It's great to feel good about what you do for a living. But, imagine feeling in awe every day of what the organization you work for accomplishes. That's the benefit the soft-spoken Clarence White gets from working as CIO for The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters for the Western United States in Long Beach, California. He takes pride in The Army's ability to act locally and to provide services ranging from help for alcoholics in the skid row section of Los Angeles, to access and training for those on the wrong side of the American digital divide in the 100 free computer labs The Army has spread across 13 states.

Early in his career, White got bit by The Army's mission to serve others. He cut his IT teeth at The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters for Canada; later, he gained valuable enterprise experience in both software development and in network architecture at the consulting division of a Big Eight Accounting firm and at a worldwide chemical manufacturer. Armed with five year's of IT experience, White returned to The Salvation Army, where he worked himself up the IT ladder to CIO at The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters for the Western United States.

White has transformed the 13-state Western Territory into a well oiled IT machine that can keep pace with any large, corporate enterprise. As a capstone to his accomplishments, his shop was named to InformationWeek's list of 500 of the most innovative IT organizations in the nation. His entry cited carrying out a workflow and documentation management system and building a home-grown decision-making system. Now, senior leaders don't have to schedule meetings; they can review materials and vote on issues electronically.

But working at The Salvation Army has its cultural challenges. Employees who service the needs of others are perceived as humanitarians, while those who work in IT are often thought of as technologists. White continues to demonstrate that IT people can leverage what they do to help those in need. One of his tasks for 2006 is to put a new donor system in place that will help make everyone in White's territory more effective at raising money and reporting on how it's being distributed.

So, join us for a conversation with The Salvation Army's Clarence White, as he talks about how IT at The Army continues to keep pace, in the face of the many challenges of today's complex society as well as those unforeseen natural disasters that may always be just around the corner.

Bio

Since 1997, Clarence White has been chief information officer, or officially, information technology secretary for The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters for the Western United States in Long Beach, California. He has installed major systems in almost every area of The Salvation Army's work. As a result of its extensive IT infrastructure, The USA Western Territory has become an international leader in the cost-effective use of technology to meet its business-, and mission-related objectives. In 1983, Clarence White became a programmer at The Salvation Army, Territorial Headquarters for Canada. While technology was still new to The Salvation Army, White pioneered the development of software programs that set the standard for systems used in that territory. He then spent several years in IT at both Coopers & Lybrand Information Technology Consulting practice and Tenneco, a global chemical manufacturer. White returned to The Salvation Army, Canada and Bermuda Territory, in 1988, as head of the Computer Services Department, and in 1997, he transferred to The Salvation Army Territorial Headquarters for the Western United States.

Resources

Salvation  Army West Updates Fund-raising Software

Salvation  Army Named Tech Leader by Industry Magazine

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

The technologies that enable companies to form global teams can't solve the complexities that come with global teams. It still all comes down to the people; even with a common business goal, people of different countries, languages, and culture probably see different paths to that goal, and have very different ways of communicating their vision to everybody else on the team. That's the challenge that has fascinated Maarten Nijoff Asser throughout his career, and that led him to work with Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner. This management consulting group provides cross-cultural consulting services to corporations facing just those issues. In this interview, Nijoff Asser explores questions like why, even for the most sophisticated of management groups, cross-cultural issues are hard to navigate; what special challenges companies that have expanded globally through M&A rather than through organic growth face; and what are the complexities posed by virtual teams and remote management. Join us for a fascinating conversation with an expert who's lived and worked globalization for years, and hear what he has to say.

Bio

Maarten Nijhoff Asser is a former intellectual property lawyer and publisher, turned management consultant. His areas of expertise include cultural intelligence and global leadership, culture change management, framing problems globally for team work, action learning and innovation across senior management levels. His special interests are global leadership and teamwork facilitation and strategic dilemma management. His engaging presentation style, professional insights, and numerous personal and business anecdotes have made him a highly regarded keynote speaker and an excellent and culturally competent facilitator to companies across the globe. His client lists include Tata & Sons, Inc. IBM BCS, Genzyme, SABMiller, Mahindra, DHL, ABNAMRO, ABB, UBS, Aegon and various small-, and medium-sized companies.

Resources

Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner  Web site

GuruInterviews:  An interview with Fons Trompenaars

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Although a lot's changed in the past 40 years in Silicon Valley, the place that nurtured Bob Metcalfe and Dave Boggs, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak continues to attract the curious, the ingenious, and the passionate. Count among that number Tim Marsland, chief technology officer and Sun fellow for Sun Microsystems. In this podcast interview, Tim describes what led him from academic life in the venerable halls of the University of Cambridge, to life in the hard-charging, entrepreneurial Valley. He also discusses the evolution of thought that led Sun to make its Solaris 10 OS free and open source, how the CTO must appreciate both the beauty of creative technologies and their market potential, and what he sees on the horizon  for the tech industry.

