NMI to Techworks Transition

NMI membership will still exist but today we have individual members of each of our Connected Communities such as AESIN, Power Electronics UK and IoT Security Foundation. In our future model, organisations can join one or more Connect Communities; multiple areas of engagement will increase your membership discount. There will also be a category of associate membership of Techworks where organisation can join without being direct members of any of the established Connect Communities.

All organisations under the Techworks umbrella will be regarded as Techworks members.

Members are continually pushing for new innovative activities that require additional resource. Additional resource requires additional funding and we are therefore establishing an innovative membership model that provides increasing levels of discount as your participation increase across current and new areas of activity.

There may be fee increase for some members and we will discuss this with members at their membership renewal and commit to working flexibly in the implementation of a new fee structure.

Basically, in the same way they are today where there is always a requirement to have a Steering Board of leaders / experts associated with each activity.Over-time, there is intent to give these Steering Boards a broader responsibility that includes raising finance for the required resources. In this way, Steering Boards may recommend a different fee structure that addresses the particular needs of that community.

We don’t see the need for this at this time and, to the contrary, there are various drawbacks. We see a future with having one legal entity that manages a number of “Communties” that provide value in their own right with part of that value is the connectivity to different parts of the eco-system.

It’s become clear that Connected Communities benefit from a combination of shared and focused resources. We feel we need to transition to a model where the Connected Communities are not a long-term financial liability on other parts of the memberships. Therefore organisations that participate in and benefit from multiple connected communities contribute to a share of the resources being consumed. In principle, overall fees will be reflective of:

a) Value to the organsisation

b) Ability to pay (size / scale of the participating organisation)

c) Paying a share of the resources being consumed

We’ll work constructively with existing members during a transition phase.

The plan is NMI activities in manufacturing and design will become individual Connected Communities in their own right with associated Steering Boards for these activities.In order to give more punch to our grass-roots connections, some of the UK’s technology leaders have agreed to join the Board of Techworks.

The fundamental drivers are the changes in the global technology eco-system and the need to take a different approach to uniting and representing this eco-system in the UK. Traditional business boundaries are changing and there are great benefits in providing members with access to a broader eco-system that’s critical to future business.Additionally, the UK has a global reputation for technology development and we feel there’s a need for recognition and strategic partnerships at the highest levels of government to help keep us there. We feel there several changes we need to make to enable that and that begins with establishing a new “Current” identity that more organisations can unite behind.