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                     NEWS FROM NATIONAL
                       March 1, 1996

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             CIPS MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY DELAYED

The CIPS National Membership Directory will not be available for
distribution to CIPS members until March 4.

Due to the time sensitivity of the national call for nominations and the
importance of the membership campaign, we have proceeded with the
current national mailing without the membership directory.

With the necessity for CIPS to keep tight control of its budget, the
directory can not be distributed as a separate mailing. Therefore, the
directory will be distributed as part of the scheduled March 26 national
mailing.

The CIPS National Office regrets this unfortunate delay and is making
every effort to move this project along as quickly as possible.

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                CALL FOR BOARD NOMINATIONS:
                     IMPORTANT REMINDER

Nominations for the National Board of Directors are to be returned to the
National Office by March 13, 1996 and they must include the signatures of
five active, regular CIPS members.

If an election is to be held, an official ballot will be mailed to you by
March 29, 1996.

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            CIPS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT SURVEY

In the recent National Mailing a Training Needs Survey was sent to all
CIPS members. This survey is now available on the CIPS National website,
http://www.cips.ca.

Please take some time to fill this important survey out either on the WWW
or on paper. The purpose of the Training Needs Survey is to assist CIPS in
allocating its professional development resources in the most effective
ways.

Most importantly, a draw will be held for a computerized day-timer
from among all survey respondents!

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           NAIT PROGRAM RECEIVES RE-ACCREDITATION

CIPS College Program Accreditation Council recently re-accredited the
Computer Systems Technology Program (CST) at the Northern Alberta
Institute of Technology (NAIT) for a five year period from July 1, 1995 to
June 30, 2000.

In its evaluation, the CPAC characterized the CST program as up-to-date,
practical, forwarded-looking, and representative of current technology in use
in the business community. The program's strong technical orientation, well
designed curriculum, clear objectives, and relevance to industry needs were
major points in its re-accreditation approval. The applied focus of the
program, shown through the  project course and the co-op option, also drew
favourable review.

The council was also impressed with the program faculty's commitment to
both industry  and student needs.  Substantial change in the curriculum during
the past five years reflects technological evolution and changes in entry level
skills demanded by employers.  Student career expectations have been made
realistic through a student career investigation report, and program retention
and student graduation rates have been positively influenced by
accommodating approximately 40% of students with individualized
timetables.

Chaired by Helen Banks, I.S.P., the CIPS College Program Accreditation
Council, established in 1988, strives to identify colleges and technical
institutes offering diploma programs that meet the needs of employers and
involve the application of computer technology to the solution of business
related problems. Accreditation ensures that programs meet the highest
standards of education so that graduates are ready for careers in the
demanding field of information technology.

One of the objectives of the College Program Accreditation Council is to
promote and advance all phases of computer education with the aim of
promoting public welfare through the development of better educated
computer professionals.   Currently, there are 14 colleges in Canada offering
CIPS accredited programs.

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                       CIPSnet REPORT


Hi folks, Steve here, CIPSnet-guy and IT bon-vivant, bringing
you the latest in comings and goings on with our facilities.

First, the highlights;

* Online Training Survey and CIPS Info Request forms are up on the web.

* Sections on the CIPSnet web-server can now have their own online forms
(presently at no cost but some restrictions apply)

* Web-Server dependability has skyrocketted

Now we turn to the details of all CIPSnet late-breaking news....

Forms Support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yup folks, you heard it here first. CIPSnet is proud to announce that our
site has 'gone interactive'. Currently sporting an Online Training Survey
and a 'Request for Info on CIPS' form, CIPS has entered the second stage
of our site development! Supported by behind-the-scenes C programs, we can
now deliver interactive applications.

We now offer basic Form Data capture and respond capability. One of the
benefits of this is that it will be essentially free. Hey, a nat.office benefit that
you can really use! Merveilleux, eh? The rules are pretty straight-forward.

     * You build the form and response pages (Michele Sura, our CIPSnet
       co-ordinatrix might even help with samples if you ask nicely).

     * You must be conversant with using an FTP client to retrieve your
       responses.

Contact Michele Sura at nat.office to get the ball rolling.

Why don't we offer online CIPS sign-up you ask? Mainly because we
need a true 'authentication signature' from you when joining
to show that you ascribe to the CIPS Code of Ethics. As soon as
we have a secure-server and world-wide access to retina-scanners,
we'll be rolling that facility out <g>.

Behind the scenes, our CGI scripts are powered in ANSI-C. Why not PERL,
Visual Basic, C++, etc. you ask? Well all options other than C give us either
portability problems or performance problems. If we move to a different
web-server, we don't want to have to re-write our scripts (eg. from Windows
to UNIX).

