The IT Professionals Community of Greater Toronto (ITProToronto) is a not-for-profit computer technology user group dedicated to helping the IT Professional, as well as those with aspirations of becoming IT Professionals.
The Mission of ITProToronto is to offer IT Professionals in the Greater Toronto Area a centralized group for learning, to be connected to software vendors , and to network with each other both in person and on-line.
· Monthly in-person events will invite industry experts to present on topics of interest to the IT Professional. These will be established based on a number of criteria:
o Requests by community members
o Industry trends
o Availability of presenters
These seminars are presented by experts working in the field and focus on best practices for technologies presented through real world scenarios. It will be clear that none of these presentations are to be sales or marketing based, and presenters must present an overview of an issue rather than focusing on a single product, unless clearly stated otherwise in any presentation invitation or advertisement.
· An on-line forum where members can discuss topics of interest without the limitation of speaker availability and as more of an open discussion concept rather than a presentation.
· Study Groups, subsidized by software vendors, aimed at teaching concepts required to pass certification exams and led by the group rather than by an instructor, though possibly moderated by a trainer.
ITProTO is an open organization with no membership dues. It is financed and supported entirely through sponsorship. Its leadership is comprised of passionate individuals working in various segments of the IT Pro world, including trainers, consultants, and businessmen. A number of those on the Executive Board are Microsoft MVPs and all are volunteers. Many of these are people with experience leading both community and corporate organization and were (and shall continue to be) selected based on their leadership and organizational abilities, rather than on pure technical expertise.
Although the group is ‘Microsoft-centric’ it is not exclusively so. One goal of ITProTO is to present solutions and concepts based on inter-operability between platforms, and will work with other local user groups, without the intent of excluding any interested group of IT Professionals.
ITProTO will assist IT Professionals to better understand software, networking, and the integration of software products and services to better achieve their goals, in order to offer to their organizations or clients the best solution available based on industry technologies and not simply based on vendor-preferred solutions.
ITProTO was conceived of and established to fill a void both for community members and for the industry vendors looking for a channel to communicate their solution.