We had a great meeting tonight with a special guest appearance from Patrick Craven of the Center for Cyber Safety and Education. Patrick laid out many ways individual members, our Chapter, and even our companies might help our communities. Every time we help our communities we also gain valuable CPE credits towards our yearly education goals.
Some specific ideas included speaking at schools, senior centers, and even libraries using the Safe and Secure Online material. Patrick said local libraries are very receptive to providing space and presentation setup as a service to local community educational efforts. The presentation material is provided by the Center, libraries provide the facility, and the only task for us would be delivering the material.
We learned about other opportunities to gain CPE by helping the Center continue programs and develop new material. Many programs the Center offers are multilingual and they are looking for volunteers to assist with translation. The scholarship program is always in need to panelists to review scholarship applications. Then there is the larger effort of coordinating a Cyber Safety Day, where the Center works closely with local groups to setup a full day focused on security education for a larger community like a school.
The next meeting will be a special group meeting with breakout meetings determining how the Chapter might help our communities given what we learned tonight. One note on the future meetings please see the post in this group hub about our calendar for 2021 or visit our Chapter calendar at our website.
We tackled a tough discussion where 74% of our participating members had not paid their Chapter dues for 2021. The dues were held very low at $25 and only members with up to date dues payments are considered Active members. Every member wants to be active to they can vote on issues, allow them to chair special groups, and they have the opportunity to hold an officer position within the Chapter. If you need to pay your current dues please visit the memberships page of the Chapter website.
The Outreach Director position is currently open and the Chapter is looking for an Active member that would like to tackle this opportunity. The Outreach Director is responsible for community outreach and the charitable works of the Chapter managing all avenues that allow members to volunteer. If you are interested please contact iscadmin@isc2denver.org.
Finally we celebrated the filing for 501(c)(3) status. Gaining 501(c)(3) status is the last step in our restructuring goals and provides the Chapter with opportunities only available to charitable non-profits. Now we wait up to 120 days for the IRS to respond to our request. (We are hopeful for a shorter time.)
If you missed the meeting we definitely missed you. We had 56 registrants and we see the Chapter growing with every meeting. The Chapter slides are attached here and you can access the slides from Patrick here.
Thank you all for making 2021 a great year for the Denver Chapter of (ISC)2 chapter program!
—
Jim Raine
President
