What’s New

As we launch the fifth volume of the Contact Point Bulletin, we thought it would be appropriate to recap our history, give thanks to those who got us here, and look ahead to the future.

President’s Report

In the summer of 1996, practitioners from various sectors came together to look at developing a resource for career services professionals. A number of brainstorming exercises, followed by more indepth focus groups helped refine the scope of the work ahead. In January 1997, at NATCON, the site was formally launched for the career practitioner community. This mammoth task could not have been accomplished in a short six months if it were not for the support and commitment of numerous practitioners who gave of their time and expertise to ensure that Contact Point would be the premier website for Canadian career service professionals from the moment it went live. Thank you!

Since it’s inception in 1996 Contact Point has been ‘practitioner’ driven. That is to say that the website was created and designed by practitioners for the needs of practitioners. We continue today with a strong practitioner led Board of Directors drawn from the fields of career counselling and related vocations from coast to coast. Members of the Board bring their expertise from the post secondary education sector, the private sector and the non-profit and voluntary community based sectors. Contact Point has continued to operate from its home base in Toronto with support from The Counselling Foundation of Canada and fee-for-service contracts.

The number of visitors to the site has grown exponentially over the past year. This is in part due to the extended outreach and marketing efforts of the staff and Board. Our outreach continues as we participate in conferences across Canada, conduct focus group sessions and distribute promotional materials at various international career management conferences. Information, materials and resources provided on the site are relevant and timely because of our focus on the needs of the community that we serve.

The past year was pivotal for Contact Point’s future. As we envisioned 5 years ago, there was much to be done in the career development online environment. There also was much unknown about the online venue. We anticipated that using technology as our primary delivery vehicle we would require upgrades and developmental changes as the digital world developed. And how it has.

We are now engaged in a series of upgrades and a site restructuring that includes changes to the features and functionality of our website that will support our leading edge service delivery for the foreseen future. In addition, with these and other anticipated new opportunities, we hired our second full time staff person (Keltie Creed) to assist our Executive Director, Riz Ibrahim. These dedicated staff in partnership with our volunteers will ensure that we move to our future vision with a new energy.

None of this would have been possible without the support of The Counselling Foundation of Canada – a very progressive private family foundation with an objective to support innovative and relevant services to the career counselling field. The support that Contact Point has received over the years cannot be understated. When the internet was an unknown commodity, we were trusted to bring new offerings to the online environment – when many online offerings experienced difficult times in recent years – The Counselling Foundation of Canada was true to the objectives and supported the re-structuring of the website (now underway). We are truly endebted to them for our existence and for our ongoing relevance to our target communities.

As we look forward, we do so in unison with practitioners across Canada to ensure that Contact Point will continue to be your main resource and professional development centre on-line. We have used our Contact Point C-SPACE community chats to nurture networking and support for job developers, and will continue to use this technology to bring other networking and professional development opportunities for our users (such as the chat with Danniel Star on Emotional Intelligence at Work, March 2001). As we develop more strategic partnerships and alliances in the months and years ahead, we hope to bring you a host of additional tools and resources. As always, our ears are open to your suggestions and needs.

On behalf of the Board and staff of Contact Point, I want to thank all of the volunteers, career practitioners and counsellors who visit our site and provide us with valuable feedback and support. Contact Point is committed to deliver services and resources that support you in the valuable work that you do.

Best Regards

Donna Walters
President

In April and May of 2001, we asked practitioners to provide us with input of what they liked and disliked at contactpoint.ca. We asked them also to identify resources and features they would find beneficial in a revamped site. Practitioners were asked to give their input either on-line or in person through questionnaires or focus groups. As an added incentive, one name from those who participated in this process would be drawn to win a free early bird registration to NATCON 2002. We are pleased to announce that Bev Archer of the Hamilton Job Finding Club is the winner. Congratulations Bev – see you at NATCON next January. And thanks to all those to provided us with their valuable comments!

Coming in August – NATCON 2001 Papers will be available on-line in the weeks that follow. Once again, you will be able to view published papers for the year’s National Consultation on Career Development (NATCON) conference held in January in Ottawa. Go to: http://www.contactpoint.ca/resources. You’ll find both English and French resources here. To find out more about NATCON, visit their site at: www.natcon.org

Coming in the Fall – C-SPACE gets heated up with more Job Developers Networking and Chat.

All of the Job Developers Chats have been facilitated by volunteer Lisa Hoekstra – thanks Lisa for all your time and commitment to ensure that Job Developers have a venue to connect with one another.

Look out for a series of networking and support chats on Getting into Private Practice.

What’s New @cjdc.contactpoint.ca

As the summer months leisurely roll by there has been a great deal of activity ongoing in preparation for the launch of the Canadian Journal of Career Development (Volume 1, No. 1). It has been encouraging to see first hand the significant research that is occurring in Canada on career development. Research from many sectors including but not limited to corporate, secondary, post-secondary, non profit and cross sectoral. Numerous articles have been submitted and are currently being reviewed by our peer reviewers. This process normally takes 4 – 6 weeks to complete and then comments are forwarded back to the authors for the appropriate action. In the interim we hope to sit down with our layout and design team to format the cover and contents. Launch date is late fall 2001. It is truly an exciting time!

The interest and support for this initiative has been outstanding. We have had emails of support from others in Australia, England and Ireland. Most impressive has been the support from authors completing research in Canada. Whether the author is a graduate student whose three years of research for their dissertation has finally concluded, or a professional in the field for the past 25 years, no longer does the research have to sit on a shelf and gather dust. It can now be displayed to the world to assist others coming after us to guide the way or add to the debate on current practice or theory.

With the launch of the inaugural edition we will making history. The CJCD not only provides an outlet for the dissemination of research and best practices but it also provides an opportunity for career professionals in this country to have their own journal to show the world what it is we do in the career development field in Canada. I have always believed that we do a great deal of wonderful career development work and research in Canada and we need to start telling people about some of that work. We hope this publication will help to tell our story.

To those of you who have submitted articles, thank you for your contributions. To those of you who by your support have assisted us to reach this point, we would also like to thank you, for without that support we would not be where we are today. To those of you who would like to submit an article, please do. This volume is just the beginning.

I hope you enjoy the first volume of this publication and consider it your own.

Robert Shea
Founding Editor
Canadian Journal of Career Development
http://cjcd.contactpoint.ca

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