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--></style></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-GB link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Well, our last event of 2017 took place this year at CIUK in Manchester on 12<sup>th</sup> December. Claire pointed out that it was exactly 7 years since the user group was first formed and we\u2019ve grown significantly since then. There\u2019s now hundreds of subscribers to the mailing list and regular events taking place across the globe.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>For those interested in the presentations this year, all the slide decks we have or that have been approved are published on the user group website.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Thanks to all the speakers from both IBM and the user community for speaking at our events!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>And finally, we\u2019ve updated the look of our website and changed to something we hope will be a bit easier for use to manage. We\u2019ve made some changes to the navigation to make things easier to find, so please do check out the website and let myself of Claire know directly if you have any comments on this.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>We\u2019re also interested in hearing from you if you\u2019d like to write a feature or article for the user group website, perhaps comment on a scale feature you use, or something you\u2019ve struggled with and fixed. Please get in touch if you\u2019d like to do this.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>We\u2019re already planning for 2018 events and hope we\u2019ll have a successful year next year.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>Simon Thompson<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'>UK Group Chair<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>