Inspirational peers

IN MY SECOND year attending InfoWorld CTO Forum, I have to say that I learned even more than I did last year, and that’s saying a lot. The panel discussions and other sessions were truly compelling. In the space of three days, the CTOs attending the conference were able to hear Kent Beck, who literally wrote the book on Extreme Programming, discuss the future of programming with people such as Grady Booch, chief scientist at Rational and one of the original developers of UML (Unified Modeling Language). Needless to say, these kinds of discussions are a cut above the kind of noise you might hear in a typical Slashdot discussion about programming. On Tuesday night, we heard Dr. Eric Drexler, chairman of the Foresight Institute, discuss the future of nanotechnology (a term he coined), a future in which he suggested 1 billion 1GHz processors could fit into a small desktop computer. Interesting. When Dr. Drexler moved on to discuss the possibility of using nanotechnology to build a diamond spacecraft with 50 times the strength-to-weight ratio of the space shuttle for the “cost of potatoes,” my mind raced with the other possibilities for the future.

Personally, I was fortunate enough to host a panel and roundtable discussion that included (among others) InfoWorld’s CTO of the Year, Dawn Meyerriecks of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency. I think all CTOs are familiar with the behind-the-scenes drama of technology, those daily challenges and dilemmas that are overcome through persistence and ingenuity. Still, listening to Dawn describe the challenges of making sure the joint chiefs of staff were able to communicate with the president from the basement of a smoky Pentagon on Sept. 11 made my own daily battles seem a bit mundane.

One of the most gratifying things I took away from the CTO Forum was a real sense of optimism. Despite the tough economic climate and the shrinking of staffs across nearly all industries, the CTOs I met at the conference were resolute and passionate about their work and the future of technology and innovation. Some of the products and services I heard about were nothing short of amazing. I spoke at length with Dave McCrory, CTO and founder of ProTier, a small company based in New Orleans that has a product that really blew my mind.

Imagine managing racks of servers from anywhere with a Web browser — but the servers themselves are virtual and can be moved from rack to rack, rolled out in minutes, and managed, again, all from a Web browser. I watched Dave set up a virtual, but fully functional, Windows 2000 server in a couple of minutes from an Internet kiosk at the Forum. This is real technology that works, the kind of innovation that changes the way you think about computing. That’s what CTO Forum is all about. Amid all the fascinating futuristic discussions of nanotechnology and even Web services, the true pragmatic spirit of the CTO still shines through: We know how to make things work today even while we dream about (and plan for) tomorrow.

Even more important than the content in the panels and revelations about the new technology innovations are the relationships that develop from the peer-to-peer interactions at CTO Forum. At InfoWorld, some of the most compelling innovations introduced into our computing environment during the past year have been the result of informal conversations at last year’s CTO Forum.

I’m looking forward to helping the InfoWorld team plan more events and services for the CTO community in the near future. Whether you are currently a CTO or aspiring to that position, I look forward to your e-mails offering your input as we plan for the future.