ASG's Security Solutions Blog

Are You Leveraging the Power of Your Peers in the Security Industry?

  

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At the ASG Security Summit & Expo in March 2010, we introduced you to the concept of increasing your own value and the value of the security industry as a whole through the Great Conversation. At the Summit, we brought together hundreds of security leaders from around the Pacific Northwest to engage in a conversation focused on physical security that included end users, security directors, manufacturers, security consultants and integrators. The participants were able to learn about some of the major trends in the industry and their input helped influence some of the security industry's top thought leaders.

For over a year now, ASG has been creating this kind of communication on a smaller scale between the security leaders of some of the Puget Sound’s top organizations. We did this using industry focused Round Tables. We began the ASG Security Round Tables in order to bring together individuals with similar needs and experiences to create an environment where members can gain new knowledge and experience from one another. Recently we made the decision to make a few improvements to these groups.

In response to the requests from our Summit participants to continuing the Great Conversation all year round, ASG has decided to reform our Security Round Tables as the new Great Conversation Forums. The purpose of the Great Conversation Forums remains to bring together security leaders within common industries and facilitate communication that will allow members to learn from one another and leverage the power of their peers. We listened to what we heard at the Summit and decided to make a few improvements that will make the Great Conversation Forums more valuable both to members and non-members alike. These changes include:

1. Removing our brand from the group. While we are very proud of the groups and our work to get them off the ground, we feel that having our name attached leads to the perception that ASG wishes to influence the group in a particular direction. We want members to know that the group is not about an integrator. It is about bringing value to the members through communication and conversation, regardless of who they use to integrate their individual security solutions.
   
   
2. Creating a new online platform. This online platform will host news, meeting minutes and other conversations and will allow members and non-members to interact outside of the quarterly meetings and benefit from the group discussions even if they were not able to attend.
   
   
3. Involving more industry through leaders. By using the relationships built by the ASG Security Summit & Expo, we hope to engage security thought leaders to interact directly with the forum members. Our goal is to allow the Forums to develop their own conversations, but leverage industry leaders in order to get the answers to their questions and gain advice from some of the best minds in the security industry.
   
   
4. Building a larger community. While we began in the healthcare and education industries, we are committed to expanding the Great Conversation Forums to include many more industries in many other locations and even a series of User Groups focused around specific technology platforms or solutions.

We hope that the members of our original Round Tables will continue to participate in the Great Conversation Forums and will be seeking new members to join the existing and new groups. If you are interested in leveraging the power of your peers in the existing Healthcare or Education Forums, or if you would like to see the creation of a Forum for your industry, contact us at info@aronsonsecurity.com or post your thoughts in the comments section below.