CIO Summit of America (NYC)

Today I will be attending the 2012 CIO Summit of America produced by HMG Strategy, Inc. in association with the New York Chapter of SIM.  The conference co-chairs include Hunter Muller, President & CEO of HMG along with the CIO from Avon, Time Warner, McKesson and Hilton. This will be an all day meeting with a program designed for senor IT managers to share their knowledge and experience.

These conferences are absolutely key to staying in tune with the current trends in the industry and learning from others who have faced many of the same problems and issues you have or perhaps will face as the senior IT manager in your organization. In my view, when you hang around with a bunch of smart people you get smarter. The lineup of speakers and panelists here will make it compelling for me to attend and worthwhile to spend the entire day.  If you are a senior IT leader in the New York metro area, you should be here too!

Of course, during the breaks and over lunch there will be ample time to network and have those equally invaluable conversations in the hall. Forming and maintaining good relationships with your peers makes good business sense for you and your company.

The breaks also allow some time in a more relaxed atmosphere to engage in conversations with the vendors who sponsor these events. I like to choose one or two vendors and really get an in depth perspective of their product or service and what makes it unique in the marketplace. Back in September, for example, at Yankee Stadium, you may recall how impressed I was with BlackRidge Technology and their security offering, or more recently Code42 and their CrashPlan backup utility.  No telling what gem I will discover among the vendor tables at this event.

Fortunately, I was invited to attend the VIP dinner for co-chairs, speakers, panelists and sponsors last night. It gave me an opportunity to listen to Hunter describe the quality of content assembled for this program and to see first hand the enthusiasm and excitement among the presenters. I knew immediately this was going to be another excellent event in a long chain of events produced by HMG.

Throughout the day I will "tweet" points of interest made by speakers as I have done at conferences in the past. Future columns may include stories from this event or focus on one or more of the sponsors and their offerings..

Captain Joe

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