M Cavanagh
GFA Secretary
The Gliding Federation of Australia Inc

I wish to thank you for awarding me an ASI Educational Grant Scholarship, as my attendance was fully self funded and the scholarship has eased the financial burden.

The NiUG Discovery Conference on the Gold Coast this year have me a greater appreciation of the depth of the capabilities and possibilities in the iMIS database.

The initial benefit from attending the Conference was on the first weekend, when I met with the Convenor of our IT Group.  As he lives in Brisbane I was able to pass on to him all the information I had collected and my recommendations for the input of data in the future.  He was happy to hear that some of th changes in iMIS 15 could be of great value to the GFA.  Our Aircraft Register has important business processes that could not previously be incorporated into iMIS.  This may be possible in iMIS 15.

The GFA wish to use the database to record Airworthiness Qualifications and I now know exactly how to create a new “User Defined Table” and enter values into a drop down list.  Once I got back to the office and was able to add values to a drop down list in “CALLS”.  This makes recording the different call purposes a much easier process and eliminates all the keystrokes previously required to type a reason.

The IQA Basic and IQA Advanced sessions were very informative, and although I have had very little times since my return from the Gold Coast, to really look at producing my own reports, I am looking forward with confidence to exploring IQA.  With the hands on exercises and the notes provided, I am sure it will (be) both challenging and rewarding.

In conclusion, the greatest lesson I learnt from attending the conference is that “we don’t know what we don’t know”, and without attending the conference we could not possibly get the most out of this valuable resource we have purchased.

The Review Panel for the December 2007 Round of funding will consist of:

Paul Ramsbottom - ASI Managing Director (and Chairman of the Fund)

Julie Willett - ASI Director Administration/Human Resources; and

Greg McLeod - ASI Senior Consultant (on rotation)

The December Round closes on Monday 10 December 2007.