My most excellent friend Thornton May coined the phrase, “By CIOs, for CIOs” in the early 2000s. It is an apt describer of why I was involved in chief information officer (CIO) conferences. Part of my professional success was understanding opportunities in higher education from other industry sectors and decisively implementing those opportunities in higher education. The service component was leading events like these as a chair, governing body member, speaker, or facilitator. I have served at these events for nearly 30 years trying to build or strengthen the technology ecosystems in the communities I have lived in.
I am occasionally asked why these technology events and ecosystems are so important. The answer is threefold:
- Leader and organizational reputation is CRITICAL in the hotly contested technology recruitment process. The most important war is the talent war as people are the most precious part of any organization. Winning awards and presenting at these events has a significant effect on recruiting the absolute best talent in the field.
- Culture beats strategy every day of the week. Meaningful recognition shapes organizational culture and especially so at a state or national level. If you want an innovative team, walk the walk and win awards at the highest possible level.
- The many innovations that I have led in higher education I stole from another industry presented at a technology conference. In healthcare and higher education, often laggards in innovation, the best tested ideas can come from other industries. The absolute best place to pick up these great ideas is at technology conference.
The Early Years
I really don’t know how it started but somehow I built a reputation for speaking at conferences while still a faculty member at West Point. I believe it was a SIM New York event or SIM Hartford event where the famed Hunter Muller approached me and offered to co-author a book about me of all people. I declined and suspect Hunter shared his opinion of me with others. I started getting invited to intimate dinner gatherings of CIOs around the nation. The plethora of today’s CIO events did not exist back then and these intimate dinners where we would fly in, have dinner together while one or two members discussed an issue they were dealing with, and immediately fly back out overnight so as to be back at work the next morning. For example, the Girl Scouts CIO would discuss how to provide the young ladies from predators within a volunteer organization and that would be our dinner conversation and collaboration. It was very enlightening.
Evanta
While I didn’t attend events like this while I was in Korea or graduate school, I was invited in 2002 to speak at an Evanta conference in Houston. It would be the first technology conference focused on Chief Information Officers from this new private company Evanta. Evanta’s CEO Bob Defthels had a vision of bringing technology leaders together to discuss the most important opportunities and challenges they were facing. I was not a keynote speaker but I was in a side room. As luck would have it, Bob came in and listened to my presentation. That would start a multi-decade collaboration.
I would speak at Evanta events around the nation between 2002 and 2008. Perhaps the most notable engagement was a speaking engagement in Philadelphia followed by a train ride to West Point with the Philadelphia Evanta conference team. While on the train ride, we called into the Praise and Progress event that Evanta had surprising the entire company. Once we got to West Point, the team got to tour the campus, attend a formal event (and meet GEN John Abizaid) and attend a West Point football game.
In 2008, having returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, I spoke at the Atlanta conference of the use of technology in war zones. Little did I know that I would become a co-chair of the Evanta Atlanta conference in two years. As of 2024, I am the longest serving co-chair of the Atlanta conference and very much enjoying working with amazing Evanta community managers like Eileen Wade and Heather Bolick to build the Atlanta technology ecosystem. E I would make a number of personal friends at these events including the legendary CIOs Jay Ferro (my brother from another mother), John Trainor (our last meeting was hugging in the middle of the Atlanta Airport), Tom Murphy, and Lee Crump.
Evanta would recognize my contributions to the technology community in 2009 with their National Achievement in Leadership Award and in 2012 as a Global Top Ten Breakaway Leader.
inspireCIO
The inspireCIO group started recognizing chief information officers in 1998 and has become one of two premiere recognition programs in the nation (the other being the CIO100). I became familiar with the inspireCIO group in 2010 and immediately noted the difference. First, invitation to inspireCIO required CIO leadership of organizations with $100 million in revenue and about half are responsible for $1 billion or more in revenue. This leads to different conversations among technology leaders with significant responsibilities. Second, inspireCIO does an exceptional job of involving the spouses in events which is just pure genius. Finally, their events are first class and always insightful and fun.