If you have 30 minutes to spend listening to really thoughtful and intelligent commentary, don't miss this podcast interview with Sun Micro's Tim Marsland. Robert Metcalfe once said, "Silicon Valley is the only place on Earth not trying to figure out how to become Silicon Valley." And this interview will help you to understand why.

Bio

Dr. Tim Marsland is Software CTO, VP, and Sun Fellow at Sun Microsystems. In his 16-year career at Sun, he has contributed to every Solaris release, working on many different areas of the Solaris operating environment, from strategic direction, systems architecture, release models to Solaris implementation, diagnosing, and fixing bugs.

During Solaris 10, Tim designed the Solaris Express release model, contributed to the early design work on Zones, aided with the revival of Solaris x86 platforms, and served as architect and an implementer for 64-bit Solaris on x86.

Resources

A  Conversation with Tim Marsland

OS Technology: Tim Marsland's  Weblog

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Municipal CIOs have their work cut out for them. They usually have to live within tight budgets and to answer to many public entities. And if they hope to align infrastructure issues with municipal business strategies, they might just have to invite themselves to the boardroom.

Gail M. Roper has done an outstanding job of carrying out all the challenges of being a municipal CIO for the economically and the culturally diverse Kansas City, Missouri, with a population of a half million. In fact, she no longer has to invite herself to important meetings to stay deeply involved in organizational changes and to drive productivity where needed.

She has received numerous awards for transforming Kansas City into one of the country's most technologically sophisticated municipalities. She's not afraid to find ways to retain legacy programmers, advise Fortune 500 CIOs, and more. And the old stereotype of bureaucratic paper-pusher? This is a CIO who pushes envelopes!

Bio

In 2001, Gail M. Roper became CIO for the City of Kansas City, Missouri. She joined the Kansas City government in 1996 to focus on technology infrastructure development. She moved up to IT director before becoming CIO. Prior to joining this Midwest city, Roper did development work on the network infrastructure for the City of Austin, Texas. She also worked in the private sector for 10 years.

She has received a number of distinguished awards and accomplishments for public technology, including Government Technology Magazine's award for the nation's Top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers; and the Present Day Leaders and Technology Award by the Black Family Technology Awareness Association. Roper has contributed to many national publications focused on the strategic deployment of technology.

Resources

Interview  with Gail Roper

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

Managing the full gamut of IT functions from bench to bedside for cancer research and patient care is no small feat for Lynn Vogel, vice president and chief information offer of The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. How could Vogel’s interesting background in driving social welfare and policy issues in the 60s and 70s help him with the most important aspect of his work in IT today? What's his secret to balancing the needs and requirements of multiple customers while at the same time retaining a clear commitment to the corporate bottom line?

Vogel talks to Enterprise Leadership.com and tells us about some major initiatives he undertook to improve the more than 600-member IT organization, from reorganization to IT governance. Learn about the biggest barriers to his effectiveness today, the IT priorities for 2006 and beyond, and Vogel's thoughts regarding the most critical elements to the success of tomorrow’s CIO.

Bio

Lynn Harold Vogel, Ph.D., is vice president and chief information officer at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, a $2B clinical, research and teaching institution that is the world’s largest and highest rated facility devoted to the cure and care of cancer. As the senior IT executive managing a more-than 600 person IT organization, he is leading the in-house development of M.D. Anderson’s Electronic Medical Record (EMR) with a major focus on the integration of research and clinical data.

Resources

"Finding Value from Information Technology Investments: Exploring the  Elusive ROI in Healthcare," Journal of Health Information Management,  Fall 2003. (Named “2003 Article of the Year” by the Healthcare Management and  Information Systems Society, in January 2004.)

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

How do you start an avalanche? Suppose you start by simply throwing rocks off a 1,000 foot mountain; the rocks would break apart into pebbles, and together they would gather momentum until ... In the end, each pebble is disparate, but uniquely useful; together, they create an unstoppable force. The new book, The Pebble and the Avalanche -- How Taking Things Apart Creates  Revolutions, examines how this phenomenon plays out in business. Author Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky begins with this question: Why do certain kinds of innovations, like, say, the personal computer and the Internet, start avalanches in business and technology, and what do these inventions fundamentally have in common? Sometimes, he offers, breaking things apart unleashes incredible power.

And Dr. Yudkowsky is no stranger to that power. One of those rare individuals you're lucky to meet once in your lifetime, he is an expert on speech technologies and even holds three patents in this area. While at AT&T Bell Labs, he led a team to design and to develop AT&T's automated operator. He also worked for Dialogic as a senior system architect, and in 2002, he founded Disaggregate, a speech technology consulting firm.

