We will have several score visitors at our company today -- in a few hours -- so I should be sleeping, rather than up in the middle of the night.

As introduction to our software training session at Hotel Monaco in DC, I will say something vaguely like this:

Hi folks. Welcome to our software training. We are very happy to have you here, and proud to have you all as NGP users. I am particularly pleased to have the chance to meet some of you for the first time in person.

If you look around you know that you are among friends. We have a wide diversity of people here today– all Democrats and their allies. In the room today, we have staff for U.S. Senate campaigns, U.S. Representatives, state and national parties, political fundraising firms, progressive PACs, labor unions, law firms, 527 organizations, statewide and local officeholders.

Louis and Dan and the rest of us will do our best to make your day worthwhile. Because you use our software for so many different things, we hope you will bear with us as we try to be helpful to everyone.

I do have a couple of recommendations:

1) Do not hesitate to interrupt the training with questions. We want this to be informal. We may decide to answer at the moment, or to answer one-on-one later, but this will be much more useful, and more fun, it you make it interactive.

2) Write down other questions or suggestions that occur to you that you as we go and submit them to us later.

If you allow me to reminisce for a minute, when I started NGP over eight years ago, it was a one-man firm, operating out of the attic of my house. I knew everyone who used the software and I answered all the questions myself. Now it takes a team of great people to do that.

It is our fifth election cycle. A tremendous amount of growth and change has taken place in our company, and even more in how technology is used in politics. As a firm we are learning every day. We have broadened our offerings to include the web-based solutions many of you use, as well as consulting on websites and online campaigning.  If you have questions about other things we do, let me know. 

I will turn this over to Lou and the gang.   

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