SCIP 32nd Annual International Conference & Exhibition Chronicles Preview

KEYNOTE 
The Collaboration Conundrum

Presented by
Nicola Millard
Head of Customer Insight & Futures, 
BT Global Services Innovation Team







SESSION ABSTRACT

With technologies becoming more decentralized and disappearing into the cloud, is it also time for traditionally centralized and hierarchical organization structures to follow as hierarchy becomes “wire-archy”? Logic (and technology) would say yes, but human nature often stubbornly disagrees. A whole host of collaboration conundrums, challenges and contradictions rear their heads as we have employees (and customers) who are connected by communication networks rather than real face-to-face ones. 

KEY TAKE-AWAYS: 

• Redefining productivity in a digital age 
• Identifying new skills for leadership in the future world of work 
• Creating new ways of bringing employees, customers and partners together on common ground 

OVERVIEW

According to recent surveys, only 13% of employees are engaged in their job. With low levels of engagement, employees are often less productive. Today, employees seek flexibility in their work. Additionally, Millard used the term “shoulder bag employees,”to describe an increasingly untethered workforce of employees who can carry their “office” around in their bag. The challenge of such a workforce is collaboration. 

In the digital space we all work in, we need leaders who are especially good connectors and networkers. These types of people are called charismatic connectors -- they are very good at networking, connecting people and getting them to collaborate. In an MIT study on Social Physics however, data showed that only one out of four participants was a charismatic connector. So where does this leave the important business of collaboration?

TAKE AWAY

Key insights about collaboration: 

• Generally, people will only collaborate if it has a purpose
• More collaboration is occurring within the digital space
• Over 50% of people will not collaborate unless they get recognition and/or rewards
• Collaboration does not happen by magic, there are tools you can use to facilitate it

Collaboration challenges:

• The physical office is not designed for collaboration
• There are an increasing number of virtual workers, calling in from home or cafes
• By 2020, there will be five different generations in the workforce; this age diversity will affect collaboration
• We must help older workers get comfortable with technology
• Culture, gender, and personality traits (introverts versus extroverts) can also influence collaboration 
• When it comes to collaboration, “one size does not fit all”
• Email is a common communications tool, but it is a terrible collaboration tool

BEST PRACTICE

• Design the workplace to encourage collaboration
• Augment face to face meetings with videoconferencing
• Encourage socializing at the office, even if it is in the cloud
• Know when to disconnect to avoid becoming “techno-stressed;” a big issue in the U.S. and the U.K.
• The less sleep workers get, the less productive they are
• Train your people to become better networkers

ACTION ITEM 

A big problem is disconnecting from work as the temptation in today’s environment is to be always on.  We even sleep with our smartphones.  But this can lead to being “techno stressed” which is a big issue in the U.S. and the UK. And being always “on” leads to not only more stress, but also less sleep,  and less sleep leads to less productivity. 

FINAL THOUGHT 

Collaboration is about trust and reciprocity. Collaboration does not happen by accident. We do not collaborate unless we have a purpose. Ninety-five percent of high performing organizations instill a good sense of purpose. Teams with pre-established relationships between 20-40% of members had stronger networks and stronger collaboration from the beginning. The effects on behavior are four times more powerful when ties are strong than when they are weak. By addressing these factors, organizations can help foster collaboration.

Top 5 Key Take-Aways - SCIP 2017

By Tracy D'Amours 
Analyst, Market Intelligence
ShiftCentral






Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the Strategic Competitive Intelligence Professionals’ (SCIP) 32nd annual international conference in Atlanta, GA. This is the premiere North American opportunity for business leaders and competitive intelligence (CI) professionals from around the world to convene, discuss the current state of the CI industry and share strategies and solutions. 

This year, the conference – appropriately themed developing and engaging the modern intelligence workforce – had a different air about it. From the keynote sessions in the main hall to the more hands-on breakout sessions and one-on-one conversations with other attendees, it was clear that the tides are turning.

Driving changes in competitive intelligence are the requirements of the industries we serve – the needs of our clients. Technology and business model innovation, geopolitical and economic uncertainty and other disruptive factors are pushing business leaders to lean more heavily on their CI teams to help them navigate the new competitive landscape. These changes create new challenges, new opportunities and truthfully, a sense of excitement for any CI professional.

