Hello and welcome to 2008!

As with all the SLA Divisions, we're finalizing all the details for the annual conference in Seattle in June. The program looks great, thanks to the hard working team of CI Division planners Sandra Stauffer and Marsha Fulton. As Past Chair Debbie Hartzman has mentioned before, we are partnering with several other Divisions and have a rich variety of topics, from social networking to working effectively with vendors. Now that registration for the Annual Conference is open, start thinking about the CI Division events and CE offerings you may want to attend! I want to be sure to highlight our Sunday afternoon session, "Using the Opaque and 'New' Web for Competitive Intelligence Research", presented by Mary Ellen Bates - this promises to be a sellout session from this dynamic and talented speaker.

My main goal for this year is to launch at least one web-based event that will be free to all CI Division members. Attending the annual conference is a rich and rewarding experience, but not all of us have the ability or support to attend each year. I want to give CI Division members even more value for their membership by offering these webinars during the year - to share knowledge and expertise and to help connect our CI Division community. Look for more information on this soon. If you have ideas for sessions, or are interested in presenting for a webinar, please contact me at scott_r_brown@comcast.net. I'd love to hear your ideas!

As my predecessor Debbie mentioned in her final message, I am also looking forward to working with her and the new Board on putting some additional structure in place for our no-longer-brand-new Division. We will be doing things like finalizing our Division bylaws, but also looking at ways that we can further engage CI Division members.

The 2007 launch of our Division mentoring program, led by Victor Camlek, has been a great first step towards this. As Debbie did, I encourage you to contact him at victor.camlek@thomson.com if you are at all interested in being a mentor or a mentee. For those of you wondering, "What would I have to offer as a mentor?", consider this: even if you've never formally worked as a CI professional, you can mentor a colleague in areas where you do have expertise and experience. Do you have experience in finding information in a particular industry? Are you particularly good at ferreting out company information? Presenting recommendations to teams or executives? Do you have templates for CI-related work that you find to be particularly effective? Are you good at finding corroborating data to support a finding? You all have areas of expertise that you can share, and the benefit to you of sharing that expertise and connecting with your colleages is a win-win situation. Resolve to become a mentor or mentee today, and contact Victor!

The Division Board and I are very excited to be in a position to help support you. Please don't hesitate to contact any of us with your questions and suggestions. You can find all of our contact information listed at http://units.sla.org/division/dci/ExecBoard.htm - but also, please don't hesitate to email me directly. I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Scott Brown
Chair, CI Division
scott_r_brown@comcast.net

Scott Brown