About

The HTCE welcomes fellow communicators, marketers, writers and designers who are interested in learning how technology is opening up new avenues to communicate and market.

How to Join

There’s no annual membership fee, just a nominal fee for each session. Simply add yourself to the mailing list to join and hear about upcoming sessions.

Purpose

The goal of the High-Tech Communications Exchange is to provide a forum for communicators and marketers to learn, grow, meet people and stay current so we can bring the best solutions to our companies and clients, grow our careers and remain relevant.

Values

We value lifelong learning: We need to stay current in order to serve our companies or clients well. Each of us bring valuable insights and experience to the table. It is that exchange of information that helps us all learn and become more effective communicators and marketers.

We value involvement: We believe giving is as important as receiving. Attending meetings, sharing our expertise or volunteering our time is how we build relationships and expand our skills. We believe we can achieve our purpose through active involvement.

We value informality and accessibility: We believe in reducing barriers to knowledge by providing a friendly, affordable, open and “pitch free” atmosphere where egos and competitive mantles idle outside the door.

History

The HTCE was founded by me, Catherine Ducharme in March 2001. While it initially started as a group for communicators in the tech sector – it evolved to a group who wanted to keep pace with how technology is changing the way we communicate. (That’s why we’ve now changed the name slightly to High Tech Communications Exchange!). The HTCE was ahead of the curve. Many of you will recall we had great speakers telling us about social media, twitter, crowd sourcing and other emerging technologies years before anyone else.

The intent was always to be an informal, accessible and simple. I believe if you create a forum for people to communicate, learn, exchange ideas and get to know fellow professionals they will come. And they did – at our peak we had over 550 subscribers and regularly drew over 50 people to each event. Many connections and friendships were formed, we learned tons and kept current.

In 2009 I stepped back from the group and Neena Rahemtulla took over the leadership for that year and then we shut the HTCE down. We thought it had run its course. We thought we were duplicating other groups. But we were wrong. There isn’t a group quite like HTCE – ahead of the curve and accessible. And wouldn’t you know it technology has continued to evolve – imagine that! We believe the HTCE can resume its role of keeping us current on subjects like mobile technology, QR codes, social commerce, digital branding, social business intelligence, integration of social feedback into decision making and topics I’m not even aware of (but I will be). So that’s why we brought it back.