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UNIGROUP OF NEW YORK JANUARY 2003 ANNOUNCEMENTS
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1. UNIGROUP'S JANUARY 2003 GENERAL MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT
   ----------------------------------------------------

      When:  Thursday, January 16th, 2003

     Where:  The Chase Manhattan Bank
             One Chase Manhattan Plaza (1CMP)  <==(Our New Location!)
             Conference Center, 28th Floor
             Downtown, NYC
             **********************************************
             YOU MUST RSVP TO GET PAST SECURITY, SEE BELOW!
             **********************************************

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

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     Topic:  IT Disaster Recovery - "Running a Winning Relay Race"
             -----------------------------------------------------

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

   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.

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

   * IN ORDER TO PASS THROUGH SECURITY AT CHASE, WE NEED YOU TO RSVP
   * PRIOR TO THE MEETING DAY, SO WE CAN GET YOUR NAME ON THE ATTENDEE
   * LIST.  ADVANCE REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID ARE REQUIRED!
   * RSVP DEADLINE 15-JAN-2003 16:00.  <<<< PAY ATTENTION, DEADLINE!
   * Keep an eye out on the deadline date and time, as it may change.

   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:
         http://www.unigroup.org/unigroup-rsvp.html
      This will allow us to have some automation in the RSVP process.

   b) If you 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.

      DO NOT simply reply to this email, sending us back the entire
      announcement (we already have it); leaving the subject as it
      was, and NOT containing the phrase "RSVP" as requested.  In
      that case, your message just looks like failed mail and it
      makes it impossible to automate the RSVP process and get
      you registered for our event.

      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.

   -------------------------------------------------------------------

   Description of Talk:
   --------------------

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

   - Respond to an outage.
   - Recover from an outage.
   - Restore normal production.
   - Resume normal production, moving from the disaster site
     back to restored production.

   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?

   - Who goes first?
   - What gets recovered?
   - What are your RTO and RPO windows for each critical component?
   - Who gets the baton next?
   - What does the rest of the team do while they are waiting?
   - How do you communicate during the disaster?
   - How do you and your team escalate issues and problems during
     recovery?
   - Where do you get more resources and who helps you?

   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:

   - Who in the business owns identifying the RTO and RPO windows
     for each critical component?
   - Based on RTOs and RPOs, what type of strategies should be
     implemented?
   - How have strategies changed today verses yesterday?
   - How much is too much to spend on recovery and how much is
     too little to spend?
   - How do you get management buy-in and a budget to implement
     the correct recovery strategy that meets the RPO and RTO
     for each critical component?
   - How do you get an IT plan documented and visual enough to
     make it understandable without all the blah blah blah?
   - How can you ensure the plan is invoke-able?
   - How do you keep the plan a living document?

   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  for information about HP.


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   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
         Payment Methods: 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.

   -------------------------------------------------------------------

   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.

   -------------------------------------------------------------------

   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.  Thus far, our meeting room has been
     upstairs, on the south side of the building.

     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 one
     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 the MTA
     Downtown NYC Map (pdf) for detailed mass transit information:
       http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/nyct/maps/mapdown.pdf

   -----

   Please mark this meeting on your calendar and join us!
   Please tell your friends about Unigroup!

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   -----------------
2. UPCOMING MEETINGS
   -----------------

   We have a series of meetings in the works:

   - True64/HPUX/Linux Futures
   - Zope and Python (Web Page Development)
   - Unix Clusters and Clustered Databases
   - High Performance Internet Servers / Web Acceleration
   - Unix 30th Birthday Celebration
   - IPsec and IPv6
   - Linux Clustering Part 3: Beowulf version 2
   - Building a Firewall using FreeBSD and Linux
   - Unix Office Tools: Word Processors, Spreadsheets, Accounting Packages.
   - Emacs
   - Tex
   - PKI
   - GNU Development Environments
   - Meetings on a variety of Sun/Solaris/Java topics

   Please let us know about any other meeting topics that you may be
   interested in.  Potential speakers on Unix related technology topics
   should contact the Unigroup board at uniboard@unigroup.org.

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   -------------
3. PRIOR MEETING
   -------------

   Unigroup would like to thank our speaker Carl Sayres and his colleagues
   from Data Representations  for his
   talk on "Building Integrated Front-end to Back-end Wireless Applications
   Using Java Technology".  We learned about current standards influencing
   Java development as well as specific APIs useful for communicating with
   Hand-held and Wireless Devices.  Small demo programs were interactively
   created using their development environment, and they were compiled and
   executed in real time.  The environment supported concurrent client
   and server-side emulation, allowing for easier debugging.
   Data Representations provided some nice giveaways- we had raffled off
   three live copies of their wireless application development software.

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   --------------------
4. UPCOMING TRADE SHOWS
   --------------------

   The following trade show will come to the Javits Center this month.
   For show information and complimentary exhibits-only registration,
   visit their web page:

      LinuxWorld Conference & Expo
      http://www.linuxworldexpo.com

        Exhibit Hall Hours:
        Wed, January  22, 2003  10:00 am - 5:00 pm
        Thu, January  23, 2003  10:00 am - 5:00 pm
        Fri, January  24, 2003  10:00 am - 4:00 pm

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   --------------------
5. UNIGROUP INFORMATION
   --------------------

   Unigroup is one of the oldest and largest Unix User's Groups serving
   the Greater New York City Regional Area since the early 1980s.  Unigroup
   is a not-for-profit, vendor-neutral and member funded volunteer
   organization.  Unigroup holds regular and special event meetings
   throughout the year on technical topics relating to Unix and the Unix
   User Community.  Unigroup is also the Greater NYC Regional Area Affiliate
   of UniForum - an International Unix Users Group.

   Thanks to Chase, Unigroup holds regular meetings planned for the Third
   THURSDAY of Odd Months at The Chase Manhattan Bank, 1CMP, NYC.
   Chase has been a long time sponsor of Unigroup, allowing us the use of
   a meeting room and presentation equipment.

   Planned meeting dates are: 1/16/2003, 3/20/2003, 5/15/2003,...
   Watch for our Special Event meetings at the various trade shows in NYC
   as well as "field trips" to the facilities of local hardware and
   software vendors.

   =========================================================================
   = For Unigroup Information, Events and Meeting Announcements be sure to =
   = visit our World Wide Web Home Page:                                   =
   =       http://www.unigroup.org                                         =
   =========================================================================

   For further information or to get on the Unigroup Electronic Mail Mailing
   List send an EMail message to:
        unilist@unigroup.org

   To contact the Board of Directors of Unigroup, send an EMail message to:
        uniboard@unigroup.org

   To contact the Newsletter Editor, send an EMail message to:
        editor@unigroup.org

   If you have recently attended a meeting and you are not receiving
   Email announcements, please send us an Email and we will make
   corrections to our lists.

   Please Email the Board with any suggestions, especially potential
   meeting topics and speakers.  Unigroup welcomes contributions and
   content suggestions for our newsletter.  Unigroup is a volunteer
   organization and we need your assistance!  Please let us know if you
   can help!

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I hope to see you all at our next meeting!

-Rob Weiner
 Unigroup Executive Director
 unilist@unigroup.org
 http://www.unigroup.org

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