This year's event will be held at the Kopanong Hotel and Conference Centre in Johannesburg. We have decided to use the same conference venue this year as last year based on the extremely positive feedback that we received. Directions to the venue can be found at:

http://www.kopanong.co.za/map.html


Registration procedure:

Go to

http://www.tenet.ac.za/cgi/cgi-ditche.exe 

and sign up. Please note that:

• Registration will close on the 31 August 2007 (or when 100 attendees have registered).
• Accommodation and restaurant meal costs at the hotel are paid for by DITCHE. Room service, telephone calls, bar bills etc. are for the account of the delegate.
• Delegates should make their own air travel arrangements, and DITCHE will refund them after the event according to the standard claims procedure.
• Registered delegates who cancel after 29 August (or who don't arrive) will be required to reimburse TENET for hotel costs incurred. Medical and other human emergencies are the only grounds for exemption.
• By registering you affirm that you have the agreement of your management for your attendance at the event.

Transport: Transport from Johannesburg International has been arranged with the hotel. Further details of this will be provided closer to the event.

Presentations: This is an occasion for the community to share its insights and experiences. We ask that each delegate be willing to contribute one presentation in which they focus on an IT issue that has been of importance to them or their institution and to describe how they tackled it, and what they learned in the process. Presentations do not have to be formal PowerPoint-driven exercises; they can take the form of a simple tenminute talk followed by discussion, or they can equally be full-blown forty-minute formal sessions. We do not prescribe the format: presenters should use whatever they are comfortable with, bearing in mind the objective of sharing experiences. Presenters who would prefer to participate in a panel discussion or in joint presentations are more than welcome to indicate this as a preference.

Program: The program will, as always, be based upon the offers of contributions and will be posted on the DITCHE web site in due course. We will start at 09h00 on Tuesday 18th September and end at 16h00 on 20th September.

To offer a presentation: Send email to Geoff Hoy (ghoy at tenet.ac.za) giving a very short outline of what will be covered in the session and what format will be used (e.g. overhead projector, whiteboard, data projector, or simply words alone). NB!!!! The subject line of your email should contain the words "NTE 2007".

We'd like to include a number of technical half-day or full-day workshops - the kind that are too long for a presentation but too short for a separate event. These have worked well in the past and we think they should be continued. If you'd like to run a workshop, or if you have identified an issue for your institution that you think should be covered by a workshop, please email Geoff Hoy (ghoy at tenet.ac.za) with details.

ITIL Implementation day event: This year we will be running an additional event, the ITIL Implementation event, on the 21st September, i.e. the day after the NTE 2007 event ends. Delegates to NTE 2007 who wish to participate or attend this event will need to register for both events. Staff who did not attend NTE2007 will be welcome to register for just the Implementing ITIL event. A separate announcement, contain information about this event, will be mailed to IT directors.