I joined inspireCIO around 2011, enjoyed and learned from the events, and marveled at their state CIO of the year award ceremony. It somehow captures the intrigue, excellence and spirit of the Oscars with a sealed envelope and no one knows whos going to win so everyone is guessing. Annually, this leads to more than 1,000 technologists showing up at 7:30AM on a Friday in Atlanta to see who will win. Hundreds of nominations have been narrowed to 25 finalists of which five will win. No one knows. The full range of egos is also on display with folks who are absolutely positive they are going to win to those who are completely unprepared because they think they have no chance at all.
Because of the intrigue, lots of theories circulate regarding indicators. One theory is that all the winners would be seated at a table near the front of the room. This is not true. I won the Georgia CIO of the Year sitting at a table that was the farest possibly away from the stage. I was barely in the room. I won the National CIO of the Year sitting at a table right next to the stage.
One theory is there is some political correctness so that a certain number of awards go to women or minorities or some group. This is not true. Having served as a judge for several selections, each of the awards is judged by a separate set of judges.
My team and I would win the 2014 Georgia CIO of the Year in what was a surprise, the 2021 Alabama Leadership Award which was not a surprise, and the 2022 National CIO of the Year in another surprise. I was honored to serve on the Atlanta CIO board and cofound with Scott McGlaun the Alabama chapter of inspireCIO.
CIO 100
The CIO100 program is another premiere program that I have attended several times during my career. The attendees and the program are world class and I have a number of friends and colleagues who I only see at the CIO100 and look forward to catching up with when I can attend. The competition for CIO100 is formidable and while there are no surprises at the awards dinner, there is very much a sense of anticipation until the winners are announced. Pride and joy if you win and determination to compete again if you do not win. Eileen has determined that the CIO100 is spouse friendly and she looks forward to attending when my schedule allows.
My team and I were fortunate enough to win the 2021 CIO100 award for our efforts during the pandemic to use technology to save lives. You would think this would be my most memorable event at CIO100 but it is not. At my first CIO100, I was playing golf and doing quite well until the 17th hole when the bottom of my right golf shoe (the part with the cleats) completely detached. Instead of a golf shoe, I had a ballerina’s shoe that was silky smooth and without any traction whatsoever. Much to the amusement of pretty much everyone who could see me, I completely missed the golf ball several times in a row as I struggled and failed to connect with the ball while effectively playing golf on one leg. The scramble team I was on did place in the top 3 and I became a CIO100 legend for my one-legged attempts, failures, and eventual success.
I have served as a judge for the CIO100 several times.
ATP
ATP is the Atlanta Telecommunications Professionals which is a truly horrible name for the absolute funnest group in Atlanta. They run all the typical technology events but they do it a certain flair. Let me give you a couple of examples.
Questions and Black Tie Service
It is a panel of great female technologists hosted by ATP. The panel went well and it was time for audience questions. There is the normal pregnant pause in an audience of several hundred before the first question is asked. As soon as the questions is asked, CIO John Trainor pops out in a tuxedo and in a Charlie Caplin gait to take the adult drink offer of the person asking the question. There were no more pregnant pauses between questions and it seems the the location of the questions being asked were as far apart as mathematically possible. Lots of technology groups run panels. No one in attendance will forget the ATP panel.
Golf, ATP Style
Every year, ATP runs the best technology golf tournament in Atlanta. It is so good that CIOs who do not golf attend the tournament. There are three things that ATP does different from every other technology golf tournament:
- The first is the establishment of an ESPN-like broadcast booth where the CIOs are interviewed on their IT strategy as well as their golf strategy for the day. They have several very large speakers and monitors so everyone can hear the interviews. On one interview, the tools they had used to build the large set were still there. When I was asked what my golf strategy was for the tournament, I picked up one of the power drills and noted that there are golf rules against moving your ball but there are no rules against moving the hole…
- The second is the order of refreshments and services. As typical at technology golf events there are strategic partners sponsoring each hole. In ATP style, the first hole had jello shots. The second hole had whiskey. The third hole had cigars. The 4th hole had had a member of the UGA women’s golf team who offered to take our shot if we desired. Given we could not see straight by this point and she was a far better golfer than any of us, we readily agreed.
