By Jose Rivera

I hope you had a nice summer (for those in the Northern hemisphere). By the time this ‎newsletter is sent, the CSIA Board will have met in-person in Chicago October 3-5. As is ‎normally the case, we dedicate the Fall meeting to strategic planning for the association. ‎

Some years we craft a new plan; in other years we review progress / update / fine tune. 2023 ‎is a heavy year as we are developing a new strategic plan leveraging the foundation of the ‎previous one. (Editor’s note: One output from this fall meeting was a revised mission, vision ‎and values statement.) ‎

July Board Meeting
The board met at the end of July. We appreciated the facilitation provided by Ralph Vasami, ‎a seasoned executive from Kellen, CSIA’s association management company. Because the ‎execution of several strategic projects involves resources (people, $) and because our budget ‎gets approved in December, the Board asked for this meeting. I thank the Board members ‎for taking time for this important meeting. ‎

Since the July meeting I been working to generate a strategy that considers the input by:‎

  1. The Board from the facilitated July session.‎
  2. Our broad membership through our regular surveys (e.g., conference and year-end ‎membership surveys), regular one-on-one interactions and other sources (CSIA EZ ‎Stats, JPMorgan survey).‎
  3. Association management literature and input by our association management ‎company on general trends impacting associations.‎

‎30th Anniversary on the Way!‎
CSIA will turn 30 next year. Over this period, we have seen considerable transformation from ‎our humble beginnings. ‎

Many of our members have seen this transformation at their companies too. For CSIA, this ‎forces us to take a hard look at who we are and what we want to be to support the needs of ‎members today and tomorrow.‎

I hope to share this work with you during our townhall business meeting in Dallas, TX during ‎the 2024 conference.‎

An immediate output from the July in-person Board meeting was the approval of a Director ‎for BP and Professional Development. We are glad to have Eric Schaefer on board to lead ‎two key initiatives for CSIA. Please see this announcement.‎

At the time of this writing, I’m about to travel with Monica Saunder (CSIA staff) to inspect ‎possible sites for our 2025 CSIA Conference. We hope to have a recommendation for the ‎Board to approve this month. ‎

As is our tradition, we won’t be sharing the selection until the end of the 2024 conference. ‎What I can already share is that this is an awesome location and that it will check many of ‎the boxes that our members told us are important to them on the survey we ran at the end ‎of the 2023 conference. ‎

For 2025 we are back to the “West” honoring our 2 East, 1 West pattern. The resurgence of ‎events has increased the demand for hotels, forcing us to decide years in advance. We are ‎already looking into 2026!‎

Jose Rivera is CEO of Control System Integrators Association.