Hello everyone. I'm Mark Ford, your Vivit Community Director. If you've been around Vivit for a while, you might be unfamiliar with this position. If so, you're not alone because we just recently created it. More to the point, we combined two former board positions, Membership and LUGs/SIGs, into this single director position. That means the Community Director is now a single point of contact directly involved in many areas that impact you as a Vivit member: LUG events, SIG webinars, membership surveys, profile updates, our webinar platform, the Vivit website, and even a Vivit mobile app in the works. This new structure is terrific because along with the new Advocacy Director position and our existing Education Director position, Vivit can now really focus in on its three core pillars: Advocacy, Education, and Community.

Focusing on these areas will be even more important as we transition from HPE to Micro Focus. By the time you read this, most of HPE software will have merged with Micro Focus, and Vivit will now be serving our members as Micro Focus software users. Vivit has been working hard behind the scenes for many months to be in the best possible position so that we're even more relevant after the spin merge. As a result, you will likely start to see some changes such as updated Special Interest Groups and new membership offerings. I've also identified 22 Community related initiatives to work on over the next 10 months. This is a busy time for Vivit, and rest assured we are hard at work!

I'd also like to take this time to thank the many members who filled out our recent membership survey. The response was terrific (636 responses), and the information was very valuable. We had three lucky winners who each selected an Apple watch prize. I'm also very pleased to report that over 82% of respondents agree or strongly agree that Vivit provides them with relevant information on Micro Focus software. This statistic will help us really demonstrate our relevance to Micro Focus. But the biggest takeaway that I received from the responses is that our members want more direct, hands-on networking opportunities in areas such as: Deep Dives, troubleshooting guides, regional conferences, more local events and technical sessions, success stories, hands-on training, live demos, networking opportunities, tips and tricks, contact lists of people interested in info. sharing on various topics, more LUGs and SIGs (and more active LUGs and SIGs), and ways to influence product development.

So stay tuned! You'll see more information in the coming months on these topics.