Unigroup's January 2003 Meeting Announcement


NOTICE: All attendees who have successfully RSVP'd by 15-JAN-2003 16:00 should have already received an "RSVP-ACK" EMail. If you did NOT receive this email, you are probably NOT registered and you won't be able to get past security. The final list has now been sent into Chase.


Topic:
IT DISASTER RECOVERY: "Running a Winning Relay Race"

Speaker:
Sharon M. Williams, CBCP,
Continuity Solutions Engineer,
Hewlett Packard Business Continuity Recovery Services (HP BCRS)

Date:
Thursday, January 16, 2003

Location:
The Chase Manhattan Bank
One Chase Manhattan Plaza (1CMP)     **This is our new meeting location!
Conference Center, 28th Floor
Downtown, NYC
** RSVP AND PHOTO ID WILL BE REQUIRED FOR ENTRY **

Time:
6:15 - 6:30 PM Registration
6:30 - 6:40 PM Ask the Wizard - Questions, Answers and Current Events
6:40 - 6:50 PM Unigroup Business
6:50 - 9:00 PM Main Presentation


Introduction

First off... Happy New Year!

That being said, its that time again... its time for the annual election of the Unigroup Board of Directors... and the annual call for Unigroup members (or other volunteers) who would like to serve on the board (or simply help the board) and take care of Unigroup.

Unigroup members are welcome to volunteer to serve on the Board of Directors of Unigroup of New York, Inc. Please Email the board at @unigroup.org> if you are interested in getting on the election ballot. The Unigroup Board holds a board meeting typically once per month (currently at a convenient Midtown NYC location), and performs other tasks via Email and Telephone. The Board plans, prepares for, and runs the meetings, finds speakers and giveaways for the meetings, and performs other tasks which keep the group alive and funded. Unigroup is a volunteer not-for-profit educational organization and we need your help!

Now, back on topic... particularly this month's meeting topic... IT Disaster Recovery. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity have always been important topics, but they have taken on new meaning given the catastrophic events of recent years (eg. wide-scale power disruptions, floods, earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and terror).

I spoke with our speaker at length last week. To summarize, all I can say is that I expect that most people in attendance will leave the meeting saying "Wow, Fantastic Meeting!" You can easily see from the meeting outline and from our speaker's biography, that we are in for a real "master class" session. This meeting will address the issues of Disaster Planning and Prevention (from a Technical and Business Impact point of view), as well as the various issues related to Business Continuity and Post-Disaster Recovery.

Unigroup would like to especially thank our speaker for flying in for this meeting. Unigroup appreciates HP's continued support.


   SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
   ---------------------

   * IN ORDER TO PASS THROUGH SECURITY AT CHASE, WE NEED YOU TO RSVP
   * PRIOR TO THURSDAY, SO WE CAN GET YOUR NAME ON THE ATTENDEE LIST.
   * ADVANCE REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID ARE REQUIRED!

   -- RSVP DEADLINE IS 15-JAN-2003 16:00 --
   -- YOU WILL RECEIVE AN RSVP ACK MESSAGE WHEN YOU ARE REGISTERED --

   Please RSVP if you know you are attending or if you think you may
   be attending.  This will help us arrange for a letter to security
   for all of Unigroup.  It will also help us to determine the correct
   amount of food and refreshments.

   To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by:

   a) If at all possible, please use the Unigroup Registration Page.
      This will allow us to have some automation in the registration process.

   b) If you have no web access and you really must EMail us, send an
      EMail containing the FIRST and LAST NAMEs of the persons attending
      to the Unigroup RSVP Address:
         unigroup-rsvp@unigroup.org
      The EMail subject should start with "RSVP".
      You may optionally include your contact phone number (that day)
      or other current information.
      Sample EMail:
        RSVP LastName FirstName your_email@domain.dom 000-000-0000

      ALSO: Do NOT give us an email address which is over quota
      and cannot receive any new email.  This causes us to receive
      bounces from your address when we send out the RSVP-ACKs.
      You must have a working and valid email address in order
      to get on the Unigroup Meeting Attendee List which will
      grant you access to our meetings.  Be sure to proof-read
      your email address before submitting the RSVP request.

   Please continue to check the Unigroup web site:
        http://www.unigroup.org
   for any last minute updates concerning this meeting.  Please
   check your email for any last minute announcements prior to the
   meeting.  Note that only the Attendee First and Last Names will
   be provided to Chase Security.


Directions

The 1CMP building is situated: South of Liberty Street, North of Pine Street, East of Broad/Nassau Street and West of William Street. The building is one block east of Broadway, right behind 140 Broadway.

The closest entrance to the conference center is from Nassau Street, first elevator bank from the Nassau Street entrance.

The building is on a raised platform. Walk up the outside stairs at Nassau Street and head for the guard's station at the south-west corner of the building. Tell the guards you are heading for Unigroup. They will inspect your ID and carry-ins and direct you to the meeting facility, assuming you are on the Unigroup RSVP list.

