Membership is a word we use often in the Cooperative world. We refer to our Members as our owners, our customers, our partners, our colleagues, our friends, and sometimes even as our family. The Cooperative business model is a unique in this regard, as it crafts a synergy between people that do business together in a way that isn’t driven by the more typical mutual self-interest approach of other business models. Harnessing this special relationship by collaborating and sharing of ideas, is something all of you do so well.

In this spirit, each year we have built upon the values of our unique relationships and have expanded to include more Member-led training sessions at the Member Information Conference (MIC). We were so pleased that last year, nearly one-third of all of our sessions were led by you, our Member subject matter experts on a wide variety of topics. NISC received a significant amount of positive feedback on the peer-to-peer learning method and are grateful to all those who contributed. To recognize our most successful Member-led sessions, last year we introduced the Member Experience Award, which we awarded to 10 Members on Day 3 of the MIC. We recently announced that we are accepting Member presentation ideas for the 2016 MIC and we hope that you will consider submitting your ideas. With the great feedback we received last year, we are hoping that with your help, we can once again have another fantastic conference, one that will take us #beyondtomorrow. I encourage you to click here to submit your idea today!

Another important component of the Cooperative business model is the Annual Meeting. As a democratically held organization, the Annual Meeting is an opportunity for NISC to handle the business of the cooperative with our Member/Owners. We recently held the NISC Annual Meeting in conjunction with the NRECA’s TechAdvantage and NTCA’s RTIME tradeshows. We were pleased with the great turnout at our annual meetings by Member CEOs, Directors, employees, and friends of NISC. Coinciding with our annual meetings, NISC also released our Annual Report which provides additional information on the status of the Cooperative. In short, this is a very exciting time to be part of NISC. Next to the MIC, our best opportunity to interact with you, our Members and industry colleagues is at our two industries largest tradeshows. Hosting our Annual Meeting in conjunction with TechAdvantage and RTIME, affords us the opportunity to showcase NISC’s products while making us available to our Members.

Whether it’s at the MIC, our Annual Meeting, the tradeshows, or the many other opportunities we have to interact, we are always reminded of how grateful we are to work in this industry and grateful that you choose NISC to be your technology partner.