Top Ten Reasons to Join the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP)

By Kevin Shen, CISSP, AITP St. Louis Chapter First Vice President for 2005

Kevin Shen

This time of the year, the end of 2004 / the beginning of 2005, when you are thinking about how you can start off the new year with some improvements to your life. Perhaps, you are thinking about, or at least, have given some thought about your new year's resolutions for 2005. There are many cliché, New Year's resolutions that we always hear ourselves or others talk about, to the point that we sometimes get sick and tired of hearing about them, including the following:

1. Advancing in your career
2. Finding a better job or career opportunity
3. Improving your current career skills
4. Learning something new
5. Helping others
6. Enjoying life more
7. Improving your current financial situation
8. Spending more time with family and friends
9. Eliminating bad habits, such quitting smoking, reducing/eliminating alcohol consumption, not staying up too late, not watching too much TV, etc.
10. Losing weight/being physically fit

From the list above, it appears that many of these cliché New Year’s resolutions either directly or indirectly revolve around one's current professional and employment (or for business owners, business) situation. Making and keeping to these resolutions past March 31^st in the New Year is perhaps the greatest challenge and is often times the point in time that one decides to completely give up on these new resolutions for the year. Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

Although this article is not about how to keep all of your New Year's resolutions for the New Year, this article does address the first 6 (and maybe, if you are lucky, and God willing, the first 7) cliché resolutions that are listed above. One way to improve your current professional and employment situation, whether it is to find a better professional employment opportunity, expand your business, enjoying your life more (in which your professional/employment situation is plays significant role in this), or improving your current skill set, is to get involved in a professional organization, that can help you with your career development and advancement. As an IT professional, getting involved in the AITP can help you in many areas of improving your professional/career situation and, in turn, help you to keep at least most of your important new year's resolutions. Thus, as an IT professional, there are many compelling benefits and reasons for joining the AITP. The top ten reasons to join the AITP are:

1. Networking opportunities with other IT professionals. The old cliché, "It is not what you know, but whom you know" is still as true today as it was in the past. Statistics repeatedly show that the majority of open IT positions are in the "hidden job market", and are thus not advertised to the public, in the newspapers or on the Internet. One proven method to access this "hidden job market", and learn about new professional or business opportunities, and in turn, improve your current professional / career situation is to network with other people in your profession. Through the various AITP networking opportunities, you can make new contacts, learn about new opportunities, and make new friends, who are in the same profession and industry that you are in. In addition, almost all of the AITP networking events and functions are focused on and targeted to people in the IT profession and industry, making it ideally suited for this type of networking. This means that you will be networking, for the most part, with like-minded professionals of your caliber, or are of higher caliber than you are, who want to succeed, as much as, or more than you do, and have similar networking objectives as you have.

2. Broaden your horizons in the IT industry. In today's fast-pased and dynamic IT marketplace, one needs to be familiar with the many different areas of IT, besides the one they are currently in. Being familiar with a variety of areas makes you more valuable to your employer or for the business person, gives you the competitive edge over your competitors. The IT industry is such a large industry, that it encompasses so many different areas and core competencies. Through AITP membership, you have the opportunity to learn first hand about the many different areas of IT and to meet these people, who are directly involved in these various areas of IT. Through these contacts, you can also gain insight and get advice about a prospective career change or change in IT specialization that you have always had in mind. The AITP membership roster is very diverse, with people in many different areas of the IT industry. AITP members include and are not limited to various types of IT professionals, such as business owners/entrepreneurs, executives, such as CIO's, CTO's, Vice Presidents, etc., all types of managers, systems integrators, software developers, database administrators, network engineers, software architects, management consultants, sales/marketing professionals, service providers, and educators, such as instructors and professors, and students.

3. Develop leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills. These skills, often times called, "soft skills" are essential to your career success in today's IT industry. In addition to having the technical skills, knowledge, education, and working hard, you need to have these "soft skills" to set you apart from others and to be valuable to your employer. Thus, in today's IT marketplace, simply "getting the work done" and "knowing your stuff" is only part of the formula of succeeding in your IT career. Today's employers and IT marketplace generally demand and expect that IT professionals have the ability lead others, communicate effectively with others, work with others in a team (including the difficult, recalcitrant, and hard to work with team members), and resolve conflict between team mates. Through membership in AITP, you can get involved in various board of directors, committee, and advocacy positions, both at the local and national levels of AITP. By being involved in these various positions, you have the opportunity to gain leadership experience that you would otherwise not have with your current employer or career situation. Through these opportunities that come with AITP membership, you will improve your self-confidence, communication skills, and learn how to effectively deal with many different types of people, that you would otherwise not have the opportunity to.

