Linda Tucci: Hi, I'm Linda
Tucci, industry editor at Tech
target. I'm here with Alan Tate.
He's the Executive Chair of the
MIT Sloan CIO symposium to talk
about this year's conference.
For more information on this
topic, please click on the link
above, or the one below. This is
the 19th year of the MIT Sloan
CIO symposium. How will this
year's conference be different
from the ones in the past?
Allan Tate: Well, we're coming
back to being in person, we're
going to be at the Sanburg
conference center on the MIT
campus along with Wong
auditorium. And unlike our last
in person in 2019, this is going
to be smaller and more intimate,
more exclusive. Go up to the
seventh floor of Sandburg you
have a beautiful view of Boston,
we're bringing back the
Innovation Showcase, which will
start on Sunday night when
people register just before the
CIO Leadership Award dinner.
Unlike prior years, everyone
with an in person ticket will
come to the award dinner. And
then on Monday, we're gonna have
a full day of panels and
keynotes with a lunchtime backup
on the seventh floor and the
reception on the seventh floor.
After the events, there's going
to be a lot of networking, and
it's really going to be fun.
Linda Tucci: sounds neat. So
what about the content? What's
the new idea this year?
Allan Tate: Well, so we went
through a long process. And we
decided that we wanted to focus
on digital ecosystems and to
bring people together and think
about whether this is really
reshaping the future of
business, we've seen COVID and
tech accelerated, accelerating
the digital transformation. We
see cloud and AI and different
types of devices, both phone,
tablet, IoT, driving creativity,
and a trade of services and
partnerships. We see the supply
chain being more than just
physical devices, but also a
sharing of digital technology
that's really enabling companies
to drive the revenue. And we
also see CIOs dealing with a lot
of unpredictable elements,
whether it be the pandemic or
war or cyber warfare, so we're
gonna explore the digital
ecosystem.
Linda Tucci: I'm curious, what
you think the differences
between digital ecosystems post
COVID and digital ecosystems?
Pre COVID?
Allan Tate: Yeah, that's a great
question. So I mean, certainly
digital ecosystems existed
before COVID, as did
cybersecurity problems, as did
cloud. But it's really, I think,
a matter of maturity. And I can
just give you one small example.
The symposium itself, you know,
when we started out, we were a
conference, we're on campus, we
sold tickets people came, but
look at how we, as a small
nonprofit have evolved, we now
have a platform to host our
community. We host live streams,
we have a back end payment
processor, a ticketing system,
we have a CRM system in order to
keep track of all of our
speakers and all of our
attendees and communicate with
everyone. And we have different
types of code that integrate
these different tools into a
platform. And so there's a lot
happening because we're not just
having the conference at the
Sandburg center in Wang
auditorium, all the conferences
are being live streamed, people
are coming to our online
community to view it worldwide.
And so we ourselves are taking
advantage of a lot of digital
technologies in order to put on
the conference. So you can only
imagine how this kind of
integration this kind of trade
of services is affecting the
enterprise.