Now is our time to shine, and my colleagues and I were energized to lead the way by the interactions we had with clients and other CI professionals at SCIP.

Here are my 5 key take-aways from those sessions:

1. The expanding role of CI professionals – Roughly 30 years ago, when the competitive intelligence profession was starting to take shape, the role mostly entailed tracking competitor moves to better inform internal strategy. Now, according to SCIP CEO Nan Bulger, the role of a CI professional is four-fold: “a CI professional must be a leader, an analyst/strategist, a business optimizer and an innovator.”
2. Deliverable expectations are evolving – Merely collecting and sharing information in not enough. In this ultra-fast paced business world, key decision makers are looking to their competitive intelligence teams to not only collect and disseminate must-know information, but to present it in a manner that adds insights, value and a set of prepared strategic options. This thought was present across keynotes, breakout sessions and chatter among attendees.
3. Know the audience and frame content appropriately – One of my favorite sessions focused on interactive coaching and was presented by Michael Cooper, founder of Innovators + Influencers. Entitled “Delivering Value and The Challenges of Interfacing with Executive Management,” it pointed out that CI – whether we want to admit it or not – tends to be delivered in a dry, overly-detailed format. Cooper’s session focused on understanding the end audience to ensure that different audience types are getting the greatest value out of their CI. He identified four brain types and how to frame CI deliverables in a manner that will resonate with each. I won’t give away all his trade secrets, but I recommend checking him out if you have the opportunity. 
4. Scenario planning is no longer a luxury, it’s an essential tool – Beyond the traditional building blocks of competitive intelligence, such as STEEP analysis or win/loss programs, scenario plans provide added insight by enabling the leaders of an organization to understand their competitors’ mindset. According to August Jackson and Tim Kindler, Associate Directors at EY, during their session on “Strategic Foresight – Keeping Your Options Open in an Uncertain World,” scenario planning can be boosted by wargaming, decision maker profiling and simulated board meetings. These approaches highlight an issue or opportunity from the competitor’s POV and can unlock greater insight into what their next move might be.
5. AI is not a futuristic notion – Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here. This was a point that Al Naqvi, president of the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence, drove home in his session on “Competitive Intelligence in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.” It may not have the futuristic form we once imagined, but AI’s trickling in and starting to impact many industries from the bottom up, ultimately reshaping corporate strategy. Technology has its limitations, and will never entirely replace humans (something we firmly stand by at ShiftCentral), but a winning competitive intelligence strategy will actively seek opportunities to leverage the capabilities that AI offers to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our trade.

Tracy manages the ShiftCentral research department, servicing clients across all industries with their more directed research and strategy support needs. Tracy has a passion for helping companies navigate new opportunities and challenges in the face of disruption, whether it be new technologies, new markets, or new competitive threats. Prior to joining ShiftCentral, Tracy coordinated economic and business development initiatives for the Federal government, and was an investment specialist at one of Canada’s top banks.

How to Turn Group Work into Teamwork

By Sean Glaze
Team Building Facilitator
and Teamwork Speaker
Great Results Team Building





Before beginning my career as a team building facilitator and speaker, I was a high school English teacher.

And as a teacher, I was all too familiar with how attempts at group work deteriorated into unfocused social time – or how a majority of the responsibility was unfairly placed on one conscientious individual, while others slacked off.

Classrooms across the country are filled with situations just like that.

Unfortunately, this is a circumstance that also translates to the workplace.

The cost of unengaged, unfocused, and disconnected workers is alarming.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. companies lose $3 billion a year to the effects of negative attitudes at work.  And the American Management Association reports that 60% of executives listed lack of collaboration as one of their top leadership challenges.

So what can managers and team leaders do to change this and improve their workplace culture?

The truth is that their solutions are surprisingly similar.

Team Engagement is a simple recipe – but it requires the inclusion of five very important ingredients.

So here is a short description of the recipe I discovered – it works when you are working with students, with athletes, with employees, and virtually ANY situation where you want to transform a GROUP into a more effective and cohesive TEAM.

You may want to follow this Rapid Teamwork recipe with your people: 

First, you will want to ensure that there is a clear goal and adequate gear (resources) for the activity or project they will be working on.  What is the essential question they will need to answer, or the outcome(s) that you want them to experience?

