Tag Archives: Other media

New look for an old blog

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I’ve been updating my blog. Well, actually I’ve done some of the updating. The vast amount of grunt work has been done by my good friend Jonny – he is a very decent egg. The end result of this updating process is that the blog has been moved from one platform (Mr Site) to another (WordPress).

I am currently uploading old content to WordPress. Re-publishing this old stuff in a backwards chronology is a bit like living your life in reverse style – dead features lists have been re-born, Wimbledon is still rubbish. And Aston Villa are still about 6th in the Premier League (again).

Autumn edition of CIO Connect magazine

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The new edition of CIO Connect magazine is out and about, featuring the first profile interview with new Bupa CIO – and former FT operations and technology chief – Yasmin Jetha. There’s also a six-page special report on Agility, featuring the MD of BT Design JP Rangaswami and Darryl Salmons, IS director at the Financial Services Authority.

As ever, thanks to all the CIOs, business leaders and technology experts that contributed their time and opinions. Below is a full-list of featured participants:

  • Yasmin Jetha, CIO at Bupa
  • Mark Templeton, Citrix president and CEO
  • Daniel Marion, ICT senior manager at UEFA Media Technologies
  • Bob Tarzey, analyst and director at Quocrica
  • Eric Brown, CTO at the Practical Law Company
  • Phil Male, operations director at Cable & Wireless
  • Andrew Tuson, head of computing at City University London
  • David Butler, chief executive of TripleIC
  • Nick Frost, senior research consultant at the Information Security Forum
  • Steve Wright, senior manager at PWC’s information security practice
  • Dominic Batchelor, senior associate at Ashurst LLP
  • Inbali Iserles, professional development lawyer at Ashurst LLP
  • JP Rangaswami, managing director at BT Design
  • Darryl Salmons, IS director at the Financial Services Authority
  • Karen Bridges, head of transformation development corporate business change at Birmingham City Council
  • Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO at EMC
  • Peter Cheese, managing partner for talent and organisation performance services at Accenture
  • Peter O’Shea, CIO at ESB
  • Gavin Dietz, CIO at Landis+Gyr
  • Gary James, head of enterprise computing at The Co-operative Financial Services
  • John Johnson, CIO at Intel
  • Tony Eccleston, partner at Ernst & Young
  • Alastair Sorbie, chief executive at IFS
  • Tony McAlister, CTO at Betfair
  • Stephen Pownall, CIO at NSG Group
  • Graham Everson, head of information services and telecommunications at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust
  • Derek McManus, CTO at O2
  • Joop Janssen, chief executive of the broadcast systems division at the Vitec Group
  • Ian Little, group finance director at Accounting Access
  • Lisa Jobson, director of talent at Harvey Nash
  • Laurent Allard, CIO at Logica
  • Graham Benson, IT director at M and M Direct
  • Christine Ashton, director of strategy and technology at Transport for London

My top five types of numbered list stories

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List stories are great, aren’t they? Easy to produce and as addictive as super-strength editorial crack, journalists, bloggers and Uncle Tom Cobley churn list stories out like there’s no online tomorrow.

My Twitter feed seems to be a constant trickle of lists, with the latest bunch of social media gurus keen to impart their knowledge on topics like search engine optimisation and social networking. Good for them.

And good for me, as I jump on the top tip bandwagon and ride into the search-optimised sunset. Ladles and gentlespoons, let me unveil my top five types of numbered list stories:

  • Top 10: The all-time favourite – most top tip lists come in tens and there’s a reason for that; it’s a round number
  • Top 100: The ultimate list story – particularly good for top album blog entries. And for Channel 4 TV shows compiling clips from the 1980s
  • Top 5: Half a top ten but not necessarily half as good. Great for your basic, short tip list
  • Top 6: Also has a nice, round feel. Useful for list compilers that are aiming for ten, but who quickly run out of ideas
  • Top 9: There’s an honesty about giving a top nine; the complier knows they’ve only got nine points and they’re admitting as much

I recently saw a ‘Top 9′ list story where one respondent complained that the journalist hadn’t bothered to round the list up to ten. That might be so, but at least the journo was honest – the scribe clearly got to nine and ran out of ideas. I mean, it’s not like these list stories take five minutes to put together.