Once you get upstairs, enter the conference facility through its main doors. There is a bank of large monitors to the left of the entrance which should direct you to the Unigroup meeting room (the room may vary from month to month). To the right of the main entrance is the concierge's desk, ask for help there if you need anything. The conference facility has two levels, keep in mind that the Unigroup meeting may be up the staircase on its upper level.

As always, also look out for Unigroup signs marking the path to the meeting room. Also note, if you come early, we may not have our own signs in place yet (we have to commute there too).

Transit By Train: Take the J/M/Z to Broad Street and walk 1 block North to Pine St. Take the 4/5 to Wall Street and walk North to Pine St., then East to Broad St. Take the 2/3 to Wall Street, the North West exit is inside the Chase complex, else you will need to walk a block North and West. See MTA Downtown NYC Map (pdf) for detailed mass transit information.


Description of Talk

No matter how big or how small your business may be, it is critical to understand the steps on how to:

In this presentation we will discuss why 60% of all businesses fail to meet their Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) because of missed steps or lack of ownership while responding to an outage. How do we determine what level of an event has occurred and who takes ownership of declaring a disaster? How do you invoke the right relay teams necessary to recover critical components before loss occurs to your reputation and revenue? We will answer these questions, plus address additional questions that deal directly with responding and escalating during an unplanned outage.

Once your relay teams are in place, how do you recover?

These and many more questions are essential for identifying the correct recovery methods and steps to recover your critical components during a declared disaster. We will discuss how to get the right level of recovery plan in place for your critical IT components. We will address:

Once we address response and recovery, we will briefly discuss the necessity of restoring your production site and resumption steps that migrate you back to your restored production site from your alternate processing or recovery site.

So, with all said and done, what can really happen that would cause an outage resulting in a declared disaster? We will discuss events of the last 10 years and explore declared disasters with both successful recovery and not so successful recovery. We will share war stories and have an open discussion on issues today. We will discuss what we learned from September 11th that has driven changes in our recovery strategies.

Web Resources:

   HP             http://www.hp.com/
   HP BCRS        http://www.hp.com/hps/tech/continuity/
   HP Services    http://www.hp.com/hps/hpc/i_business.htm

Giveaways:

To-Be-Announced (HP is investigating what they can put together).


Speaker Biography

Sharon M. Williams, Continuity Solution Engineer
HP, Business Recovery Services

Sharon is an experienced leader in Business Continuity practices across the United States since 1978. She has extensive experience in all aspects of recovery that include risk assessment, business impact analysis, strategy development, crisis management, disaster recovery planning, and business continuity planning. Her major focus over the last 15 years has been IT Continuity Planning and paying special attention to the never-ending changes in IT infrastructures and components. She draws on more than 25 years of Information Technology related experience to support clients of various major businesses.

As a Continuity Solution Engineer for Hewlett-Packard, she is responsible for ensuring customer recovery plans and recovery components are invoke-able. She specializes in IT continuity and rehearsal management, focusing on IT staff processes and the steps necessary to recover within the correct recovery time objective for each critical IT component.

Over the years, Sharon has assisted many businesses and organizations in North America, Asia/Pacific Rim and Europe in understanding business continuity concepts. These concepts include risks and threats, determining recovery and continuity strategies, and developing plans to anticipate any outage that would impact the businesses reputation and revenue. She has managed over 100 recoveries due to major and catastrophic outages for North American clients.

Her IT recovery experience includes network recovery, various system platforms such as IBM, Unix, MPE, NT etc., critical IT infrastructure components such as print servers and batch servers along with applications and database recovery, including SAP, Oracle, Informix, etc.

   Education: 
     BA  Education: Western Montana State University, UC Berkeley.
     CIS Education: American River College, Sierra College.

   Certifications and Awards:
     Certified Business Continuity Professional,
                                        Disaster Recovery Institute.
     Certified Novell Engineer,
                                        Novell.
     System & Advanced Management,
                                        Hewlett-Packard.
     Windows Application Specialist,
                                        Micro Soft.
     Financial Management Achievement Awarded,
                                        U.S. Department of Energy.
     Area Manager's Ward 1993,
                                        U.S. Department of Energy.


Company Biography

The "New" HP. See www.hp.com for information about HP.


Fee Schedule

         Yearly Membership (includes all meetings):      $ 50.00
       * Non-Member Single Meeting:                      $ 20.00
         Student Yearly Membership:                      $ 20.00
         Non-Member Student Single Meeting (with ID):    $  5.00
         Cash, Check, American Express.

       * Employees of JPM/Chase (with ID) can attend general meetings
         at NO CHARGE.

    ==>  Unigroup is the Greater NYC Regional Area Affiliate
         of UniForum - an International Unix Users Group.
         Our Joint Membership Program with UniForum is currently
         on hold due to circumstances at UniForum.
         For information about UniForum visit http://www.uniforum.org.


Food and Refreshments

Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served. This includes sandwiches such as turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna and grilled eggplant. Chase also provides us a very nice spread of treats, which include brownies, cookies, popcorn, bottled water and assorted beverages.


Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!

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