- The third is the putting contest. The putt was something approaching 100 yards with dips, hills, and valleys. It was legendary every year.
I would note that I don’t play golf very often anymore because I do not have the time. I will occasionally do golf scrambles as I retain enough muscle memory from my 12 year old body to easily have enough drives and putts to contribute to the team.
I was fortunate enough to serve on the ATP board and to win their 2013 Technology Impact Award for my contributions statewide to advance Georgia.
Redhat Enterprisers
The Redhat Enterprisers Project was a genius idea that ran from 2014 to 2023. What happens if you build a vibrant community helping CIOs and IT leaders solve problems by interviewing world class CIOs so as to produce short, pithy action-oriented articles throughout the year. The excellent editorial team would interview the CIO, ghostwrite the article, and then allow the CIO to edit the draft. This was incredibly efficient allowing the experts in each process to do what they are best at. Annually, Redhat would travel around the country, host a dinner with the top CIOs in region and interview them. Enterprisers Project then partnered with Harvard Business Review to produce a state of IT article. Genius.
I had the pleasure of working with tremendous Redhat team leaders like Ginny Holden and Carla Rudder over the nine years to produce 30 articles attributed to me and five additional articles as a jointly authored articles. In fact, they were all jointly authored with Ginny and Carla maximizing what came from the interviews. I was fortunate enough to be quoted in several of the annual Harvard Business Review state of IT articles.
The Unpublished Story of Terry and Madge
There is one story that was never published by Redhat that should have been and that was the story of Madge and Terry. In 2018, The Enterpriser’s project hosted a dinner of the top CIOs in Atlanta. Seven of us would attend and three of us would be quoted in the Harvard Business Review article that was published. The venue was Buckhead’s King and Duke which can best be described as a hunting lodge restaurant with a library. I arrived early as Atlanta traffic is unpredictable and I was coming from Birmingham, AL. I met Ginny Holden at the bar and the bartender noted that the mounted elk Terry and the stuffed canary Madge were local legends. People from all over would come to take pictures with them. Madge has an instagram account. I asked the bartender how did Terry and Madge meet as it is an odd pairing. He did not know. I leaned over to Ginny and told her that we should jointly write that story. She laughed assuming I was joking. I was not.
While Jay Ferro (my brother from another mother), Anil Cheriyan (a CIO Legend), the other CIOs and I were interviewed, I wrote the following story:
So there I was - sitting at the bar of King and Duke pondering the large elk on the wall. I learn the name of the elk is Terry. Terry knew and had a relationship with the stuffed canary Madge. This is their story.
When Madge was but a young thing, the world was wonderful. It was so bright, and soft, and war. Mom was always there and she always brought food, hugs, and in retrospect, a sense of unconditional love. Everything was so perfect. And then, everything changed.
It was a different day. The nest was moving. MOVING. The nest never moved. Mom was out hunting and MAdge did everything she could to burrow into the nest. Madge had never experienced such a wind. As she closed her eyes and prayed yet again for Mom to please come home, the world moved.
The world moved abruptly left and right, up and down, and Madge's body seemed to move in every direction at the same time until that terrible earth shattering halt when time stopped.
As Madge opened her eyes, everything was different. She was no longer in a tree. She was at a place she had never been before. She was on the ground. THe was like completely alien and totally scary. The wind was gone. Mom was gone. Could Mom find her? How could her home ever get back in the tree? Tears flooded Madge's eyes as she imagined a very bleak and horrible world.