Summer edition of CIO Connect magazine

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The summer edition of CIO Connect magazine is out. Very pretty it is, too – with some lovely illustrations of wildlife, including butterflies and giraffes. There’s also some interesting written content, including exclusive interviews with new City University London CIO Andrew Abboud and Nick Masterson-Jones, IT director at VocaLink.

Here’s the full list of featured CIOs and business leaders. As ever, thanks to all contributors for your time:

  • Andrew Abboud, CIO at City University London
  • Ben Verwayeen, CEO at Alcatel-Lucent
  • Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president, Gartner
  • David Hopkins, regional IT manager at Park Plaza Hotels
  • Peter Cochrane, former BT CTO and now chairman of Cohrane Associates
  • Ian Cohen, former CIO of Associated Newspapers and MD of The Simply Great Group
  • Prof. Leslie Willcocks, director of outsourcing at the London School of Economics
  • Mark Reece, director of development at the London Stock Exchange
  • Karl Deacon, CTO at Cap Gemini
  • Dan Solace, responsible for high performance computing at Thomson Reuters
  • Philip Buckley-Mellor, designer at BT Vision
  • Tom Kilroy, vice president at Intel
  • Paul Calleja, director of high performance computing at the University of Cambridge
  • Peter Cheese, managing partner for talent and organisation performance services at Accenture
  • Rob Rice, head of leadership at Atos Consulting UK
  • David Rigney, group operations director at Nationwide
  • Dominic Batchelor, senior associate at Ashurst LLP
  • Les Taylor, director for business development and information services at the Disposal Services Authority
  • Nick Masterson-Jones, IT director at VocaLink
  • Chris White, firmer IT director at Ashurst LLP
  • Paul Woobey, CIO at the Office of National Statistics
  • Tim Mann, CIO at Skandia UK
  • Mykolas Rambus, head of IT and special projects, Forbes
  • Dave Williams, IT director at Confused.com
  • Gerhard Eschelbeck, CTO at Webroot Software
  • Anne Moises, CIO at Scottish Government
  • Anne Weatherston, group CIO at Bank of Ireland
  • Diane Bryant, CIO at Intel
  • Andy Beale, technology director of enterprise operations at Guardian News & Media
  • Christine Ashton, group IM Ssrategy and technology director at Transport for London
  • Sanjay Mirchandani, CIO at EMC
  • Richard Page, international purchasing director at Compass Group
  • Karen Bridges, acting head of transformation development corporate business change at Birmingham City Council
  • Glyn Evans, corporate director business change at Birmingham City Council
  • Andrew Coulson, COO at Dimension Data
  • Tony Bates, COO and group CFO at Colt
  • Daryl Scales, UK finance director at Enterprise Rent-A-Car
  • Andy Ross, CITO at SHL
  • Zafar Chaudry, director of information management and technology at Liverpool Women’s NHS Trust
  • Spencer Mott, CISO at Electronic Arts
  • David Bason, IS director at Shoosmiths

The new rules of social networking

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Social networking is great. You can use Facebook to see photos of people you lost touch with years ago, celebrating the birthday of someone you don’t actually know. You can use LinkedIn to hype yourself up as the latest, greatest ‘social media guru’. And you can use Twitter to find out that loads of people got up this morning, ate some food, listened to a bit of music, were busy at work, went home, watched TV and went to bed.

But social networking is also a bit odd. I was watching the news on TV earlier and there was a lot of coverage of Peter Harvey, the teacher from Mansfield who has been charged with attempted murder. After I’d finished my fix of retro information gathering (news on the TV), I went all Web 2.0-tastic and did a search for the teacher on Facebook. And there was quite a bit of stuff, some of which surprised me – names, alleged actions, etc. You know, the kind of stuff the retro media aren’t mean to print in case of prejudicing a trial.

But all that stuff is fair game in the world of social networking. Isn’t it?

CIO Connect forthcoming features

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I’ve been getting a bunch of emails from PRs that are pitching for what they believe to be forthcoming features in CIO Connect. The pitches are always welcome – but many of the suggested features have already been written and are about to be published.

Take the corporate social responsiblity (CSR) feature, which has received a lot of attention in the last week-or-so. Some nice ideas, too. The problem is that the feature is due to come out in July’s spring edition and was finished a long time in advance. I’m actually now working on content for the autumn edition, which goes to bed mid-summer.