What makes some innovations into revolutions, says Yudkowsky, is that they break things apart to create even greater energy. For example, Ebay.com began solely as an online auction site. But by breaking its infrastructure apart, Ebay remained an auction site, but also created a service tier, enabling anyone to set up their own storefronts to sell whatever they wanted. In other words, they made it possible for you to integrate your computer system with EBay's and go into business. Now, half of Ebay's business comes from these storefronts. Dr. Yudkowsky calls this process disaggregation because the pieces of the technology that were formerly stuck together are pried apart, but not destroyed.

Bio

Moshe Yudkowsky is a Ph.D. physicist who became an expert on speech recognition technologies for Intel, AT&T Bell Labs, and Dialogic, a premier manufacturer of equipment for the telecommunications industry. In 2002, he founded Disaggregate, a speech technology consulting firm. His background includes the following areas: implications of new technologies for business and society, speech technology (speech recognition, text-to-speech, voice biometrics), telecommunications, Internet telephony/voice over Internet telecommunications, and new trends in technology. Dr. Yudkowsky holds three patents, all involving speech recognition. For 10 years he chaired the Automatic Speech Recognition Task Force of the Enterprise Computer Telephony Association, an international standards organization. In 2002, he founded the Midwest Speech Technology Association and currently serves as its chair. He recently wrote the book The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates  Revolutions (Berrett-Koehler). Dr. Yudkowsky offers predictions about technology, cheers innovations, and razes corporate blunders through his daily blog at www.pebbleandavalanche.com/weblog.

Resources

The Pebble and the  Avalanche Blog

Disaggregate.com

Midwest Speech Technology  Association

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

It's well known that today, overall healthcare costs in the U.S. continue to rise much faster than the rate of inflation -- but Robert Worthington, chief information officer of BlueCross Blue Shield of Tennessee, aims to change all that. This pioneer, risk taker, and cultural innovator has been working very hard to keep healthcare costs under control for the onslaught of baby boomers. His toolkit includes a mix of technology and processes to streamline such traditionally labor-intensive chores as claims processing. And, he's putting in place an innovative cultural environment that encourages employees to develop new products and better ways of doing things.

Worthington's mission has many facets. First, he's helping to transform the way Tennessee's largest health benefits company serves its 2.9 million enrollees, who work for companies such as Wal-Mart, Olan Mills, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the State of Tennessee. Second, he's helping to re-invent the way the healthcare industry has traditionally processed claims by eliminating many manual steps. Recently, Worthington's company made headlines when it created a subsidiary to make patient health records available electronically to emergency room physicians. And, he spearheaded development of a client-server core administration system that could handle 1.5 million members (most systems on the market could handle only 100,000 members).

Of course, weathering major shifts in a very conservative company and in a very conservative industry requires a lot of perseverance and forward thinking. Worthington possesses these qualities, and so does his company, which is not afraid to be an early adopter. For example, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee was the first BlueCross BlueShield Association member to offer interactive claims reporting to client companies via the Internet. Likewise, Worthington is helping to promote the company's innovation program, which provides a culture for employees to contribute their ideas for new products, ventures, and processes.

We invite you to sit back and listen to this mover-and-shaker CIO, Bob Worthington, as he talks about how his company is transforming itself to drive down the cost of healthcare through the application of technology.

Resources

BlueCross BlueShield of  Tennessee

Bio

Robert Worthington is senior vice president of business operations and CIO at BlueCross BlueShield of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has been with been with the company since 1995. Previously, he held positions at Phillips Petroleum Company, California Vision Service Plan, Eskaton Health Corporation, and BlueCross BlueShield of Georgia. He has authored several technical articles for trade magazines, and has contributed a chapter, “The State of Management Information Systems,” for Milliman USA's underwriter/actuarial textbook. He served on the Applied Computer Science Advisory Committee for University of Georgia/Columbus College and the UTC-Chattanooga's Engineering and Computer Science Advisory Committee.

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

How many CIOs would climb 16,000 feet up the Andes to test some mobile satellite terminals with digital links to laptops? Providing IT solutions for colleagues in a remote African jungle or high up in the Andes has become second nature to Gregory Smith, CIO of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) based in Washington, D.C. The WWF ranks as the world's largest and most successful conservation organization tasked with protecting endangered species and their habitats in more than 100 countries. Smith doesn't want to dwell on the altitude sickness he experienced, but he would rather talk about his belief that it's better to field test systems before buying in bulk (the mobile equipment worked).

In 2005, he took time to weave his professional experience and teaching  experience into a book, Straight to the Top -- Becoming a World Class  CIO. He interviewed CIOs from both U.S.-based and foreign-based companies in a variety of industry sectors, ranging from academe to financial. They all shared the same goal of figuring out the Holy Grail of trying to align IT with the needs of the business. Each CIO approaches the management of IT in differently. Some focus more on relationships with other executives, while others emphasize IT best practices and governance.

Join Enterpriseleadership.org for a fascinating conversation with a pragmatic CIO who also happens to have the spirit of an adventurer.

