CEOs BizJournals Column

I’ve been hearing empty promises for actual decades.   Remember Wang word processors? How about WordStar?   For years and years the folks marketing these products have been dangling this nirvana of the “paperless office” in front of our faces.   No paper documents flitting about, no filing cabinets clogging up precious real estate, no…

It’s that time of year again!   As we cross into 2018, what can we expect to see on the technology side of things? Here are my top 10 predictions.   10 – TVs will get smarter and way, way cheaper. Ever heard of Element Electronics brand televisions? I hadn’t either until I found that…

We can’t avoid spending money on IT.   We can, however, avoid spending money on IT that isn’t properly supporting and advancing our business objectives.   Here are the top 3 signs that you aren’t getting the best value out of your IT spend.   1. Your CEO, COO, or CFO is spending an inordinate…

I recently spoke with Michael Pryor, one of the founders of Trello, about what it takes to keep a widely dispersed workforce effective, productive, and engaged.   If you don’t know about Trello yet (despite there being 25 million registered users), it’s a collaboration tool that uses moveable tiles (“cards”) much in the same way…

We’ve been hearing about Equifax ad nauseam.   We’ve learned that the Yahoo hack was even worse than we had thought, and that all 3 billion accounts were compromised in their 2013 breach.   If I asked you to, I’m sure you could rattle off at least half a dozen other big-name companies (or government…

If I were to ask you what your IT team actually does for your business, what would you say?   Over the past 3 decades I’ve watched my industry slowly split itself into 3 distinct categories, all of which fall under the “IT support” umbrella. While the split has been evident to those of us…

You did it. You decided that maintaining your company’s technology was not one of your core competencies, and that rather than fussing with it internally like you have been, you’re going to outsource that responsibility to another company. Your business partners referred you to a few outsourced IT firms that you have met with and…

I watched Elon Musk’s presentation at the 2017 TED conference the other day. If you haven’t seen this yet, I challenge you to watch it the whole way through without your jaw dropping. In it, we learn about his plans to: Build subterranean highway systems in Los Angeles on the West Coast and from New…

It’s 2017 – anyone can work from anywhere at any time on any device now, right? Not exactly. We as a workforce are definitely the most “connected” bunch yet; we carry tiny computers in our pockets that connect to any number of free WiFi connections to give us access to more information than we could…

So, you’ve accepted the fact that your employees (including you – and me for that matter!) are far and away your weakest link when it comes to the security of your data. You know that even if you perform periodic risk assessments, and even if you create and document the most airtight IT policies, all…