Day One from Boca Raton, Florida at the Midsize Enterprise Summit (MES) event.
The MES event is a unique event in that it has a number of unique characteristics that determine why I make room for this event each year on my calendar. The leaders on this list are an opportunity to network with 300-400 of my CIO peers from Canada or USA. From them I learn some of the best tips and techniques you don't read about elsewhere as they come from the trenches. The other leading factor is that analysts from major firms like Gartner are here to share there insights, giving you the other half of the equation in what may be happening that you missed because you were focused elsewhere. Together these two top issues provide
Day began early with a round of golf on one of the hotel's courses. A 6000 yard course that was very picturesque if not challenging at times. Played in a scramble format fun was had by all including the winners of the scramble with a 10 under who walked away with a HP mini netbook as their prize, The winners of longest drive ad closest to the pin also received the same prize.
The first official event for all attendee's was registration immediately followed by Peer Networking. While crowds who attended the Peer Networking were thin, they missed one of the first gems in this event and that was a chance to chat with other CIO's about topics as specified by the Peer roundtables, or chosen a topic of their choice.
After introductions and welcome remarks by our event organizers the keynotes began.
Abbie Lundberg, www.lundbergmedia.com, who is a twitter friend who kicked off the event talking about profitable growth and IT's role in helping their company change. She laid out a framework on how CIO's can resolve the conflicting roles of making IT more responsive while also helping the business run more efficiently. Her vast experience as former Editor in Chief at CIO magazine helped provide lost of content and quotable quotes of many leading CIO's in North America.
A technology demo was next from Life Size, a Logitech company presented their video conferencing solution. While video conferencing technology has become ever more popular and vendors in that space have been taking advantage of demand for their products and services, LifeSize differentiates it by full HD quality starting at a price point of $2400 and they see their role as driving the market price even lower. This approach not unexpected as Logitech already owns almost 70% of the personal video camera market.
Finishing it off for the formal part of the first evening, was a presentation by Randy Baklini, Enterprise Architect for HP. He shared HP's own story about how they transformed and it matched with Abbie's story very well, reinforcing the message she delivered.
The rest of the evening was a cocktail reception for more meet and greet.
If you would like to follow my live tweet feed you can either follow me on twitter @nfortlage or follow the tweets by others at this event using the hash tag on twitter of #ecmes
Thanks for listening . . .
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