Bio

Gregory Smith holds the position of chief information officer for the  World Wildlife Fund and is the author of Straight to the Top -- Becoming a  World Class CIO. With annual revenues of more than $129 million in the United States, the World Wildlife Fund, based in Washington, D.C., ranks as one of the world's largest and most successful conservation organizations tasked with protecting endangered species and their habitats around the globe. Prior to this position, Smith was head of software development for the American Association of Retired Persons. Since 1995, Smith has been an adjunct professor at John Hopkins University specializing in courses, such as information architecture, Web site design and development, and database design and development.

Resources

Talking at the Top  of the World

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

Okay, we can accept it: Too much of anything good really becomes, well, too much. There are the obvious examples: Wind sprints (unless you don't care about having knees in 10 years), reality TV shows (after the first season or so), yellow silk neckties. But can a company do too much of that often-powerful transformer of efficiency and quality, process management? To the point of processing out the great driver of American global business success -- innovation?

Yes, says Prof. Mary Benner of the Wharton School of Business. Her research, with Dr. Michael Tushman from the Harvard Business School, has shown that that the same process management programs that have helped business increase quality and efficiency while driving down card also drive out the kind of radical innovation that moves technology forward -- "the next cool thing." Benner found that companies that were heavily invested in process management relied more on exploitation of known technologies for new product development than exploration of very new areas, thus risking falling behind their competitors. This may not be as much of an issue for a mature company and industry, when products are more or less ubiquitous, and it's all about cost. But for a company in an industry that constantly undergoes rapid change with multiple competitors, too much process management stifles creativity and flexibility. Does she advocate throwing out your Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, or other process management initiatives? No -- but she does advocate a more balanced approach that requires thought and stewardship by upper managers.

Tune in to this informative podcast interview with Tom Parish that might shake up the conventional wisdom, but might also help your business stay strong in the face of tough and global competition.

Bio

Mary J. Benner, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. She has held a number of consulting and managerial positions, most recently at Honeywell Inc., before joining the faculty at the Wharton School. Her research focuses on organization theory; strategy; technology and innovation; organizational change; and process management. Dr. Benner is currently exploring how process management practices and institutional pressures affect organizations’ innovation, adaptation, and technological change.

Resources

Is  Process Management An Impediment To Innovation? Wharton Professor Mary J. Benner  Says Yes

TQM, ISO  9000, Six Sigma: Do Process Management Programs Discourage  Innovation?

Dr. Mary J.  Benner, Faculty Web Site

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Will physical security and IT security become a singular function managed by a single CSO (chief security officer)? If so, does that mean the role of CISO (chief security officer) will go away? These are some of the questions posed in this podcast to Tim Williams, Nortel CSO, and Steve Hunt, research president and founder of 4A International (4AI), a physical/IT security convergence consultancy.

Williams had a critical role in the formation of the CSO Guidelines put out last year by the American Society of Industrial Security – guidelines that cross extensively between IT, human resources and physical security functions. For the past 25 years starting with Proctor and Gamble, Williams has helped redefine corporate security guidelines to increasingly involve IT. Then in the mid-80s, he saw convergence happening and started aligning himself with IT.

You'll have to listen to the podcast to hear these experts' predictions of whether or not the role of the CISO will dissolve into the overall CSO function. But both experts firmly believe that to keep competitive, enterprise organizations should already be working together cross-functionally to standardize uniform risk management for all business departments.

Bio

Tim Williams is responsible for global security functional leadership within Nortel, including policy and practice development for computer, telecommunications and related systems security, risk assessment, crisis management, security-related investigations and employee protection. Previously, he served as Vice President, Business Ethics, from 1994 to 1997. Prior to joining Nortel in 1987, Williams was Director of Corporate Security Services of Boise Cascade Corporation and International Security Coordinator of Procter & Gamble, with both domestic and international corporate security responsibilities. He holds an MBA from the University of Toronto and a bachelor's degree from the University of Cincinnati. He is a member of the Information Security and Audit Association and the Information Systems Security Association. He also serves on the Board of Directors of ASIS International.

Steve Hunt is president & CEO, Strategic Consulting, Security Industry Analysis, Sales & Marketing Guidance. Mr. Hunt is on the board of the Open Security Exchange, advises the board of ASIS International through its Convergence Commission, and is a valued consultant to many of the world's largest corporations. From 1998 to 2005, Mr. Hunt led the security research teams of Forrester Research and Giga Information Group. Before joining Giga, he served as technical director to an Israeli security company's 20 worldwide channels and resellers. Previously, Steve worked as a consultant to Chicago's financial community. Throughout the 1980s, he implemented and designed security for facilities, including physical access control systems, disaster recovery, alarms, and surveillance.

