At the November AMITPRO meeting we had two speakers in attendance

First was Dominic Gill from Microsoft

Dominic has been involved with AMITPRO in various different areas in his previous role as West Midlands Regional Manager for Microsoft

His current project is the helping to roll out the Microsoft Apprentice Scheme, Steve blogged about this in detail recently so check out his post here

The main aim of the scheme is to help school and college leavers to get into the IT industry and to ensure potential employers are confident in the level of training they have undertaken with the added bonus of having some input into their development as they also spend time in the workplace

Dominic also brought along Amrik Bhabra, Managing Director of Coventry based Adecs who was involved in the initial pilot of the scheme to help field any questions

Next up we had Alan Jones, HP Reseller Development at Bell Micro

Alan was here to speak about HP’s partner program and how Bell Micro can help partners develop the server and storage side of the business from an HP perspective

He gave lots of details about the various levels of engagement you can have with HP, the product range, the areas in which Bell can help and passed on information about some of the resources that are available when selling HP equipment

After this Guy went through the results of the recent member survey. We got some good feedback about what AMITPRO members would like to see in 2010. This information is invaluable to help with improving the group and also helps when speaking to potential presenters as we illustrate the value they will get as well as ensuring their presentation is designed to give maximum value. A copy of the results are available from here

Feedback is always welcome so if you have any please leave a comment here or drop us an email

The slides for Dom’s presentation are available from here and if anyone would like to quiz Amrik on his experiences with the apprentice scheme let us know and we can put you in contact with him

Thanks to everyone who attended and we look forward to seeing you in December!