130 members who have been placed on hold, mostly because dues for the current year have not been paid. We are going to wait before canceling access for these members, and have established a committee to contact each of these people to see if we can assist in case of problems, but more importantly, try to retain as many of them as we can. I suspect there are a certain number of people moving out of the area or the industry, but this list seems to be quite high, and I would like to understand it better. I have also heard that there were some processing problems for payments earlier this year, and we need to get to the bottom of it.

We ARE listening to our membership from San Francisco, who have told us in the past that we do not have enough programs in the northern part of the peninsula. I am pleased to report that the June breakfast meeting will be held at Wells Fargo Bank in downtown San Francisco, hosted by Bill Wipprecht, and Ted Barron, CPP. In addition, we will hold the annual Security Officer Appreciation Luncheon in San Francisco at Pacific Bell Park, and have just last week, finalized plans to hold our December meeting at Bechtel’s World Headquarters, also in San Francisco.

Now, it’s the membership in San Francisco and the northern peninsula who can help us by registering and attending the meetings there!

I am really getting excited about the upcoming SFBA Annual Seminar and Exhibits, which will he held at the Parkside Hall of the San Jose Convention Center on May 29th. The event, under the leadership of R. Douglas Nunes, is coming together very well, and you should see an exhibit hall which will outdo anything we have done in the past. Plus some exciting seminar topics and speakers make this an event you don’t want to miss! The SF Bay Area Chapter will be holding a drawing at the May Seminar for a complementary registration at the ASIS Annual Seminar and Exhibits in New Orleans in September, so be sure to visit our booth. Strong sales are anticipated, so get your reservations in now.

And lastly, ASIS International has announced the Allan J. Cross, CPP Award; a scholarship program offering registration at the annual CPP review program conducted at the ASIS Annual Seminar and Exhibits. Only one applicant per chapter will be considered, and we must provide our nominee to the ASIS Foundation no earlier or later than 12:00 noon on June 2, 2003. For more information on the award, and how to apply for the chapter nomination, please visit our website.

As always, feedback is welcomed and appreciated. Please send to chair@sfasis.org.

See you at the May Seminar!

Sincerely,
Brad Minnis, CPP
Chapter Chairman