Today, I had the incredible opportunity to be involved in an event hosted by Microsoft Canada called the TechNet Connected Summit. It was an invitation-only event in which selected IT professionals from across Canada met with Microsoft Canada IT Pro Advisors, product managers, and technology enthusiasts for a day of non-technical learning, discussion, workshops, and fun.We learned about initiatives like the Community Connection Framework, Psycho-Geometrics, Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Home Server, technical presentation do's and don'ts, how to win at X-Box 360's Forza, and what product managers actually do for a living. We connected with other user-group executives and IT professionals representing a broad range of interests, levels of expertise, regions, and technology specialties. And all of this in preparation for Saturday's EnergizeIT event.
I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the moniker IT influencer. After all, it seems like just yesterday that I became an IT manager, although it is true that I've been in the computer technology field ever since IBM first released a personal computer in the early 1980s.
One of the alternative names used to describe who we are and what we do today was IT advocate. That makes me slightly more comfortable. It is, in fact, what I tend to do at Microsoft events, at user-group meetings, in my blog and other online activities, and, of course, in my daily work with users and managers at Pano Cap Canada. I seem always to be advocating technology solutions to users, to advocate on behalf of small business to associations and technology vendors, and to advocate use of advanced technology in general in enhancing work and play.
Good things are on the horizon because of events like that hosted by Microsoft today and the relationships being established between IT professionals across Canada. I have a renewed sense of optimism and excitement which will, I'm sure, only be heightened tomorrow when hundreds more of us gather to get our geek on.
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