Resources

When  Business Matters: Forget Security! Focus on Business

Production Credits

Deb Radcliff, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive Producer,  Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

1. Take two large, well-established health care systems -- each with distinctly different IT systems, technology infrastructures, staffs

2. Merge them together

3. End result = managers jumping out of windows, employees fighting in the  hallways, absolute chaos?

Not if you're talking about the merger of the Egleston Children's Health Care System and Scottish Rite Children's Medical Center, both based in Atlanta. What you'll be lucky enough to get is Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, ranked among the top pediatric hospitals by U.S.News & World Report, and as one of  the top 10 children’s hospitals nationwide by Child magazine. Oh, and, it  was also featured as one of Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work  For.

Today, host Tom Parish talks with Jack Storey, CIO of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, who was with them through the merger (and lived to tell about it). In this interview, he'll be sharing some experiences with us, talk about the telecommunications initiative he implemented that saved money and made IT news, and talk about best practices, the delicate art of bringing together different staffs to form one team, and generally, what to do/not to do in a complicated merger situation. At the end of the day, it's all about providing great healthcare to the most vulnerable of patients, so Jack and his team had a lot on their shoulders. Join us, to find out how they made it work.

Bio

Jack Storey is the vice president and CIO of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, one of the countries largest pediatric healthcare systems. He is responsible for the Information Technologies operations and strategic direction. Jack has been an information technology professional for 23 years, and has been focused on healthcare for the last 17 years. He has served in the of the senior IT executive for healthcare systems for the last 12 years. He is very active in professional organizations including CHIME, HIMSS and the CHCA CIO Forum.

Resources

Children's Healthcare of  Atlanta

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Warren is giving away his billions. Bill is taking early retirement to concentrate on working with his charity. U.S. charitable giving has reached new "highs." What's going on here? Is social responsibility becoming cool? The CIO of a $1.6 billion dollar wholesale/retail company that has built its culture around social responsibility believes that being progressive can also be profitable, and she proves it. Timberland is the company, and Rosalee Hermens is the CIO whose task it is to align the nuts-and-bolts of IT with Timberland's goals for social responsibility and business success. And she does it very well.

This CIO aligns her organization with Timberland's socially progressive principals while ensuring the company is at its competitive best. Within the structure of Lean Six Sigma, Hermens ensures that Timberland maintains high customer satisfaction among its suppliers, business partners, and customers. And, she strives to make sure that IT is an environment in which employees enjoy, and are proud to work.

Bio

As CIO for Timberland Company, Rosalee Hermens, is responsible for the development and execution of Timberland's global information systems and strategies. She works to ensure that Timberland's IT infrastructure enables the company to maintain a strong competitive advantage in its operations, manufacturing, distribution, and sales.

Prior to joining Timberland, Rosalee was the founder and principal of Hermens and Associates, a strategic IT management consulting firm. In addition, she served as vice president and chief information officer for Aspen Technology, Inc., and spent eleven years at Compaq/DEC. Rosalee holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Oregon and a Masters of Arts in Administrative Science from Yale.

Resources

Timberland Web site

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

Despite the title of city manager, Mary K. Suhm functions as the chief executive officer for the City of Dallas, Texas. She oversees the day-to-day operations of the municipal organization, including managing a $2.18 billion budget and some 13,000 employees.

Some of her job challenges could make some corporate CEOs run for cover. A year before Suhm was appointed to her role, a report, Dallas at the Tipping  Point, showed that the city was performing worse than its peer cities on residents' concerns, such as public safety, education, and economic development. Also, a Booz Allen Hamilton analysis, called a Road Map for Renewal,  reported that Dallas's elected officials had not provided the leadership to fuel  such a turnaround.

Suhm, working with the City Council, put together a strategic plan to define key areas of focus for the city, the services that needed to be offered in each of those areas, and the results that should be achieved. "We had not been doing a very good job of providing day-to-day essential services our citizens needed," she says.

She also established a permanent efficiency team to look at ways to generate more revenue, cut costs, and improve services to citizens. For example, a centralized collection unit, for everything from delinquent water bills to taxes, brought in more than $3 million in one year. Outsourcing the maintenance on sanitation trucks has already saved the city about $900,000. And, numerous customer surveys have helped her make changes to improve city services, such as extending court hours. In 2007, Suhm plans to have the streets department be ISO 9001 certified, to have consistent processes in the way things are done. Also, by moving to a central, online procurement system, the city has reduced the costs of goods and services by $5 million a year.

While Suhm has greatly improved the quality of life for residents of the City of Dallas, she still faces the task of updating a 30-year mainframe IT infrastructure and putting the latest technology in the hands of emergency personnel, such as police. However, before she can present any technology budget items before the City Council, she requires IT to explain the purpose and the reason for the products. Then, she must translate this information into non-technical language that the City Council can understand. Says Suhm, "It's tough for some public officials to understand why we need to spend $6 million for a piece of software. That's why it’s important for IT to get it right. Everything we do and say can wind on the front page of the newspaper."

