These boots were made for walking

Mike Zastrocky is an analyst for Gartner, the consulting company, and every year he gives an update on what the key issues for CIOs are. This year he concentrated very much on the role of the CIO as an IT educator, marketing the technology vision and emphasising the value of IT to the institution. An recent survey of CIOs and their bosses (CEO, Registrar etc) showed an interesting discrepancy. When asked to choose from list what role they best fulfilled at the university, they chose Business Partner. However, when the bosses were asked the same question, they put this role as the least effective. Gartner's recommendation was that CIOs need to take seriously their role as educator and regularly look for opportunities to market the value of IT to the whole community.

The last session of the day was delivered by the EDUCAUSE Evolving Technology Committee and covered the following emerging technologies:
web 2.0
google apps
web conferencingm-learning (using mobile devices for delivering teaching materials)
3D printing
virtualisation
information lifecycle management

Some were interesting - 3D printing for example. As these printers get cheaper we can expect see them become more common. They'll cause chaos with our printing management system though - imagine deciding how much to charge!
I think I was losing the will to live by the end of the presentation though. As virtualisation's been around since the 1960s I couldn't see how it could be described as an emerging technology!

Off to the "special event" tonight at Seattle's Museum of Flight - might get chance to have a go in a flight simulator!

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the boots were bought in Texas last year and are my favourite footwear at the moment. I wore them today and several complete strangers came up to me and said how cool they were!