“The Higher Education User Group was created for users - users looking for support with complex issues and users looking to share feedback to Oracle - about existing products, technology and about strategic direction through one united voice. The strength of the HEUG comes from the interactions between you as members, from the HEUG communities, Advisory Groups and from the Board which represents you. Help us to ensure that HEUG leadership know what is important to you.”
This formed the basis for my opening night speech at Alliance ’17 in Las Vegas and also closed out my first blog back in March. I’m reusing it again because this represents the importance of my focus on our members during my Presidency. I want the HEUG to provide the framework, tools and opportunities for us to connect with our strategic partners. We continue to encourage feedback from our members and urge you to assist us in working with Oracle on the expectations of our membership. We welcome you to participate in our Student Applications Development Strategy Feedback Forum whether it is just your personal opinion or a more institutionally representative perspective.
To this end, the Board will meet next week for one of our 3 in-person meetings each year. We will discuss the feedback we have received about Oracle’s recently published Position Statement, and we will plan our engagement across the community in terms of Oracle roadmaps for on-premise and cloud applications. Also, we are organising ourselves as leaders and as a community on HEUG.Online. We are working on the best ways to collate requirements, feedback and aim to provide influence on future developments to meet our institutions’ needs. As a note, if you haven’t done so yet, please take a few minutes to complete the Oracle Student Products Position Statement Feedback Survey.
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Our network, of course, involves other partners. At the Board meeting, we will discuss how to ensure we work closely with our partners to help expand our thinking about our complex IT landscapes, current challenges and future needs. We strive to maximise our members’ benefit from partnerships with HEUG.
So, quite a focus on the ‘advocacy’ part of our mission, but we haven’t forgotten about the ‘education’ part. We’ll have deep discussions about our conferences, particularly our global Alliance conference, and deliberate on how we can ensure our members derive maximum value from their attendance this year and in the future. The conference programme is central to the content and session style… but there is far more to the conference than this topic so I expect it to be a lively (and fun) discussion! We will also focus on how to expand on our educational offerings on HEUG.Online. We’ve had some widely successful webinars as of late, so we’re thinking about how we can build on this momentum and ensure HEUG.Online is a ‘go to’ resource for learning about how technology products and services can help to solve the complex issues at your institution.
As you can see, the Board will be busy! The reason for sharing our agenda in this way is that I want you, our members, to engage with us in these discussions…however not literally in the meeting room next week! But by using the tools and volunteers at your disposal. Please take advantage of the previously mentioned survey, user forums, conferences, Advisory Groups; and us, your representatives on the Board. We want to hear from you!
Sincerely,
Jane Broad
HEUG President