Press Information:
Stacey Johnson
Miner & Miner, a Telvent company
Telephone: +1 970 223 1888 x151

General Information: info@miner.com

Fort Collins, CO -- Miner & Miner, a Telvent company, successfully hosted their 5th annual User Group Meeting (MMUG) the first week of March in Fort Collins, CO. This year, the Telvent North America Utility Users Group (UUG) participated in the event, which helped to cross-educate users on product and service enhancements and bring the message of integrated workflow to their joint user community.

Lee Ayers, System Engineer from Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative, remarked on the value of this approach. “I left the User Group Meeting with more usable information than any I’ve received from conferences in recent memory. It was valuable to envision the integration possibilities for two previously stand-alone systems, and as an end user of GIS, see presentations on the possible uses of GIS to the enterprise.”

Nearly 300 system users and business partners from around the globe gathered to discuss the future direction in products and services, share experiences with other users, provide feedback, and learn from the technical presentations. The first day included an integrated demo featuring a SAGE 2300 RTU, OASyS DNA system, Responder OMS, and ArcFM Viewer and Redliner applications. The workflow depicted the tripping of a substation breaker, resulting in a dispatcher sending a crew and truck to inspect the problem, locating the probable outage device, using GPS and making redline changes in the field, managing the outage, and ultimately restoring it. The rest of the day was spent on product demonstrations and discussions on future product direction.

Sid Terry, the Senior Project Leader at Oklahoma Gas & Electric (OG&E), acknowledged the benefits of networking with other users and attending product update information sessions that will directly affect OG&E’s ArcFM and Designer project. “I particularly enjoyed meeting with other users and attending the product development sessions. The planned product enhancements will provide solid benefits for the future of our project and the productivity in our organization, including, for example, technology advances such as partial posting and design optimization.”

The sessions, held at the newly renovated Hilton Hotel, were divided into seven tracks on the second and third day, with the agenda reflecting a mix of product overviews, feedback sessions, case studies, and advanced technical discussions. A demo room allowed users to meet with technical staff, ask questions on the products, and obtain demos on products of interest. Attendees also enjoyed varied social functions that allowed for additional networking. These included a hosted dinner, an evening of bowling, snowshoeing in the Rocky Mountains, and skiing at Winter Park Resort.

Ginger Chugg, the IS Applications Manager at Clark Public Utilities, summarized this year’s User Group meeting by saying, “We experienced many benefits from attending this Conference. The atmosphere is conducive to getting acquainted with other users and discussing product updates and other projects. The conference offered a variety of sessions - from the beginner to more advanced technical levels for long-time users - and it was great to have our account manager, project manager, and technical support people all in the same location at the same time, providing a convenient and mutually beneficial opportunity for discussing project details. All this made the conference very worthwhile.”