Unfortunately, things got much worse. Through her tears, Madge saw...Hunger. She saw a large swat body with beady eyes that channelled one singular message: I am hungry, oh so hungry, and you are my next meal. As Hunger moved towards Madge menacingly, she shrank back and looked as to where to flee when she saw the oddest thing. While Hunger was large and swat, this thing was gigantic and lanky. It was so weird. It had four legs, no wings, and like a gazillion legs on its head. Later Madge would learn this gigantic, lanky thing had the name of Terry.
For reasons that even Terry could not explain, he moved to position himself between Madge and Hunger. This seemed to surprise all parties involved. Hunger stopped in its tracks and reconsidered this new threat. Madge boggled and tried to reconcile the intervention of this malformed creature and Terry just stood there awkwardly and stared at Hunger. The calculus of an easy meal changed. Who knew what Terry would do? As Hunger backed away, Terry looked behind himself and stared at Madge as only an elk can do. Thus, began a friendship that would last a lifetime.
Less you gentle reader misunderstand, the relationship between Madge and Terry was not one of a hero and a victim - it is the story of two heroes.
Now before you criticize me for multitasking, I did participate in eating a great meal and in the conversation to the point that I was one of only three Atlanta CIOs quoted in the annual Harvard Business Review state of IT article. I stopped the above story at this point so that Ginny could write the rest of the story where she was the hero and saved Terry. I passed to her my handwritten notes (on The Enterprisers Project paper) so she could make magic out of my nonsense.
TechBridge
TechBridge is the heart of technology community in Atlanta. It is the technology equivalent of Let’s Make a Wish it terms of the connection with the attendees. The initial idea is simple: how can we accelerate the work of nonprofits using technology. Over time, that mission has shifted slightly to focus more on generational poverty.
I have been fortunate enough to support TechBridge while I was in Georgia and seamlessly transitioned into the TechBridge community in Birmingham. In both communities, you were not important in the technology community if you did not attend TechBridge. The best and the brightest technology leaders flocked to the events and we always left with a sense of connection with the community. There are some negatives associated with TechBridge: it introduced my wife to Rent-the-Runway and the afterparties are so good we started getting a hotel room at the event. I got to work with great leaders like James Franklin, Carrie Bates Hastings, Nicole Armstrong, Clint Bailey, Andre Dickens, and Bud Kitchin.
In Georgia, I continue to search as an Executive Ambassador. In Alabama, I served as a member of the advisory board and liaison to the outreach committee focused on fundraising until TechBridge closed its Alabama operations.
HMG Conferences
I have been fortunate enough to be associated with Hunter Muller since 2007 as part of the executive committee or governing body of the Fairfield/Westchester CIO Forum and New York CIO Executive Summit. I spoken at the Denver and Atlanta events and currently am a co-chair of the Atlanta CIO Summit. Hunter brings a personal touch to his events around the world and is actively present and leading by example at all of the HMG events.
In one of the more humorous speaking engagements with HMG, Hunter asked me to speak at the Atlanta executive dinner the night before the main conference. He asked that I share my technology leadership journey and do it in like 10 minutes. I thought it was a cool challenge so I accepted. The dinner speakers overtime so by the time I was up to speak, the 10 minute summary needed to be 4 minutes. It was a fun challenge and I had some fun staying under the time limit. Could you summarize 42 years of work in 4 minutes with some humor?
Gartner, Front of the Boat, and the Innovators Group
I have been attending Gartner conferences for the last 15 years and for the past decade, I have been associated with the Front of the Boat or Innovator’s Group. Gartner is renown for its research and large conferences that are well attended by CIOs. I have had two outstanding executive partners (Louis Boyle and Dan Stoneman in my time with Gartner.
What is less well known was the Front of the Boat program which is currently called the Innovator’s Group. It is a small group of 20 or so CIOs who are nominated by their account executive. They have their own program that compliments the main program. It has been my most favorite part of Gartner conferences. The Innovator’s Group is led by the outstanding Gartner leaders Bob Brese, Susan Harwood, and Rich Varner.
Tech Birmingham and Sloss Tech
For the last ten years, I have supported Tech Birmingham and its associated 300 member companies to grow the technology ecosystem in Birmingham. I serve on the board of directors and have been the membership chair for the last couple of years. During this time, I had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Skjellum and Deon Gordon both of whom have been transformational leaders in Tech Birmingham.