New technology services on the agenda include wireless remote water meter reading, using document imaging to make more public documents available to citizens, expanding Web technologies to communicate more effective with citizens, and putting in a reverse 911 system to provide information to a large calling body if a disaster occurs. But along with the new ideas and technologies, this city manager-CEO is not afraid to use old-fashioned common-sense to make life in Dallas better for all of its citizens, at a price they can afford.

Bio

Mary K. Suhm is city manager for the City of Dallas, Texas, overseeing the day-to-day operations of the municipal organization, including 13,000 employees and a $2.18 billion budget. Her leadership has been instrumental in a variety of the city's key programs such as Citizen Police Academy, the Office of Intergovernmental affairs, and citywide volunteer program. During her five years as the first assistant city manager, Suhm was responsible for the daily operations of key city departments, including financial services, business development and procurement, housing, sanitation, and water utilities. Since joining the city in 1978, she has served as executive assistant director of the Dallas Police Department, director of court services, and assistant to the mayor. She is actively involved in mentoring mid-level female managers in the City of Dallas.

Resources

City  of Dallas Web Portal

Dallas  at the Tipping Point

Production Credits

Elizebeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

Turn on the Dr. Phil Show and you'll see the 1-800-GOT-JUNK people removing four tons of clutter from a packrat's house. Since the company's inception in 1989, 1-800-GOT-JUNK has hauled away more than one million truckloads of weird stuff, including 18,000 cans of expired sardines. One of the fastest growing companies in North America, the company has more than 260 franchise locations in 38 United States, four Canadian provinces, and parts of Australia and the United Kingdom.

Originally known as The Rubbish Boys, the company was rebranded in 1998 as 1-800-GOT-JUNK to take advantage of its new, e-commerce business model called Junknet. The Rubbish Boys began as a no-tech company in 1989 when Brian Scudamore, fresh out of high school, bought himself an old pick up truck and invested $700 in the business. His goal was to become the FEDEX of junk removal. The company is on target to do $100 million this year.

Developed from scratch, the Web-based JunkNet does three things: handles all of the booking and dispatching tasks of franchisees' customer calls, acts as the central repository for customers' personal information and histories, and manages company accounting functions.

The company has won numerous business and humanitarian awards, including the  Fortune Small Business's Best Bosses Award, B.C. Business  Magazine's Best Company To Work For Award, Profit 100's Canada's Fast  Growing Companies Award, and Entrepreneur's Fortune 500.

Bio

One of the principle architects to this explosive brand, Cameron G.  Herold joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK in December 2000. As chief operating officer, Cameron has brought a wealth of experience to the leadership team. Prior to his arrival at the "Junktion," Cameron was employed by Ubarter.com, a division of Network Commerce (NASD: NWKC) in Seattle, Washington, as vice president of corporate development; as president of Barter Business Exchange in Vancouver, British Columbia; and as vice president of franchise development for Coast to Coast Franchise Services (Boyd Autobody & Glass). In these positions, Cameron was involved in the sale, branding and integration of 120+ franchise locations, development and deployment of e-commerce and Internet strategies, negotiation of corporate acquisitions and development of numerous strategic partnerships.

Resources

1800GOTJUNK Web site

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Austin Energy, the 10th largest public utility in the United States, has a lofty corporate mission: to make Austin, Texas, the most livable city in the U.S. Why not? As chief information officer at Austin Energy, Andres Carvallo takes that goal seriously. In fact, he spearheaded a revolutionary program to transform a jumble of outdated legacy systems into a streamlined IT operation. He is now helping the company transform its business model to a offer a range of commodity power services and to build the systems to deliver them to customers. Listen as Carvallo doesn't mince words about running IT as a business and as a service provider.

Owned by the City of Austin, Texas, Austin Energy has the lofty corporate mission of striving to deliver clean, affordable, reliable energy, and excellent customer care. The end goal of the 10th largest public utility in the United States is to make Austin the most livable city in the U.S.

So what does it take to be a chief information officer at a company that provides power to about one million residential customers and 41,000 business? An acute technology vision, the ability to run IT as both a business and as a service provider, and the commitment to effective best practices. These characteristics accurately describe Andres Carvallo.

When Carvallo signed on with Austin Energy in 2003, he put a revolutionary program in place to transform a jumble of outdated legacy systems into a streamlined IT operation, and to create a new governance process. The $50 million overhaul of Austin's IT organization includes a new systems architecture, an updated Web site, a new customer portal for online electric payments, a wireless system for an automated meter reading system, and a series of best practices, such as the IT Infrastructure Library. Carvallo says he has achieved the goal of shaving millions of dollars from IT operating costs and reinvesting them back into the company.

Join us for an informative podcast with a dynamic CIO who doesn't mince words about what it takes to balance the goal of running IT as a business and the goal of running IT as a service provider.

