62 THE POWER OF POSSIBILITY NISC | 50 YEARS OF INNOVATION AND MEMBER SERVICE melding of different products into one streamlined system. That became known as iVUE. The new software entered beta testing amid a burst of optimism. While developers wrangled over the software design, support and implementation staff asked Members to weigh in: What information should be at the top of the screen? What should be at the bottom? Member Advisory Committees (MACs) became a key way of gaining feedback, and they continue to be a conduit for gathering input on software enhancements and development. Today, seven MACs, focusing on different products or industries, meet as often as six times a year. NISC also sent out updates to Members to keep them engaged with Project Discovery. In September 2003, just as the first Member was preparing to go live with iVUE in a few weeks, NISC held its first joint Member Information Conference (MIC) in St. Louis, rather than having separate conferences in North Dakota and Missouri. Telecom Members met in one hotel and electric Members in another; they came together for general sessions. Marty Nester-Peavy planned the first Member conference for CADP in 1975, so she understood the power of bringing Members together. In that first event, CADP initially planned to hold the conference in the restaurant and lounge of a St. Louis hotel, but to accommodate the enthusiastic response, they moved to a larger hotel with meeting rooms — and held a second, even larger gathering the next week. “We began, even at that very first meeting, listening to all of the Members and what they told us they needed,” she says. Ultimately, the disagreements dissolved in the wake of pressure to release a product. “If we had waited for perfection, it probably never would have left the building,” says Professional Services Industry Consultant Rex Moorman, who worked on the iVUE development team. No one was prouder than Hobson and Dosch of how the employees came together. “There’s a story behind every single employee in this building, in some fashion or another, of how theycontributedtothesuccessoftheorganization,”saysHobson. Wilbanks and his team solicited from employees suggested names for the new software. It was an integrated view — a Early iVUE screen design, like this Point of Sale screen, provided a contemporary look and feel for the time.