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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’ve grown significantly since then. There’s 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’ve updated the look of our website and changed to something we hope will be a bit easier for use to manage. We’ve 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’re also interested in hearing from you if you’d like to write a feature or article for the user group website, perhaps comment on a scale feature you use, or something you’ve struggled with and fixed. Please get in touch if you’d 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’re already planning for 2018 events and hope we’ll 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>