Coming together

GOA: After what appeared to be a long day–most CIOs having left in the morning from their respective destinations arrived during sunset at the lush resort tucked 70 Kms away from the airport–looking cheerful and ready for the evening. The President of CIOL Abraham Mathew kicked off the panel discussion with a spirited introduction. Mentioning about CIOL, the organiser of the event, he highlighted that CIOL was among the first internet properties to have been formed when it was set up in mid 1996, way before the country woke up to the Internet and dot com potential.

Interestingly, CIOL was also the first to build communities, enabling them to come together on a single platform to share, discuss and of course gain from being a part of the community. "The C Change event is one such attempt to bring the online CIO community to interact and share in an offline mode."

The mood for the evening’s panel discussion was set by the emcee introducing the panel members comprising of CIOs, CN Ram, Anwar Bagdadi, Eswar Jha and Sunil Kapoor. The discussion was moderated by Shyam Malhotra, Executive Director of Cyber Media India Limited, the publishers of premier industry magazines such as Dataquest, PC Quest, Voice & Data, Living Digital and the DQ Week.

The panel walked through the challenges faced by CIOs, the skill sets required to get users to accept and adapt to technology, the role of CIOs as a change agent or change leaders. The opinions were varied but by and large the challenges that came up were same with some differences in the approach. However, one factor stood out: while some argued that CIOs had a very critical role to play, there were others who felt that it was just another job and not to be seen as more important than the organisation itself.

The discussion also led to Q&A sessions, which stood out by the very fact that not many CIOs had specific questions to ask but had very definite statements to make. Clearly, it was evident that most CIOs took themselves and their role in an organisation very seriously. Indeed, the role of a CIO is only emerging, considering that the role is as little as 3 years old. Even globally, it is less than a decade old.

Needless to say, the discussion continued well through dinner. The last word on the subject came from Malhotra who said, "Perhaps, with maturity around technology and the use of technology becoming as commonplace as the telephone, issues such as RoI on IT investment will become redundant."

CIOL Bureau