Bio

Andres Carvallo is responsible for the technology vision, planning, development and operations for Austin Energy, the 10th largest public utility in the United States. He has driven a wireless and service-oriented architecture transformation that has resulted in a fully integrated and self-healing enterprise. Besides his CIO responsibilities, Andres belongs to an eight-member executive team, and also an Innovation and Opportunity Development executive board. He co-authored Information Technology Leadership and CTO Best  Practices Collection and contributed to Player Manager: The Rise of  Professionals Who Manage While They Work. Carvallo has received several awards, including IT Executive of the Year by the Association of Information Technology Professionals, Premier 100 IT Leader by Computerworld, and  Best in Class Premier 100 by Computerworld.

Resources

CIO  in Action: Leaving a Legacy

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Producer
Dana Farver, Executive  Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom Parish, Audio Producer, Show  Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development Manager
Scott Ebner,  Web Developer

It has been a pretty good run so far for businessman and entrepreneur, Thomas L. Harrison. After advancing from a thriving career in pharmaceutical sales to a position in marketing, he opted to start his own company and achieved success there, also. Now, he is chairman and CEO of Omnicom Group's Diversified Agency Services, the world's largest holding group of marketing services companies. Most recently, he has authored a new book about, well, being successful, leveraging his early training as a scientist to explore what genetic traits may in fact comprise the "born" entrepreneur. Maybe, proposes Harrison, these traits really are part of what we are born with, as surely as brown or blue  eyes, dark or light hair.

Drawing on current research on genetics and personality, Harrison first presents an overview of what he calls the "Big Five" personality traits that are present at varying degrees in everyone's personality, and seem to be predictors of entrepreneurial success. These include Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, and Extroversion. He provides a short quiz to help you identify which of these traits are stronger in your personality, and which are less so. And if you long to start your own business, but find you are short on Extroversion, for example, he also discusses strategies to help you develop that trait, and ways to compensate.

With its mixture of practical, hands-on advice and the scientific research to  back it up, Instinct emerges from a sea of "how-to succeed" and "get to know yourself" self-help books as a thoughtful proposal on how both nature and nurture combine to form character, and the ability to dream, and to achieve dreams. Join Tom Parish for an engaging talk with a man who's been open to the unexpected turns his own life has taken, has enjoyed success in many areas, and wants others to enjoy that success, too, whether in business or personal relationships. You may come away with some new insights about who you are, and strategies about how you can achieve success in your own life goals.

Bio

Thomas L. Harrison is the author of INSTINCT: Tapping Your  Entrepreneurial DNA to Achieve Your Business Goals (Warner Business Books), and is chairman and CEO of Diversified Agency Services (DAS), the largest, most profitable, and fastest growing division of the multibillion-dollar advertising and marketing company Omnicom Group, Inc., a Fortune 500 company. He holds a Master of Science degree from West Virginia University in Cell Biology and Physiology and is a published scientist. Previously he was a Research Associate at West Virginia University Medical Center. He lives in New York.

Resources

www.instinctdna.com

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web DeveloperWorking by Instinct

In the heady days of the Internet Bubble, the sea was full of big-company fish with big appetites for smaller-company fish, along with their promising technologies. They snapped them up, sometimes in chunks, sometimes swallowing them whole, and with dizzying speed. And now, after the long drought of activity that followed the Bubble's burst, when some big technology fish are again getting hungry, isn't it a good time to take a close look at those M&A moves of the 1990s: what succeeded, what failed, and why?

Enter Prof. Saikat Chaudhuri of the Wharton School of Business, whose work focuses on technological innovation, mergers and acquisitions, and organizational adaptation. There are more challenges to M&As than the usual concerns about pricing and complexity, cautions Chaudhuri. There's that deep, murky Bermuda Triangle of uncertainty that has bedeviled, and ultimately led to the failure, of a number of promising deals.

In this podcast, Dr. Chaudhuri talks about findings from his scrutiny of successful, and not-so-successful mergers and aquisitions, and even gives tips on how to solve some of the problems he's found, and how to avoid others.

Bio

Saikat Chaudhuri, DBA, is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business. He has consulted with a range of technology-based companies on acquisition and other corporate growth strategies, and with the Indian government on IT-based economic development opportunities.

Resources

The  Innovation-through-Acquisition Strategy: Why the Pay-off Isn't Always  There

Dr. Saikat  Chaudhuri, Web Page

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager
Scott Ebner, Web Developer

Back in 1974, when Suzanne Gordon was a college student at North Carolina State University, she recalls seeing an ad in her school newspaper, warning students against choosing a career in IT because there wouldn't be any jobs available when they graduated. She remembers thinking, well, what do they know, and continued her chosen major. Today, she refers wryly to this story when speaking to students about going into high tech as a career. Layoffs and outsourcing? IT has always been cyclical, counsels Gordon, but if you truly have a passion for the field, don't let those ups-and-downs stop you: IT needs people with passion.