If you have C-programming capability within your section and want to do
fancy interactive forms, give us a buzz. FYI, we don't do magic-cookies
yet. Magic-Cookies are sorta like the old-time IMS Scratch Pad Areas
used to support pseudo-conversational processing. We do have other means
to pseudo-converse, though.

Why am I so excited about all this? Well, it's the first step on the road
to the Online Membership Directory! We hope to roll out a rudimentary
directory by the end of March (with any luck). I had alluded to this
'coming-soon' last month and we're now into active development on it.

Web-server Up-Time
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well we've been on our new provider for over a month now and boy what
a difference. We've been up pretty well continuously except for 2 hiccups
during the month, one brief (6 hrs) and one a little longer (~30 hours).
On our previous IAP, outages occurred almost daily and often lasted
for untold hours due to our 'lights-out' operation. With a stable provider
it seems that our access problems are behind us.

Mail-Server
~~~~~~~~~~~

Lordy, Lordy, I don't believe it. We got the fix! Last month while
working on email support both within the office and as part of the
development to offer "virtual CIPS id's" we discovered that our
local mail-client didn't talk properly when connecting to a mail-server.
Hhhhmmmmm, so that's why we've been having so much trouble with mail.

Anyway, we contacted the developer (Netmanage) and they agreed that
their product had a bug. They said they'd put it into the maintenance
queue and someone would call us when it was fixed. "Ya right", we said
(we weren't paying for the fix and it was a Win 3.1 product
not that sexy new Win95 stuff). This last week, they called us. The fix was
available. I nearly fell off my chair I was so shocked at the quick response.

We've just downloaded it and I'm off to nat.office to install it.
If all goes well, we will be rolling out a variety of mail features in the
next month. If all goes not-well, I'm going out for a beer!

Nielsen Survey
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On Feb 15 just past, the folks at Nielsen Media Research (yes,
that Nielsen) publicly released their first Internet Demographics
survey. Catch it at www.commerce.net. It's interesting reading.

The exec-summary is freely available at the site but
the full-survey has to be purchased ($2000US). The study
examined only Canada and US and was conducted in Aug/Sep95.
It was a combination of phone interviews (4200) and online
surveys (32,000). In addition to the summary, academic rebuttal
of the results is also available at the site. Nice touch, Nielsen
guys! You will be hearing about the results via various media.
Go see for yourself to get the unfiltered view.

Here are a few highlights.
     > 37 million people have the access to the net
     > Regular users spend 5 1/2 hours per week online
     > Total Internet usage is approximately equal to the
       total time spent watching rented video-tapes!
     > Users are upscale, professional, educated
     > Access is done 65% at work, 45% at home

That's all the true-poo this month so keep those cards and letters
coming in. Til next month.....

Seeeya,
Steve Gallinger, ISP

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                        AI/GI/VI '96

The Artificial Intelligence/ Graphics Interface/Vision Interface super-
conference will take place May 21-24 in Toronto.

Program, registration and accommodation information is available from the:
CIPS National Office, email info@cips.ca
 or from
Dr. Wayne Davis, I.S.P.
Box 817
Fort Macleod, AB
T0L 0Z0
email: davis@cs.ualberta.ca
fax: (403) 553-2745

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            ADDISON-WESLEY PUBLICATION CATALOGUE

The 1996 spring/summer Addison-Wesley publication catalogue is now
available. CIPS members are entitled to 15% off all Addison-Wesley I.T.
titles.

To receive a copy of the catalogue contact:
Mark Jones
tel: (416) 447-5101 ext.340
email: markj@aw.com

Identify yourself as a CIPS member and have your membership number on
hand.

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                 CIPA NOMINATIONS REQUESTED

The nomination deadline for the 1996 Canadian Information Productivity
Awards is April 5, 1996. Nomination forms are available from the CIPS
National Office.

CIPS is a managing partner of the CIPA. Other managing partners are
Canadian Business, Ernst & Young, the Information Technology Association
of Canada, Centre de recherche informatique de Montreal and Royal Bank of
Canada.

These will be the fourth annual CIPA Awards.  CIPA celebrates excellence in
the use of information technology by recognizing the success of both
innovative individuals and creative solutions/systems.

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               CONSULTING FOR RESULTS WORKSHOP
                     APRIL 25-26, 1996
                      TORONTO, ONTARIO

Consulting For Results is a two-day workshop for IT professionals and other
internal staff consultants who support organizational change and
improvement. It is designed to help you translate your technical
knowledge into successful business results for your clients. Over 300
companies, including Motorola, General Electric, Northern Telecom, and
Morgan Bank, have sent participants to Consulting For Results or have
held the workshop internally.

At the workshop, you will learn how to:
