MTUG News
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Current Announcements & Press Releases
October 2021 Update -- MTUG's Summit, Programming & Resources
Hello MTUG Community,
As many of you have heard already through direct participant communications, following careful monitoring of the current Covid-19 pandemic situation in Maine, earlier this month the MTUG Board of Directors decided to cancel our in-person I.T. Summit & Tradeshow on Oct. 5th, 2021. Our next scheduled I.T. Summit & Tradeshow will be Thursday, May 26, 2022.
About our decision:
MTUG worked to implement precautions at the Summit, including masking, vaccination/testing mandates, and distancing. However, the enhanced transmissibility of the Covid-19 Delta variant has changed the risk calculations. The current surge’s health impact particularly among groups and regions where vaccination rates are still low or not yet possible has strained our local healthcare and school systems. Therefore, this new and still unpredictable situation compels us to cancel our in-person event for the health and well-being of our constituents, their families, and the broader Maine community. After interviews with constituents, we felt that an all-virtual Summit would not be a good investment for our exhibitors/sponsors or for MTUG. We believe much of the educational material at the MTUG Summit can be brought to the community online again this year, for free, and we look forward to filling the coming season with those informative and timely topics.
What’s Next?
The MTUG staff and volunteer board are working on a selection of educational events highlighting the great topics our Workshop presenters submitted this past summer. In addition, these online events will include opportunities for our vendor community to engage the MTUG audience – we realize after two years without a tradeshow, our community and our vendors do need a chance to introduce each other, and learn more about available technology products and services.
Please check the MTUG site in the days and weeks to come for our next webinars featuring these integrated education and vendor introduction webinars from October through April. And, as conditions may allow, we hope to bring back our small in-person in early 2022, leading up to our May I.T. Summit & Tradeshow. These events – along with MTUG’s many resources – can be found online at www.mtug.org, including:
- News on the MTUG Scholarship Program coordinated with the University of Maine Foundation – in 2021 MTUG worked with our Corporate Co-Sponsors to fund $12,500 in technology scholarships
- Ongoing tech educational webinars, as well as announcements of locally-hosted tech events across Maine
- Technology job postings with regional employers
- Our “Get Involved” page with many other ways to get involved (see www.mtug.org/get-involved-mtug)
- And check out our LinkedIn Group to reach out to the MTUG community at https://www.linkedin.com/groups/1496097/ and share events, opportunities, or ask questions of the community
Thank you all for being part of our community – it’s been a long road, but we’ll keep on learning and sharing together. We look forward to seeing you online -- and some day soon, in-person.
We wish you all good spirits and health!
Tonia Ennis, Board President,
Kristen Kucera, Chair, Conference Committee,
and the MTUG Board of Directors
MTUG Board of Directors
| Tonia Ennis, President | Joe Bourgault, Vice President | Austin Brower, Treasurer |
| Ron Brown, Director / Scholarship Liaison | James Harder, Director | Mark Hopper, Director |
| Will Kilbreth, Director | Kristen Kucera, Director | Jamie Popkin, Director |
| Eugene Slobodzian, Director | Uli Stewart, Director | Kate Carpenter, Executive Director |