TotalCIO » CIo job

Every little byte helps – teaching tech matters

Karen Goulart — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 15:23:51 +0000

What if you had skills so powerful they could change the course of the U.S. economy? You’d try to pass that awesomeness along, right? Well, great news SearchCIO.com Searchlight readers – you happen to possess such skills! As you’ll see when you go to this week’s roundup, volunteer IT professionals are changing kids’ lives by teaching tech in public high schools. The hope is these tech savvy high schoolers are more likely to become tech savvy college grads, who then fill some much-needed skills gaps in our economy. Check out the item, as well as bits about a project aimed at finding ”The Human Face of Big Data,” a look at Windows 8 from someone “in the know” and more.

Go to SearchCIO.com Searchlight

“The Human Face of Big Data.” Oops, sorry, way off — this is the android face of regular-size Data.

Big demand for big data analytics pros

Karen Goulart — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:25:57 +0000

In this week’s SearchCIO.com Searchlight we have a bevvy, a big ol’ bonanza – ok – a bunch of interesting bits you may have missed in your own web travels. Read about why being brainy is beautiful when it comes to big data analytics; learn about a media project that puts the ”big” in big data; enjoy a beautiful infografic depicting the role of the CIO in 2012 and more. Brilliant!

Go to SearchCIO.com Searchlight

Both brains and beauty!

CIO lights up Olympics with green tech innovation

Karen Goulart — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 16:44:23 +0000

Every four years, it’s the same thing. We sit and watch the summer Olympics in awe of human physical potential and our minds begin to wander. What if we’d kept up those swimming lessons? If only we didn’t dump track for the school newspaper. Then we come back to reality, pop open another soda and wonder how those divers can be so darn synchronized. But Olympic-loving readers, take heart — CIOs can shine in the summer games.

Leading off this week’s roundup, from our sister site SearchCIO-Midmarket.com, we have a CIO whose gold medal-worthy green tech innovation is truly energizing London’s Olympic Park. Also, read about how speeding to market with software could kill a trading firm, and read about the CIO’s role in IT transformation.

As chronicled on the SearchCIO-Midmarket.com blog, CIO Symmetry, the CIO of the London summer games scored big, lighting up Olympic Park with green tech innovation. And he didn’t even have to put on a Speedo.

Speed is great for sprinters and the like but can be downright dangerous for makers of stock-trading software. Perhaps Wall Street’s third stock-trading fiasco in five months will drive home this point.

Winning by changing the rules doesn’t sound very sportsmanlike. Unless we’re talking victory over network hackers — then by all means we ought to hear out the argument for changing the rules of writing code.

Think social collaboration is a frivolous pursuit? Perhaps this bar graph can convince you otherwise.

Finally, be sure to check out this week’s CIO Matters column, in which SearchCIO.com’s Editorial Director Scot Petersen looks at the role of the CIO in the midst of IT transformation.

CIO skills in most demand: The ability to ‘helicopter’

Christina Torode — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 15:41:14 +0000

I’ve been collecting chief information officer jobs ads for the past month (yes, an exercise that smacks of not having a life) to find out which CIO skills are in demand in the here and now. What’s telling about the skill sets in high demand is not so much the long lists of qualifications and expected experience, but the words used time and again in all the ads.The most used one? Timely. As in (my italics):

“Maintain direct and timely communications with senior and middle management.”
“Contributing to the definition of the organizational risk profile, and ensuring that all IT risks are highlighted and agreed actions addressed in a timely manner.”
“Proven experience developing and maintaining a qualified, diverse ITS staff through appropriate hiring, staff development and training, and effective, timely performance.”
“Build strategic partnerships with vendors to maximize investment and provide timely delivery of initiatives.”
“The executive is also responsible for ensuring reliable, timely, cost-effective, efficient and secure delivery of information technology to all areas.”

Another common denominator? Very rarely did an ad call for CIO skills that were timely but not cost-effective as well.

There were also a few job descriptions that screamed Landmine ahead. For example:

“The ability to defuse conflict.”
“Develop greater confidence throughout the organization and with physicians in the ability of information systems to meet the needs of individuals and the entire organization.”
“Reports unusual events appropriately.”
“Motivate subordinates.”

My favorite description was from a publically traded energy company (but then, I have a soft spot for CIOs): “The impact of this position on company performance is very high.”

We will be running down the top CIO skills in a future article, but just to share one more tidbit: This one skill was posted by a religious institution: “The ability to ‘helicopter’ from big picture, strategic issues to more granular levels of detail as needed.” Whee!

I just found a new way to say multitask.

Let us know what you think about this blog post; email: Christina Torode, News Director