Next, you will want to have given enough time to build relationships and a strong sense of community. Too many managers underestimate the impact of building rapport and strengthening the relationships and awareness of those who you are asking to work together.

Third, you will want to provide clear expectations and roles for team members, and then continue to encourage them to meet those expectations once the activity has begun.  Without establishing expectations, how will you know if they did what they were supposed to?  And it is your encouragements and reminders that will serve as fuel for refocusing their efforts if they encounter adversity or frustration.

Fourth, you will want to include some measureable accountability for assessing their efforts and attach a consequence for their positive or negative behaviors during the activity.  Holding people accountable, and being willing to make adjustments to seating arrangements, groupings, or team roles, are all important to maintaining a sense of professionalism and purpose.  If it isn’t important enough to measure, it won’t be important enough for your people to do well.

And the final ingredient you want is to include some element of thanks and providing recognition. What gets rewarded will almost always get repeated, so if you would like certain behaviors to be repeated (or adopted by others) you should offer toasts or celebratory rewards – maybe candy, maybe other perks – to those who did what you desired they would.

You will find that the greatest gift you give your people is not the single insight or sense of accomplishment from any one project or activity...  

Instead, the greatest gift you will have given them is the SKILL of being engaged and working together successfully with others.

Teamwork is a tremendously important and learned skill, and along with the outcomes that your activity offers, you will also have shared with your people a set of valuable skills that they will be able to transfer to other situations they will certainly encounter later in life…

If you are part of an organization whose culture needs to improve the sense of community amongst your staff, the steps for building a more cohesive and successful class, faculty and workforce are identical.

You can help to inspire more engagement when you include those FIVE powerful and essential ingredients into your company culture.

And if you realize that one of the ingredients is missing, that is the area where you will need to focus in order to improve the engagement of your employees.

Often, I find that companies are generous in investing in their strategy and technology – but then neglect to create and maintain connections and relationships among the people that are responsible for implementing that strategy.

If that is you, perhaps a team building event would be a great idea – because all collaborative conversations are based on the quality of relationships that your people have developed!

Sean inspires people to have fun laughing together so they can have more success working together. His three books, The Unexpected Leader, Rapid Teamwork, and The 10 Commandments of Winning Teammates are powerful parables for building and leading great teams!

As a successful basketball coach and educator for over 20 years, Sean gained valuable insights into how to develop winning teams, and founded Great Results Teambuilding to share those lessons. Today, he travels around the country delivering interactive events and entertaining keynotes that transform employees into winning teammates!

To connect:  @leadyourteam on Twitter or sean@greatresultsteambuilding.com

SCIP 2017 International Conference & Exhibition:Intelligence Professionals on the Frontlines of Change

By Lakshika Trikha
Assistant Director,
Strategy & Business Development
SCIP








In many ways, the theme of the SCIP2017 International Conference was also its mission: to galvanize the modern intelligence workforce. Over the course of four days, over 450 professionals assembled to envision a future in which all intelligence functions and disciplines are going to be fundamentally different. They also discussed the best ways to build the necessary skillsets and processes within their organizations to thrive in this future landscape. The conference featured pre-event workshops, SCIP University certification, keynotes, breakout sessions, and networking receptions, all packed with content that covered a wide range of industries and disciplines. At the end of the event, in speaking with attendees and reviewing post-conference evaluations, it was clear thata few ideas resonated particularly well. 

Diversity, Inclusion, Collaboration: Beyond the Buzzwords 

A simple fact that cannot be stated enough is that learning to work with other people is critical. This is a prerequisite for getting work done within teams, but is even more important when trying to steer change within an organization. A number of the keynotes and breakout sessions made “people” their primary focus: Nicola Millard highlighted the problem of collaborative overload, and Michael Cooper zeroed in on 4 brain-types, with a special focus on how Analyzer-Systemizers (the brain type of most intelligence professionals) can effectively communicate to Controller-Managers (the most common brain type among the C-Suite). 

Michelle Rozen’s Capstone presentation, ‘How to Get Along with Anybody’ included a role play that demonstrated the way clashing personalities can affect productivity in the workplace. In an effort to put the principles of collaboration into practice, the Women in Intelligence, Strategy & Analytics (WISA) forum not only generated lively discussion and debate among women, but encouraged men to join in and share their experiences. The conference also featured an international array of speakers from 5 continents,reinforcing SCIP’s commitment to bringing a wide range of diverse perspectives to every conversation. 