4. Expand and diversify your existing career skills. Because of the fast paced and dynamic nature of the IT industry, with technology nearly doubling every couple of years, being up to date with the most current skills is more important than ever. Often times, this may also mean that you will need to learn new skills that are outside of your current skill sets and core competencies. Membership in the AITP can be an indispensable aid in giving your career this needed boost through the many educational, continuing professional education, and skills enhancement benefits that the AITP provides to its members. In addition, through making new networking contacts, you may get good advice and guidance from a respected professional in the area that you are seeking to expand and diversify your skills in.

5. Learn first-hand about the latest technologies, IT management best practices, and IT products/services. Each of our bi-monthly AITP Chapter meetings feature a guest speaker presentation from a leading national or local IT company, or IT organization about a current topic in IT. Our first meeting is the St. Louis dinner meeting at the Holiday Inn Westport, usually held on the fourth Thursday of the month from 5 to 8:30 p.m. Our second meeting is in Illinois meeting, in Belleville, IL at Southwestern Illinois College, usually held on the second Tuesday of the month from 5 to 6 p.m. The AITP St. Louis Chapter meetings have featured guest speakers from a wide variety of companies and organizations, such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Cingular Wireless, Information Builders/iWay Software, The United States Transportation Command, Xiotech, S.E.A. Group, Inc., Bluesocket, Inc., Metamatrix, VistaWiz, Sudora LLC, Web Innovations & Technology Services (WITS), Jonathan Jones Consulting, and Business Continuity Planning, Inc. (BCPI). For additional details about our AITP St. Louis Chapter meetings, please visit our website.

6. Keep abreast of the latest developments in the IT industry. Through active involvement in AITP as an AITP member, you can better keep abreast of the latest developments and trends in the IT industry. Having this knowledge and understanding is crucial in today's dynamic and fast-changing IT industry. Technologies and core competencies that were in high demand a few years ago, such as Y2K remediation and large-scale ERP implementations, are no longer as in high demand as they were in the past. The current IT trend of "off shoring" application development programming jobs to foreign countries such as India, China, Malaysia, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, or Poland was little known and almost unheard of just a few years ago. Now, it is an IT management trend that shows no signs of slowing down, that industry experts predict will continue to grow at a faster rate in the next several years, and may even affect your current IT position (or if it has not, it has already have affected someone you know). The bottom line is that because trends and developments in the IT industry change so quickly, knowing about and understanding these trends is essential to your career or business planning and strategy. By having this knowledge, you can help protect yourself against these trends and developments from working against you, and instead, capitalize on them, making them work in your favor.

7. Exchange knowledge in various areas of IT with other fellow IT professionals. AITP members enjoy the benefit of having access to our nationwide knowledge repository, discussion forums, and other online knowledge base resources that are only available to AITP members. In addition, AITP members enjoy membership in the various AITP special interest groups (SIG's), regional conferences, and national conferences. One of the best methods of getting the information that the you really need "in a pinch", in order to solve an IT related problem that you need to solve (such as a specific Java programming, UNIX, Windows system administration problem, or whatever it may be) is to go to a knowledge base that your organization provides, discussion forum, or a newsgroup on the Internet. This type of information sharing is the main premise behind open source software development projects (such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, Mozilla, FreeBSD, etc.) and is one of the main reasons why the products and technologies that result form these types of projects are so successful and so technically sound. By having access to these AITP knowledge bases, in addition to your existing information resources from your organization and from the Internet that you already use, you have another valuable resource at your disposal. In turn, this could potentially give you a competitive edge over other IT professionals, or for the businessperson, a competitive edge over your competitors.

