The first step is to meet with the interested people in your University, to discuss what you should do to get started. A meeting to plan a half day or an extended lunchtime information session would be a good place to start. The support of the Vice Chancellor, and where possible Executive Deans and Heads of School will assist in the promotion of the meeting, particularly if the meeting is to be held during work time. A small amount of initial funding will be needed to hold this session for catering purposes. The feedback from this session can then be used to gauge the amount of interest in forming an organization or not.

If there is enough interest expressed at the meeting, a full day forum is a good way to start. You should invite the Vice Chancellor to open the day and approach high profile guest speakers from different backgrounds to contribute to the day’s program. The program should included special interest group breakout sessions to enable like discipline technical staff to share their experiences. This is also a good time to circulate questionnaires to find out the needs and concerns that technical staff had about their personal and professional development.

You should also include questions about how TechNet can assist technical staff. The forum program must include not only information from the speakers, but also the opportunity for attendees to network to share their work experiences with their peers.

Morning and afternoon tea and lunch breaks, also is a time for them to have a break from the formal sessions but also more networking time. In our experience the feedback from attendees, was that they enjoyed this part of the day and found it most useful.

In the case of TechNetSA, the very positive feedback after hosting the National TechTrain Conference in 2004 was so well recognised by the three universitie’s Organisational and Professional Development Unit Managers, that they attended our first meeting in 2005.

It was also decided that they would work with and support TechNetSA and that each university should form its own chapters, (sub committees) under the TechNetSA umbrella, to organise in-house training sessions and focus groups, as well as to continue with holding forums and special events on the annual TechNetSA calendar.

Forming a Committee

1. Recruit Steering Committee

* Refer to sample Forum Program attached

1. Committed people on the Committee

2. Sufficient interest from Technical Staff

3. Support from VC – Promotion

4. Financial Support – VC/Faculties/Schools

5. Executive Deans of Faculties Informed

6. Staff Development Units Involved

7. Database of contact addresses Technical staff

Note: 1. Make sure that you get feedback sheets back complete with contact numbers for your database

2. Keep members informed with what you are doing.