“Don’t Wait” – Leadership in the Age of AI 

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution is already beginning to transform industries, and many featured sessions examined the nature of this transformation and the pivotal role that strategy and intelligence professionals can play in helping companies adapt. Al Naqvi, President of the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence (AIAI), delivered an opening keynote presentation that emphasized the importance of AI being discussed in strategy departments rather than being confined to the technologists. His message was clear: do not wait. Lead the change. The energy in the room from his call to action was palpable, and attendees left equipped with specific recommendations on how to plan for the future. For more on Mr. Naqvi’s take on AI and intelligence professionals, read our post-conference interview in CI magazine (member login required). 

Cultivating a Culture of Critical Thinking

Many of the presentations underscored the fact that, in the age of increasing automation, human contributions are going to be more important—not less—and we must reassess the kind of skills that will propel us forward.One foundational skill that will withstand the test of time is critical thinking. We will need to be more vigilant, increasingly rigorous thinkers in order to deliver sound analysis. The good news is that this type of thinking is a skill that can be mastered like any other. This is precisely what Randy Pherson described in his plenary presentation on the “Five Habits of the Master Thinker.” Major General Neeraj Bali touched on some of these same ideas in his case study from the Indian Army and shared some compelling examples that showcased the importance of unconventional thinking in high-risk circumstances.

The 2017 European Summit inCascais, Portugal and will expand on many of these same ideas in the context of European markets. As always, there will be sessions that cover the tools and frameworks that are important for intelligence professionals today—but the continuation of our theme of ‘Developing & Engaging the Modern Intelligence Workforce’ will ensure that the focus will remain on the future. On that note, be sure to save the dates on your calendar for November 13-15. The future will be here before you know it. 

Lakshika Trikha is responsible for driving strategic direction for both SCIP and the Frost & Sullivan Institute (FSI). She is working on building programs that drive membership growth and lead the market in decision support analytics on the SCIP side and projects that make use of the use of business applications for social good on the FSI side. In previous roles, Lakshika has led the research, planning and execution of many international summits on topics related to business strategy, globalization, emerging markets and global economic development. Lakshika has a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University in the city of New York. 

Creating an Environment that Fosters Employee Engagement

By Rhian Sharp
President and Chief Executive Officer
Sharp Medical Recruiting and HR Consulting








Have you ever google searched the term employee engagement?  There are over 286,000 results! Surely this topic is on the minds of many leaders.   Managers and organizations spend countless hours of the day focusing on the idea of employee engagement.  But what specifically is employee engagement? Why is it so important for organizations?  How is it measured?  And how can we improve it?

What Is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement?  Let me first start by saying that employee engagement is NOT exclusively about tenure.  It is very possible to have highly tenured employees with very low levels of engagement. Think about it… have you ever visited a business where the person providing the service had been employed for over 20 years, and was rude or slow while customers stood waiting irately in line?  Surely as a customer, the chance of your return visit is minimal.  And the reality is that the employee is not at all engaged.

David Macleod (co-founder of Engaged for Success) has a clear definition of engagement.  Mr. Macleod states that employee engagement for managers “is about how we create the conditions in which employees offer more of their capability and potential.”

So,truly engaged employees have evolved to a level of what I refer to as performance actualization. They are performing to their maximum potential because they not only have the knowledge, skills and abilities to do their work but they are also working in an environment designed for their success. The environment includes not only the technology needed to perform the job, but also the organization’s policies, and culture.

So why do we want and need more engaged employees? I’ll answer that with one word:productivity. Research shows that employees who are more engaged, who feel more a part of the organization are more productive.

Aimee McKee at the Teleos Leadership Institute says: “Happy people are better workers. Those who are engaged with their jobs and colleagues work harder — and smarter.”

In fact,Gallup claims a 20% or better boost to productivity and profitability for companies with high employee engagement.

How to Measure Employee Engagement?

