Midwest Cooperative Purchasing Meeting in St. Louis Day 2

June 27, 2007, meeting notes:

Corporate Express:

• Corporate Express wants non-AEPA states to piggyback on AEPA states contracts

Atlas Track & Tennis:

• key selling point is Atlas can provide a "turn key" total project solution
• Greenbush will contact Atlas to inquire about school playground padding

Williams Scotsman:

• has office in Kansas City
• marketing mainly via email blasts and mailers
• need digital copies of email and snail mail marketing

School Specialty:

• producing a furniture catalog for AEPA states; due out early fall 2007
  

Midwest Cooperative Purchasing Meeting in St. Louis

June 26, 2007, meeting notes:

Our regional AEPA meeting kicked off with informational presentations from the states in attendance. Those states include, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and New Mexico. Marketing seems to be high atop this list of interests of the state AEPA members.

Indiana:

• utilize e-marketing almost exclusively
• have extensive databases of school personnel and staff to keep it updated

Missouri:

• Greenbush needs to investigate CSD's (Cooperating School Districts) REAP initiative
• CSD has cable TV and IDL...how can CSD partner with GreenbushTV?
• CSD websites: www.schoolsupplies.org, www.csd.org

New Mexico:

• Greenbush needs to investigate Job Order Contracting
• Cooperative Educational Services (CSD) website: www.nmedu.org

The MASTER Teacher:

• new marketing initiatives and inside/outside sales force
• how can Greenbush partner with MASTER Teacher to market Greenbush business partner/AEPA products/services

AEPA states/Non-AEPA states transaction PROPOSAL by Tom Post, Missouri:

• non-AEPA states may piggyback on AEPA states' contracts
• 2% administration fee divided among AEPA and adjoining AEPA states

Konica Minolta:

• selling point to schools is cost comparison of in-house vs outsourcing printing
• will request supporting documentation for that cost comparison
  

Week of June 25

I will be out of the office June 25-27 attending a Midwest regional AEPA meeting in St. Louis. I will have access to email and voicemail. I’ll be back in the office at Greenbush on June 28.

LearnKey Visit & Secondlife Demo

LearnKey, a new AEPA vendor, visited Greenbush on Wednesday, June 13, to tour the campus and discuss logistics of our new partnership. Sharon Hoch (Greenbush Virtual Prescriptive Learning director) met with us also.

Rich White demonstrated the Greenbush Secondlife island on Tuesday, June 12, to the Learning Tree Institute Board of Directors. Vendor Tower is coming along!

Corporate Express Meeting and iNTouch

Had a good meeting today with Randy Jones and Chuck Luchen with Corporate Express, one of our AEPA vendors. We discussed marketing and logistics to move our partnership forward to better serve Kansas school districts.

Drafted a memorandum of understanding for our pending partnership with iNTouch Consulting. iNTouch has a great employment survey service for school administrators to use to aid them in hiring the right teachers and administrators the FIRST time.

Also, June is one of the best flyfishing months in the year...I'm taking a day off on June 18 to flyfish at Roaring River State Park with a couple of other hard core flyfisherman from Greenbush!

Catch-Up Friday

Caught up on updating partner web links on www.greenbushbusinesspartners.org.

My six year old son had his first T-ball game on Thursday, June 7. I think there were some major league scouts present! A great way to spend a Thursday evening!

Have a great weekend!

Morgan-Hunter

Had a great conference call today with representatives from Morgan-Hunter. This was the first step in our partnership inquiry process and, hopefully, provide the school districts we serve with a total solution for substitute teacher staffing. This would be another exciting educational resource for school districts. More to come!

AEPA Catalogs Mailed to Superintendents & New Website

AEPA catalogs were mailed to 120+ superintendents today. They will now be more aware of the educational resources available to them through AEPA!

I am meeting today with staff from Greenbush's IT and cooperative purchasing departments to kickoff a redesign of our cooperative purchasing and AEPA websites. We will be using the content manager "Joomla" for our new site...exciting!

Recycled Computers, New Partners and More!

Had a very successful computer recycling day at Hiawatha Kansas on Friday, June 1. We recycled more than 430 pieces of computer equipment that would've otherwise ended up...well, who knows where it would have ended up!

We're excited to begin working with two new business partners: Custom Energy and iNTouch Consulting. Check out their links on my blog for more info.