In our technology leadership roles, we are all challenged with monitoring emerging technologies, ensuring reliability and relevance for the information resources we maintain and use, setting strategic direction, and pursuing priorities that will bring value to our organizations – all while ensuring that the information assets of our organizations and their customers are kept safe and secure, and not exposed to unreasonable risks. How do we keep in touch with what others are doing to meet these challenges, with what responsible global practices might be, and with what we can each do in our own responsibility areas?
Every October, Gartner North America holds their week-long Gartner Symposium/ITxpo at which they explore and discuss these very issues. For the morning of November 17, members of CIOCAL were invited to an excellent session at which four Gartner Executive Partners provided excellent summaries of Gartner’s research and perspectives in these areas. The sessions were very practical, focussed on a variety of examples and “how to” aspects for communicating value to fellow C-suite colleagues, determining priorities and communicating “no” to colleagues, sifting through emerging technologies and identifying those that are significant to our organizations, and perhaps most importantly, how to interpret and apply the concepts of the “Digital Ecosystem” to the opportunities facing our organizations. They also replayed the most compelling presentation of their 2016 Symposium – a presentation by Platon, a photographer with a global reputation for illustrating truth through his photographic art. The presentation that Platon did on his work photographing and interpreting global leaders, is proprietary to Gartner and not available through our resources. If you are interested in seeing it, contact your local Gartner rep (if you don’t know who that is, consult the Find an Analyst page of their website).
CIOCAL members were able to learn directly from the Gartner research and expertise as well as from the other invitees. This was definitely an event not to miss. CIO Association members can access the slide deck from this event here, but only until December 17, 2016.
