by Eduardo Acosta and Jose Rivera
Over the years, CSIA has had spectacular growth in market recognition and membership. While we have 91 international members today, our main arena has been the United States and Canada. We have not only the opportunity but the need to increase our international presence to ensure that CSIA remains relevant in the years to come.
Under the leadership of Eduardo Acosta and with the dedication by SI members like Don Ulrich, PC Romano, and our past Executive Director Bob Lowe, CSIA ventured into Latin America. With support from our partners, CSIA organized several events in the region. CSIA has held four events and participated at ExpoElectrica (a local trade show) in Mexico, and the ISA Show in Brazil. Presentations have also been made at partner events around the region, introducing CSIA to a brand new audience. Eduardo Acosta shared his company's experiences and the role of CSIA at Rockwell Automation events in Argentina, Colombia and Costa Rica, reaching approximately 150 companies. Our LATAM Director, Marcela Vallejo, made a recent presentation on CSIA in Peru, leveraging her personal travel.
CSIA was fortunate to receive support from ISA Brazil and ExpoElectrica for our presence at their trade shows. CSIA has also been successful at leveraging the investments made by vendor partners in the region. We fully recognize and appreciate all the time and travel expense contributions made by several of our leading members. CSIA's monetary outlays in the region have been modest.
CSIA's Latin American presence began with the hiring of Marcela, as well as a local association management company SAMEVA (both in Mexico). Today, we have a solid starting presence in Mexico, and in Latin America overall. We would like to take engagement with Latin America to the next stage. After having had the opportunity to meet several of our Latin American members at our past Executive Conference, CSIA CEO Jose M. Rivera will be traveling to Mexico DF at the end of July. He will meet with local system integrators and vendor partners to work on the growth of our association in Mexico and to apply our lessons learned there to the rest of Latin America.
We often take for grated the prevalent environment of trust and collaboration prevalent at CSIA Executive Conference. We are working to recreate this environment in Latin America. We are developing a calendar of quarterly events in Mexico DF to bring local system integrators and partners together. Through the delivery of technical and management presentations, along with best practice knowledge sharing, we aim to create valuable networking opportunities. Hopefully, this will build the overall momentum to develop a vibrant local chapter of our organization. We understand that our road to success will require "tweaking" along the way.