The truth is that work IS personal.  Human beings tend to be happy and more engaged when they feel a part of the organization and its culture.  Therefore, employee engagement tools tend to ask the following types of questions with the intention of gaining a better understanding of an organization’s employee’s level of engagement:

• I know what is expected of me at work
• At work, my opinions seem to count
• I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right
• The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important
• At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day
• My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work
• In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work
• I have a best friend at work
• My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person
• In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress
• There is someone at work who encourages my development
• This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow

There are several great companies  that provide survey tools to help organizations measure their employee engagement levels.  In fact, organizations can analyze the level of engagement by department and by individual managers.

Creating an Environment To Achieve Employee Engagement(The Hierarchy Of Employee Engagement)

Working with various organizations for the last 20 years, I’ve observed that organizations with highly engaged employees tend to have a very well established hierarchy of engagement. What’s a hierarchy of engagement? Well, like Maslow’s theory of a hierarchy of needs, employees in an organization all need the following events to occur in a meaningful way:

Leaders of organizations can foster a culture that focuses on the events in the diagram above.  It all starts with the talent acquisition (recruitment) process.Is the company’s brand one that people want to be a part of?  Does the company offer a competitive or creative compensation and benefits plan designed to attract and retain the right people?Then, once employees join the organization how robust and effective is the training provided?  Are performance reviews just a ‘let’s check the boxes exercise’ or is it an event that leads to a collaborate review of how the employee and company can best perform? Finally, does the organization have a genuine succession plan, one that provides the training and mentor ship needed to ‘grow’ its next generation of leaders?  

Bring It All Together

Having a more engaged employee population is achievable.  It involves not only understanding and measuring the level of engagement, but also an honest and introspective look at the environment and the culture needed to have highly engaged and productive employees.

Rhian Sharp is the founder and CEO of Sharp Medical Recruiting and Consulting. Rhian has been an HR Leader for almost 20 years and a Healthcare leader for over 16 years (working with industry leading companies like McKesson and Gentiva). In 2009, Rhian was named the first HR Director for the newly created state agency DBHDD. The agency consisted of the 7 behavioral health hospitals in the state of Georgia.  Rhian earned a B.A. in Economics from Georgia State University and her MBA and Masters Certificate in Human Resources from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University.

Is Meeting Regulations Really Enough When It Comes To Security?

 

By Ron Dinwiddie
Chief Information Officer
Texas Trust Credit Union






Being in a heavily regulated industry, we have an obligation to comply. It is understandable that the regulatory burden often leads some to consider doing the bare minimum to get through the next audit. When faced with an overwhelming number of requirements, we are tempted to calculate the minimum our team needs to do in order to be in compliance and avoid a finding.

As a former consultant and now CIO for my fourth financial institution, I have experienced policies, procedures, and practices that represented the bare minimum needed to satisfy requirements. The reasons for that were either “we don’t have the time to do it better” or “the auditors and examiners didn’t ding us, so it must be OK.”

Maybe this is acceptable in some areas, but how about when it comes to your data and network security?

I am in touch with other IT senior leaders that include CEO, CIO and CISSO and clearly there is great interest in this industry about how to provide a higher level of security for our credit unions. Topics include multi-level security implemented at the brick and mortar level as well as the newest and most difficult to control – mobile devices. Why are mobile devices so difficult? At the brick and mortar level we can control what security solutions, policies and procedures are implemented but we have absolutely no control over what our members (customers to non-credit union industries) implement on their own device(s). We can make our mobile banking app secure, but if the member saves their login ID and password on their device and then their device is compromised so is their banking account.

In my discussions with other industry leaders, we all understand that just meeting regulations was not enough. Several of my peers have stated they were implementing the SANS Top 20 Critical Controls. So why are we all thinking this way?

• There are multiple regulatory compliance bodies overseeing various industries and they don’t all provide the same guidance or requirement levels, suggesting one or more of these guides is missing something or the developers of the guidance have a different idea about what is most important.
• These regulatory bodies are mostly reactive; once a vulnerability is identified they then develop the regulation, have it reviewed and approved, and publish it to their constituents. This takes time and leaves us vulnerable if we merely adhere to their publications.
  
• Most regulations, though not all, are geared towards a specific industry, such as credit unions. But those of us in IT understand that bad guys use some of the same tactics from one industry to another to gain access.
• It’s very difficult for regulatory bodies to draft a regulation that fits every environment. Not all credit unions have the same network structure, support staff, or ability to implement security solutions. A $40 million credit union doesn’t have the same resources as a $4 billion one, so regulations are designed and written to address organizations of all sizes.