And it's evident from listening to her talk about the career she has built that passion is what brought Suzanne Gordon to the field of high tech, and what fuels her in her current job as CIO of the largest privately held software company in the world, SAS. She is proud to have helped build the company, starting with the fledgling SAS in 1980, and feels that women bring particular strengths to the traditionally masculine IT landscape, both in collaboration and communication. Note, for example, the IT governance council she helped establish, which brings together IT and business professionals at SAS to develop realistic, valuable projects for the company, at a reasonable cost. And included in her wide range of interests in technology today are the new, "disruptive" technologies of IM and RSS, both on the leading edge of communication enabled by technology.

But what might say the most about Suzanne Gordon, the CIO and the individual, is what she points to as the best career decision she made since joining IT at SAS -- leaving IT at SAS, and joining SAS Consulting. There, Gordon interacted directly with customers and salespeople, and gained a new perspective on her company and its products: the customer perspective. And she took that view with her when she moved back to IT as its CIO, helping her shape IT into a more open and client-driven organization.

If you listen to this podcast conversation with Suzanne Gordon, you'll probably learn a thing or two, about the quiet computer giant where she works; its powerful, intelligent software; some good advice about how to establish an IT Governance Council; why SAS chooses to implement many of the controls placed on publicly-held companies by Sarbanes-Oxley and others; and what the future might hold for this strong-willed and charismatic executive on the leading edge of IT.

Bio

Suzanne Gordon became CIO of SAS in 2003, the same year she was named a ComputerWorld Premier 100 IT leader. Gordon has also served as the director of National Technical Consulting and acting vice president within the SAS Professional Services Division, where she directed the consulting, strategic support and partnering activities of nearly 300 employees. Before joining the professional services organization, Gordon headed the management information services department in ISD for nearly 20 years, where she helped develop the company’s information- and applications-rich intranet. She joined SAS in 1980.

Resources

About SAS

SAS CIO  Suzanne Gordon: Seeing the Forest and Trees

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager

It was a long road to travel, from writing software for geophysical exploration to heading up IT for Sun Microsystems. And along that road, you can bet that Bill Vass, Sun's visionary CIO, acquired a wealth of experiences; among them, working as CTO for the Army, and later, as a Pentagon CIO overseeing IT for the Department of Defense. What can a tech guy learn from heading up that $35 billion behemoth? If you are Bill Vass, you might learn that simplicity is a beautiful thing, and that consolidation can spur, not quash, exciting innovations.

Consolidating Sun's IT was not always easy, as Vass is the first to note. It required plenty of buy-in from all levels of the company to eliminate redundancy, put in place good standards and processes, and implement good architecture. But the efforts paid off handsomely in terms of cost savings and agility for Sun. Yet Vass's term as CIO has not just been about cost cutting; he has helped to bring about a number of initiatives that might elicit a lot of envy from other tech company employees.

He points to Sun's iWork program with pride, for example, and why shouldn't he? iWork, empowers Sun employees to work wherever there is a computer — at home, at a hotel, at a kiosk at an airport ... all they need is their employee badge. The program, says Vass, spurred greater employee mobility, realized savings in real estate costs, and enabled Sun to be able to put up a new system on thousands of desktops in a matter of a few hours, without deploying anything.

Grid technology is another topic that Vass discusses in this interview: The same thin-client technology behind iWork enables Sun to centralize processing power, utilize grid technology for a number of its applications, and move toward the future goal of buying cycles as it needs them. Vass comments on his travels in the blogosphere, and even weighs in on open source versus open systems.

Join host Tom Parish for a fascinating conversation covering a wide map of  topics with one of Sun's brightest stars.

Bio

William (Bill) Vass is Chief Information Officer of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Vass is responsible for all aspects of Sun's global IT infrastructure and line-of-business application development, support, and maintenance, including information service delivery and security.

Vass has been with Sun for several years, serving as Chief Security Officer for Sun IT and Vice President of Corporate Software Services.

Before joining Sun, Vass worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the CIO. There, he was director of three large sectors of the Department of Defense's (DoD) IT infrastructure and represented DoD to Congress, the White House, and other nations. Prior to joining the Office of the CIO, Vass was CTO and Technical Lead for Army personnel systems worldwide.

Resources

Bill Vass's  Blog
"General" "Java" "Music" ... How cool is this?

IT's Top  Ten
Vass's "Top Ten" rules for how to succeed with technology, or  sometimes refer to them as IT Essentials.

Masters  of the Virtual World
Financially strapped NW200 vendors find  cost-cutting nirvana with large-scale telework deployments.

The End of  Software Licensing
The success of open source software will,  eventually, lead to the end of proprietary software licensing as we know it.

Production Credits

Dana Farver, Executive Producer, Communities Editor-in-Chief
Tom  Parish, Audio Producer, Show Host
Kimberly Stone, Web Development  Manager