I have spoken at SlossTech and it is a cool, hip, and very informative conference with attendance from around the nation. The picture above is from an AI panel with Google and Microsoft.
The Center for Higher Education CIO Studies
I was a CHECS advisory board member from 2013 until it merged with EDUCAUSE in January 2019. I met some amazing CIOs as part of this group as we worked to empirically explore the experiences of higher education CIOs. You can access the CHECS reports from 2003-2019 at EDUCAUSE
Educause
I was the principal EDUCAUSE representative for my organization from 2004-2025. I have attended a number of EDUCAUSE events and spoken at several of them. I have struggled at times with the value of EDUCAUSE as I tend to get overwhelmed with strategic partner meeting requests to the point that I have limited opportunities to attend the conference. Some years, I simply refuse all strategic partner meeting requests unless they are less than 30 minutes and whiskey is involved.
Three interesting vignettes associated with EDUCAUSE:
- The Forever Ferris Wheel: Like Gartner, EDUCAUSE has some over the top evening events. At one such event in Orlando, my deputy CIO had a panic attack while we were on the Ferris Wheel. We had to slowly back the wheel up until she could get off. It took forever much to the ire of all of the other Ferris Wheel passengers.
- Generals and Redeye Wives: My lovely wife and I had flown out early to EDUCAUSE so as to spend a day at the Channel Islands National Park. The visit went well but as we checked into the Anaheim, California conference hotel Sunday morning, I received an emergency email from my department chair at Georgia State University. This was unusual as I was only part time at Georgia State. The National Security Agency chief was visiting Georgia State and they wanted me to speak with him. I had to leave my wife, jump on a redeye flight to arrive back in Atlanta just in time to brief him and then board another flight immediately back to California to rejoin my wife and the EDUCAUSE conference. The end result was my wife went to the spa, the NSA Chief was impressed, and I was very tired.
- The Dell Nomination: In 2021 and coming out of the pandemic, Dell thought so much of our efforts during pandemic to save lives that they nominated me for the EDUCAUSE Leadership Award. I thought the odds were low as EDUCAUSE service is valued for the award and it was not something I had done over the years. I was right and my friend Michele Norin from Rutgers won the award. Despite not winning, I was impressed that Dell went out of their way to nominate top CIOs for the award.
Blackhat, RSA, and Others
I mention Blackhat and RSA specifically as two notable events occurred at these conferences. At Blackhat, a panel of presenters presented how they had penetrated 2,000 car wash facilities throughout the nation and had complete control over them. They could lock cars in the car wash, damage the car, or attack people. They painted a convincing picture of how ugly, insecure 1980s code had a pretty web interface applied in the 1990s and a convenient remote control functionality added in the 2000s with the core code remaining from the 1980s. They showed a code segment with a obvious buffer overflow weakness and an audience of 800 collectively groaned. The default password to the system was “12345”.
For two years, they notified the parent corporation of the security weaknesses. The researchers were ignored. The researchers told the parent corporation that they were presenting the results at Blackhat. They were ignored until the week of the presentation when the corporation asked them to withdraw the presentation. Such is the arrogance of greedy corporations ripe for cybersecurity plunder.
I mention RSA for a different reason. My wife and I flew out to the conference in San Francisco and I was excited to attend the sessions. There had been a mistake in registration and for reasons that are unclear to me, the conference registered me as my wife when my wife was not attending the conference. Rather than collect the bad credential, they just gave me another one. I thought that was poor security as now my wife could wander a security conference for free. The second notable reason I mention that conference, the guy sitting right next to me at the very first Sunday session was notably sick. He infected me with covid immediately and I missed the rest of the conference and San Francisco. I would sleep for three hours, eat, and then immediately go back to sleep. I quickly recovered but missed the entire conference because of the actions of someone who didn’t care about who he hurt through his careless actions.