As far as why some IT shops don’t do security as well as they could, let's look at the first excuse, that "we don’t have the time to do it better.” I would ask them “do you have the time to identify, counter, and remediate a network or data breach?” And how much time does it take for one of your IT staff to research and work their way through finding out how to fix a problem when your expert on that particular system or area within IT is not available as opposed to having your Subject Matter Expert (SME) develop proper procedures so their backup can easily follow them to fix a problem?

If there are loopholes in your policies because they meet the bare minimum requirement, of course you will get compromised. Using lack of time as the reason for not doing things in the best manner possible is inexcusable. By blocking out dedicated time each week to work on these items, and having your direct reports do the same, you will make progress.

"As to the second excuse, that "the auditors and examiners didn’t ding us, so it must be OK," auditors and examiners have checklists to follow. And since some of them are auditing and examining multiple departments, their level of expertise is somewhat limited in one or more of those areas. IT audits and exams are, perhaps, the most difficult. Most auditors and examiners don’t come from an IT background; they get training and look for specific words or phrases in policies and procedures and certain types of software and hardware settings when they come onsite. Your customers – members in the credit union world – deserve more. They deserve the best security you can provide for their personal information.

Think about airports and how many people complain about the TSA security and how it slows everything down. But if those agents slacked off and let someone through who caused harm to people in one way or another, everyone would then scream about how TSA failed to catch them. Think about how many of your users, and in some cases members, complain about your security measures. What would those same people say if it was their personal information that was compromised because you lowered your security standards just to make them happy?

Here are some facts, as reported in Homeland Security/FBI communications I receive, concerning security threats and breaches:

• BP reports it suffers 50,000 attempts of cyber-intrusion every day;
• The Pentagon reports 10 million attempts every day;
• The National Nuclear Security Administration records 10 million attacks every day;
• Attackers average 205 days inside an environment before they are discovered;
• 69% of victims learn from a third party that they have been compromised; and
• Healthcare has become a much higher target than financial institutions because their records contain more personal information and the black market has become flooded with compromised debit/credit cards.

Most auditors and examiners you encounter will readily agree that meeting regulations may be the minimum that you should do, but as a responsible senior IT manager you should constantly review and upgrade your security. There are many organizations you can join and become part of to help keep your security knowledge up-to-date. These organizations include the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, InfraGard and FS-ISAC for financial institutions.

Ron Dinwiddie’s 42-year career in IT has spanned most areas of IT in a wide-ranging variety of industries. Ron started his IT career in the United States Navy working with mainframes as an operator, moving into programming, networking, system administration and security before retiring after 22 years on active duty.

After the Navy Ron became a Unix instructor and consultant before moving into his first CIO role with a financial institution. Ron continued to expand his area of influence by moving to other financial institutions requiring his expertise in rebuilding their IT infrastructure and restructuring the IT services to provide the highest quality of service to end users. Ron also developed and updated Information Security policies and procedures so they complied with regulatory compliance standards.

SCIP Chapter Community Expands

 

By Michelle Winter
Director, Global Chapter
Management and Education Programs
Strategic and Competitive
Intelligence Professionals (SCIP)
 




If you are looking to make new connections, learn best practices and engage in discussions with other Competitive Intelligence professionals, SCIP Chapter meetings are the best way to get involved!  With over 52 chapters worldwide, the SCIP global chapter community has held over 85 meetings worldwide this year that have featured live presentations, workshops, panel discussions and webinars.

CI professionals regularly present their ideas, theories and best practices to local chapter meetings. Attending a local chapter meeting enhances your SCIP membership and exposes you to the latest trends within the discipline, builds your network and opens the door for you to become an active participant in the global SCIP community.

 
There are two new chapters that are joining the SCIP Chapter Community – we are pleased to welcome St. Louis, Missouri and Laos, Nigeria! 
 
Reach out to your local chapter to find out which of these programs they will be featuring for an upcoming meeting.  If you would like to get involved with your local chapter and don’t know how to start, please feel free to reach out to Michelle Winter at mwinter@scip.org and I will be happy to help get you pointed in the right direction.  Why wait? Become an active part of the SCIP global chapter community!