8. Opportunities to give back to and get involved with your local IT community. As an active member of the AITP, you have many unique opportunities to get involved in various philanthropic and community service activities that the AITP St. Louis Chapter is involved in, such as our AITP College Scholarship Program, mentoring local college students who are studying IT related subjects, giving presentations about career or IT related subjects at local colleges and universities, and participating in the annual downtown St. Louis St. Patrick's Day Parade, in which the AITP St. Louis Chapter has actively sponsored. One activity that often helps many people enjoy life more is to serve your community and to give back to your community. The overall satisfaction that you will get from this type of activity is often times greater than that from your work related accomplishments. In addition, there is great joy in helping someone in need and making a difference in someone's life, in which you will always be thanked and remembered for by that person you helped.

9. Special discounts and insurance benefits available only to AITP members. Through partnership agreements that the national AITP organization has made with various vendors, the AITP has established the Vendor Affiliates (VA's) program for its members. This program provides AITP members with great discounts and special offers on a variety of products and services, such as the AITP group life and health insurance plans, professional liability insurance, continuing professional education, conference registration fees, travel services, magazine subscriptions, financial services, and shipping services. Our VA's include some well known industry leaders in their respective industries, such as Airborne Express, Alamo Rent-A-Car, Gartner Group / Gartner Events, Geico Auto Insurance, Kinko's, LTCI Illinois, Marsh Affinity / Seabury & Smith, MBNA Bank of America Financial Services, Target Insurance Services, ActiveEducation, and SkillSoft / SmartCertify. These discounts and special offers are only available to AITP members.

10. Advocacy and influence opportunities in the IT industry. As an AITP member, you have the opportunity to be involved in advocacy, influence, and to an extent, lobbying on behalf of and in the IT profession and the IT industry, through the various AITP adcovacy committees. Nationally, the AITP is involved in various types of advocacy, including IT Education, IT Certification, IT Research Strategy, IT Research Community Outreach, Collegiate Programs, and Professional Ethics. Through these advocacy programs, the AITP helps to ensure that the new government legislation does not place undue burdens on or excessively regulate the IT profession or the IT industry, to maintain high IT educational standards, and to maintain high IT professional ethical standards of conduct. As a result of these various advocacy efforts, self regulation of the IT profession and the IT industry, and maintaining these high professional ethical standards of conduct, we have been successful, to a large extent, with preventing our government from imposing many burdensome, bureaucratic, and unnecessary regulations on our profession and industry, as it has already done with many different professions and industries, such as accounting, health care, financial services, and insurance.

About the AITP: The AITP is a national professional organization for IT professionals to help them advance their careers and to advance the IT profession as a whole. It is composed of a wide variety of people in all areas of IT from employers, employees, executives, managers, programmers, technicians, recruiters, sales professionals, consultants, educators, students, and many others. The AITP St. Louis Chapter is the local AITP chapter that serves the St. Louis Metropolitan Area and the outlying areas in both Missouri and Illinois.

Membership and Dues. There are three types of membership, ranging from professional, interim, and student membership. The membership dues listed below are for the AITP St. Louis Chapter, as membership dues vary by chapter. The dues listed below include the membership dues that cover both the national organization and the local chapter and the one-time processing fee of $15.00. Contributions for the Foundation for IT Education and the Education Special Interest Group (EDSIG) are optional and are not included in the membership dues listed below.

Contributions or gifts to the Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP dues) are not tax deductible as charitable contributions. However, they may be tax deductible as ordinary and necessary business expenses. Payment is required in U.S. Dollars. Please consult with a qualified tax professional regarding the eligibility of tax deductions.

1. Professional Membership. This type of membership includes individuals who are or have been employed in the IT field, but not limited to, managers, staff, sales, service providers, and educators. $150.00

2. Student Membership. This type of membership includes individual students whose degree major is consistent with their desire to enter the IT field. $35.00

3. Interim Membership. This type of memberhsip includes former student members who have all the rights and privileges of a Professional Member, at a reduced dues rate for three years. $65.00

Please note that these dues are subject to change without notice. Therefore, please check the National AITP website for the most current information and details regarding membership dues.

Disclaimer: The results and benefits of being an Association of Information Technology Professionals (AITP) member stated in this article are not guaranteed by the writer of this article, Kevin Shen, the AITP, affiliated AITP chapters, AITP employees, officers, members, agents, or contractors, herein referred to as and named as involved parties. Therefore, the involved parties are not responsible for or are legally liable for guaranteeing these results and benefits of AITP membership that are stated in this article.

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