One PR told me she’d got the details for forthcoming features from ‘Features Exec’. It’s a regularly repeated story – don’t believe everything you read on a database; better to get it from the horse’s mouth (in this case, me). Here’s what I’m currently working on for the autumn edition:

  • Hyperconnectivity – How can collaborative technologies help CIOs to boost connectivity? Potential areas include mobile devices, next-generation web and the future office.
  • Information management – How can CIOs control information management? Potential areas include content management, security, next-generation search and retrieval.
  • Executive partnership – How can IT leaders create effective partnerships with other executives? The feature will draw on the significance of senior team relationships.
  • Finally – and as ever – I’m also looking for interesting business people with an interesting story to tell. So, that might be CIOs, it might also be other c-suite executives, business gurus, leadership experts and futurologists.

There’s also the back page slot, which gives technology chiefs the chance to talk about out-of-work interests (we’ve recently had mountain climbing, round-the-world sailing and marathon running). Ta.

Spring edition of CIO Connect magazine

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I was on holiday last week, during which time the sparkling spring edition of CIO Connect magazine hit the desks of the UK’s key IT leaders. In the lead-up to the release of the magazine, I’ve been busy modifying the content to include more forward-looking elements.

The changes are represented in ‘Foresight’, a new introductory section to the magazine that identifies the business and technology issues that will impact the work of CIOs in the next year-or-so. In short, change in business IT is so rapid that there is little point having a discussion about the here and now. CIO priorities are always about helping the business to work smarter and the ‘Foresight’ section will help IT leaders as they attempt to establish a competitive edge.

There are several other subtle changes in the spring edition, too – including more boxes and summary points in the main features. The aim is to give time-precious CIOs as much information as quickly as possible. As ever, the edition includes a series of exclusive features:

  • Globalisation at Procter & Gamble – featuring Filippo Passerini, global CIO at Procter & Gamble, and Karen Winney, business services director for UK, Nordic and Ireland at Procter & Gamble
  • Innovation and transformation at ITV – featuring Richard Cross, group technology director at ITV
  • Equal opportunities in IT – featuring Intel CIO Diane Bryant, Scottish Government CIO Anne Moises and Christine Ashton, IM strategy and technology director at Transport for London

Finally, here are a list of the IT leaders and business experts that appear in the issue. As ever, thanks to all that contributed their time and thoughts:

  • Richard Cross, group technology director at ITV
  • Jon Inch, CIO at Christie’s
  • John Suffolk, Government CIO
  • Filippo Passerini, global CIO at Procter & Gamble
  • Karen Winney, business services director for UK, Nordic and Ireland at Procter & Gamble
  • Diane Bryant, CIO at Intel
  • Anne Moises, Scottish Government CIO
  • Christine Ashton, IM strategy and technology director at Transport for London
  • Tania Howarth, CIO at Birds Eye Iglo Group
  • Stephen Entwistle, financial director of McKeowns Solicitors
  • John Thorp, chairman of the VAL IT Steering Committee at the IT Governance Institute
  • David Woodgate, chief executive of the Institute of Financial Accountants
  • Robin Dargue, CIO at Royal Mail
  • Karl Deacon, CTO at Capgemini
  • Neil McGowan, IT director at JD Williams
  • Tim Mann, CIO at Skandia UK
  • Olivier Uytterhoeven, director of IT at Starwood Hotels
  • Nathan Marke, CTO at 2e2
  • Tony Eccleston, partner at Ernst & Young
  • Steve Pikett, head of IT at Rothschild
  • Paul Mockapetris, domain name system (DNS) inventor and chairman of Nominum
  • Martin Roesch, founder and CTO of Sourcefire
  • Professor Soumitra Dutta, Roland Berger Professor of business and technology at business school INSEAD
  • Rob Spencer, senior research fellow at Pfizer
  • Ray Johnston, group IT operations manager at Aspen Insurance UK Ltd
  • Euan Semple, social media consultant and former BBC technology chief
  • Richard Moross, chief executive and founder of online printing company Moo.com
  • Peter Hinssen, programme director for Realising Business Performance Through IT at the London Business  School
  • Dr Martin Clarke, director of general management programmes at the Cranfield School of Management
  • Ian Cohen, former CIO at Associated News and managing director of SimplyGreatConsulting.com
  • Ian Buchanan, former CIO at Alliance & Leicester
  • Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, former director general of MI5

What makes a good headline?

