Despite a late night of dancing and celebrating at Innovation Awards Dinner, packed rooms greeted the first sessions of the day.

Wednesday got started with two technical sessions- AMANDA Public Portal and AMANDA Personalization.In the AMANDA Public Portal session, headed by CSDC consultant Amar Kumar, clients gained a deeper understanding of the different methods available to move their citizen services online using the Public Portal. Attendees saw a live demo of how citizens can conduct a public query, and learned about Google Map integration, setting up users, as well configuration options that are available.The AMANDA Personalization session provided an overview of how to set up the many new personalization features available in AMANDA.

As is the case every year, the annual Innovation Awards dinner was a great opportunity to celebrate AMANDA users and have some fun. The Oktoberfest themed event also provided a little local Waterloo flavour to the proceedings, highlighted by a traditional Keg Taping lead by CSDC CEO Dan Mishra and Waterloo Director of Building Standards, Ralph Kaminski.

The Innovation Awards Dinner also provides two of the most highly anticipated parts of any CTAC, the announcement of the Innovation Award Winner and the unveiling of the host jurisdiction for the next CTAC.

Congratulations to the City of Windsor. Windsor took home the Innovation Award for their development of an Automatic Documentation Generator that goes through the procedure code of an AMANDA Folder and automatically generates documentation for what it does. This tool helps ensure that documentation is up-to-date and allows AMANDA support staff to provide faster service to their users.

The other much anticipated moment of the Innovation Awards Dinner is the announcement the next year’s host. We are very excited to announce that CTAC 2011 will be held in Arlington, Texas.

Following last night’s pleasant evening event in the Town of Elora, Ontario, Tuesday began with a tour of Waterloo’s Perimeter Institute - an internationally renowned state-of-the-art facility leading the way for ground-breaking scientific research in the field of theoretical physics. The tour of the Perimeter Institute, which was originally established by Research in Motion (RIM) founder and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, provided the group with a brief but insightful look into the innovations being developed in the Waterloo Region.

The first full day of CTAC 2010 was a great success.

The morning started strong with packed rooms for both the "Getting Ready to Go Mobile" and "Configuring AMANDA Workflow" technical sessions. These information-packed sessions benefited from the enthusiasm in the room which lead to insightful discussions.

As we moved into the afternoon, we got our first look at the new schedule for CTAC 2010. This year, lunch included not just great food, but a peak into the future. Executive Vice President Eric David treated those in attendance to an overview of the AMANDA development roadmap.

The afternoon sessions were short and quick. Working with only 30 minute sessions, presenters had to be concise and to the point.

CTAC was officially kicked-off today with a great opening session. CEO Dan Mishra welcomed attendees and provided some insight into how CSDC has been growing as an organization to serve our clients. Mr. Mishra was followed by City of Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran who highlighted the many things that the Waterloo Region has to offer.

We are looking at great and this week promises to be a great one.

The Waterloo Inn, the site of CTAC 2010, has graciously extended its CTAC room discounts until May 7th.

Please note, online registration will no longer be available with the CTAC discount.

To book a discounted room for CTAC 2010, please contact the Waterloo Inn directly at  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 1-800-361-4708.