-   Discover what's really going on in the client organization;
-   Get clients to value the contribution you can make;
-   Develop solid working relationships with clients; and
-   Build incremental, confidence-building successes into each
consulting assignment.

You will leave the workshop with an action plan for applying your
learning right away and also for continuing to develop your
consulting skills on future projects.

This workshop will be led by Harvey Thomson, President of Robert H.
Schaffer & Associates of Toronto. He has over 20 years of experience
consulting on organizational change and the consulting process. For
additional information on this workshop, please contact Rudi Siddik
at (905) 625-8025 or by e-mail at ras@rhsa.ccmail.compuserve.com

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                  RECENT IFIP PUBLICATIONS

The following IFIP titles have recently been published by Chapman & Hall.

Members of IFIP affiliated societies are entitled to a 30% discount off any title
published by Chapman & Hall on behalf of IFIP and to a 20% discount off all
other C&H titles.

"Broadband Communications", edited by L.G. Mason, INRS
Telecommunications, Canada and A. Casaca, IST/INESC, Portugal (April
1996).

"Information Network and Data Communications", edited by F.A. Aagesen,
Department of Computer Science and Telematics, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology , H. Botnevik, Kvatro Telecom AS, Norway and D.
Khakhar, Department of Informatics, Lund University, Sweden (June 1996).

"Communications and Multimedia Security", edited by R. Posch, Graz
University of Technology, Austria (August 1995).

"Integrated Network Management IV", edited by A.S. Sethi, Department of
Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware, Y. Raynaud and
F. Faure Vincent, University of Paul Sabatier, France (April 1995).

"Performance Modelling and Evaluation of ATM Networks", edited by D.D.
Kouvatsos, Department of Computing, University of Bradford, UK (June
1995).

"Data Communications and their Performance", edited by S. Fdida,
Laboratoire MASI, France, and R.O. Onvural, IBM, North Carolina (October
1995).

For further information on these books please contact:
Samantha O'Sullivan
Associate Marketing Manager
Chapman & Hall:
email: samantha.o'sullivan@chall.co.uk
tel: +44 (0) 171 865 0066
fax: +44 (0) 171 522 9624

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        TAKE A WORLD VIEW.....EXPORT YOUR SERVICES!

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade along with
Industry Canada, in cooperation with the private sector, has developed an
interactive self-help tool for small services exporters entitled "Take A World
View...Export Your Services!"

This guide is a series of six diskettes to help you plan, step by step, your foray
into the international business market. The software is $49.95 and is formatted
for Windows.

For your copy please contact:
Canada Communications Group Publishing
tel: (819) 956-4800
fax: (819) 994-1498
or purchases can be made by VISA or Mastercard by faxing 1-800-565-7757

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                CANADA EXPORT AWARD PROGRAM

The Canada Export Awards, presented by the Department of Foreign Affairs
and International Trade (DFAIT), are the Government of Canada's official
recognition of the export success of Canadian companies active in
international trade.

Each October the Canada Export Awards recognize the success of Canadian
companies in exporting their products and services to markets around the
world. Since the program's inception in 1983, 171 exporters, selected from
approximately 2800 applications, have received the Canada Export Award.

Applications for the 1996 Awards must be received by April 30, 1996. The
1996 ceremony will take place on October 7 in Winnipeg.

For more information on the Canada Export Award Program contact:
Beverly Hexter
Trade Development Operations
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa K1A 0G2
tel (613) 996-2274
fax (613) 996-8688

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                      UPCOMING EVENTS

EVENT: The Internet: Beyond the Year 2000

WHAT: a Special Colloquium of the University of Toronto Department of
Computer Science Distinguished Lecture Series

SPONSORED BY:
The Information Technology Research Centre of the Province of Ontario
The Connaught Fund of the University of Toronto
Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto
Knowledge Media Design Institute of the University of Toronto

WHEN: April 28 - May 1, 1996

WHERE:  Convocation Hall, University of Toronto

CONTACT: Ann-Barbara Graff,  email graff@dgp.toronto.edu or call (416)
978-5184

WWW SITE: www.dgp.utoronto.ca/upcoming/internetconf.htm;

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EVENT: SYSTEMS 96

WHAT: 15th International Trade Fair and Congress for Information
Technology  and Telecommunications

WHERE: Munich, Germany

WHEN: October 21-25, 1996

CANADIAN CONTACT: UNILINK, 50 Weybright Court Unit 41,
Agincourt, M1S 5A8 tel (416) 291-6359, fax (416) 291-0025

WWW SITE: www.messe-muenchen.de

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        THE CIPS NATIONAL OFFICE CONTACT INFORMATION

snail mail:  430 King St. West, Unit 106, Toronto, M5V 1L5
telephone: (416) 593-4040
fax: (416) 593-5184
email: info@cips.ca
website: www.cips.ca
ftp site: cips.ca
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