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In this webtastic age of search optimisation, one answer is a lot of references to stuff that will get you a high Google ranking. The basic theory goes something like ‘never mind the quality of my story on service-oriented architecture, just check out how many times the headline mentions the recession, Angelina Jolie and Twitter’. Goal.

Or is that an own goal? Back in the world of ink, paper-based headlines are usually short. There’s often a pun involved, too. I worked with a sub who thought song titles by The Smiths made the best headlines. The theory works well to some extent, such as in the case of ‘How Soon is Now?’, ‘What Difference Does it Make?’ and ‘This Charming Man’. But ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ and ‘The Queen is Dead’ have a more limited applicability.

And of course, there’s the online problem. ‘This Charming Man’ is a nice title for a magazine article on a friendly CIO. But most paper-based articles end up on the web and would you click on the article if you weren’t a fan of The Smiths? More importantly, would you be able to find it?

The end result is that puntastic magazine headlines get rewritten for the age of webtastic search optimisation. In fact, stories start to exist simply because people know they will get hits, such as ‘Top 10 tips’ articles. As journalist Andy McCue said to me the other day: “I’ll go mad if I see another ‘Top 10 tips for beating the recession’ article.” Check out Google News, my friend – there are plenty to push you over the edge.

Still, the headline and the content are no guarantee of attention anyway. I heard a woman on the train say to her friend the other day: “So, what was that story about a plane landing on a river? I missed that.”

It is difficult to understand how she could have missed the story of the US Airways plane landing on the Hudson River. Well, unless she’d sold her TV, refused to read, smashed up her radio, disconnected the computer, refused to talk to another human being and moved to Venus.

Which, I assume, she hadn’t. In short, you just can’t grab some people’s attention – even when the headline is great and the content of the story is even better. But good luck trying.

Look who I have been speaking to

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The sparkling new edition of CIO Connect magazine is out. Thanks to all those who participated and to those that helped sort out the interviews. Here is a list of featured CIOs and business experts:

  • Gordon Hextall, COO of NHS Connecting for Health
  • Paul Jones, NHS CTO
  • Mykolas Rambus, head of IT and special projects at Forbes
  • Ken Narvey, group chief technology and services officer at HSBC
  • Tony Mather, CIO at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office 
  • Paul Woobey, CIO at the Office of National Statistics
  • Ben Booth, global CIO at Ipsos MORI
  • Anne Weatherston, Bank of Ireland CIO
  • Mark Leonard, Colt CIO
  • Martin Thompson, Tradefair CTO
  • Steve Pikett, head of IT at Rothschild
  • Mark Greenlaw, Cognizant CIO
  • Jan Durant, director of IT at Lewis Silkin LLP
  • Ray Johnston, group IT operations manager at Aspen Insurance
  • Dean Branton, group director of business transformation at KCOM
  • Nathan Hayes, head of infrastructure and technology at Osborne Clarke
  • Mary Hensher, Deloitte CIO
  • Dave Williams, IT director at Confused.com
  • Robin Osmond, Tradefair CEO
  • Sharm Manwani, associate professor at Henley Management College
  • James Urquhart Stewart, media commentator
  • Duncan Aitchison, partner at TPI
  • Joe McDonagh, executive development expert at Trinity College Dublin
  • David Head, director at La Fosse Associates
  • Jo Alexander-Jones, organisational development manager at BG Group
  • Guy Hains, president of CSC’s European Operations
  • Patrick O’Connell, president of BT Global Service and MD of BT Health
  • David Bodanis, scenario planning expert
  • Rohit Talwar, futurologist

PRs looking to feature CIOs or business experts in forthcoming issues can ping me an email. Thanks in advance.

I’m looking for CIO comment

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I’ll be starting to work on the following features for CIO Connect magazine in the next week-or-so. As usual, I’m looking for one-on-one interviews with IT leaders (CIOs, CTOs and IT directors) of big name organisations. The briefs cover the following areas:

  • Environmental responsibility and carbon neutrality – We will look at how corporate social responsibility and carbon neutrality can help drive increased value and operational efficiency.
  • Migration strategies – How should enterprise software be deployed? Potential areas include bespoke development, legacy retirement, porting applications and SOA.
  • Next generation leaders – What strategies can help CIOs create top class, next generation leaders? And how can IT leaders create a strong framework for succession planning?
  • C-Suite executives – I’ll also be looking for one-on-one interviews with CxOs (CEO, FD, HR director, etc.).

Mail me if you have any pitches. Thanks in advance.