I recently went to an event called ITBoss organised by Core Com Consulting. It was really good, helped partly by a free bar and great food.

The event was hosted in a pub in central Leeds, so I rushed to the train station from work to get there. And yes I was the first to arrive (Why do I always do that?). The event was targeted at IT Leaders and Managers and was limited to about 20 people.

To begin with I just chatted to the hosts and other people as we waited for everyone to arrive. Once we got going we had a short presentation about the need for Strategy. Interestingly the next day I suggested a strategy meeting with my director, so something must have sunk in from this.

The main gist of the talk was that IT leaders need to pop there head up from day to day work to look at where they are going, and this should be matched with the overall direction of the company. I agree with this, recently I have been thinking of what direction our infrastructure needs to go in, it is currently just in my head, but at least that is a start. However our company directors are poor at sharing their long term vision, so it is hard for me to know where the company is going. I need to step up and challenge this behavior, so I can deliver the changes that are needed. Not easy but that is what the best IT leaders are doing.

After this we broke for food, which was very nice. I had a chat with a couple of people. I found it interesting that one gentleman was surprised that I wanted to get into development. I think I understand why, most of the people in the room where senior managers, while I share their job titles, I don’t share their salaries. He saw development as a demotion, I see it as a promotion.

After food we had some discussion questions. Mine was the first, How to convince others of the need for change? Some interesting ideas where presented, but it is the need to work closely with others, find out their requirements which is the difficult part not anything technical. The other topics of discussion where relating to recruiting people with skills that you have no knowledge of and around the topic of security and privacy in this modern age. Both were very interesting with lots of viewpoints expressed.

I enjoyed the evening and hope to go to another at some point. Previous events I have been to have been technical, but lacked the networking that this one had. While I am not very good at networking, at this event it was easy to have a conversation or two with people.