Fri, 24 May 2013 12:31:39 -0800WeeblyTue, 09 Nov 2010 14:36:00 GMThttp://computerworldmediakit.com/1/post/2010/11/2011-premier-100-it-leaders-conference.htmlIf you haven’t had the chance to read the August 23rd issue of Computerworld, I urge you to take a look.  In this issue, Executive Editor and National Correspondent , Julia King, takes a look at the IT organization of the not so distant future in our cover story entitled “IT Careers 2020”.
 
For anyone marketing to enterprise IT, this well written article should be required reading.  As I talk with Sr. IT Managers and CIOs , the shift Julia makes reference to, is a reality they can immediately identify with, and one that’s happening quickly.  In fact, feedback received from Honorees of our upcoming Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, happening March 6-8th of 2011(http://www.premier100.com), shows a pervasive need to build and manage a “business aware”  IT organization and culture.  With that in mind, our 2011 Premier 100 conference theme and agenda centers around the topic of “Extreme Convergence: Fusing IT and Business in a Leaner, Global, Virtualized World.”  We’ll also take an insightful look at the technologies IT Executives and Management have identified as being central to their ability to drive this transformation including Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Application Development, Mobile and Wireless, and BI & Analytics.

The more than 350 Sr. IT Management Executives that attend this event each year, will take away a roadmap for evolving their IT organizations to a point where everything IT does will be at the foundation of operational cost cutting, identification and development of new market opportunities, business expansion, and creation of a long term sustainable and competitive enterprise.
 
If you’re interested in engaging with this community, a limited number of sponsorships are available to this conference. As a sponsor you’ll have the opportunity to connect and build relationships with an otherwise difficult to reach community of C-Level and Senior IT management executives, through a combination of structured and informal networking time.  You’ll also have the chance to engage attendees in meaningful dialog, leverage existing customer relationships as peer testimonial, and position your solutions in a more informed manner.
]]>Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:00:00 GMThttp://computerworldmediakit.com/1/post/2010/07/keeping-it-fresh-in-the-marketplace.html This week I had a chance to attend the CEMA Summit in Las Vegas.  This event attracted more than 200 event marketing professionals from around the country.  As a speaker in the Peer 2 Peer session on Proprietary Events, I heard a lot of questions around how to successfully produce local or regional events and what secrets there are to attracting Sr. level attendees.

As I explained to those in attendance, the most consistent feedback I hear from CIOs and Sr. IT Managers, when talking about the many invites they get to attend these types of events, is “don’t expect me to attend an event, if the content is nothing more than what I can get by picking up the phone and asking for a meeting with your organization, on my time, and on my agenda.”  In other words, if the value you lead with is about product or appears to be “pitchy,” there’s no reason for them to attend.  While this might seem elementary, Computerworld research conducted in the last year indicated that those in Sr. IT Management positions spend less than 4 hours on average per week with vendors, with the majority of that time being spent with incumbent vendors.  

One of the many advantages to partnering with Computerworld to produce a local or regional event (beyond leveraging the affinity the Sr. IT Management community has for our brand) is that we’re in constant contact with our audience.   As we gain an understanding of what ROI and ROO metrics a vendor organization wants to achieve, we marry this to our deep understanding of the audience you’re trying to appeal to.  The result is a turn-key program with a compelling, peer based agenda that allows our vendor partners to be viewed as thought leaders on topics that identify with a pressing need expressed by our audience, and a promise to attendees that their investment of time will provide them with actionable ideas they can bring back to their own organizations for immediate implementation.  

Coupled with Computerworld’s unparalleled access to the Sr. IT Management community, we’ve successfully produced hundreds of events for a wide variety of IT vendors looking to engage with this difficult to reach audience.

]]>Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:00:00 GMThttp://computerworldmediakit.com/1/post/2010/06/keeping-it-fresh-in-the-marketplace1.htmlI’m pleased to introduce this blog as a means of sharing any news, developments and general thoughts about what’s going on at Computerworld and in the market. Spending time in the field with our readers and vendor partners, I’m fortunate to meet a lot of interesting and innovative people whose added insight I also plan to share in this forum.

It’s a great time to be working with Computerworld! In just the past couple months alone we have a lot of exciting things to talk about, including:

• Deploying the new tagline: “Peer Perspective. IT Leadership. Business Results.”
• The recent refresh to our Web site
• The launch of our vertical sites covering IT Health Care, IT Finance and IT Government
• The redesign of Computerworld magazine
• And according to Nielsen AdRelevance, Computerworld ranked first among Computing & Technology-IT sites with 16.8 million ad impressions

“Peer Perspective. IT Leadership. Business Results.” is our new tagline. This truly reflects our unique value in the market and we are committed to delivering on this promise through every facet of what Computerworld offers to our audience and to our advertisers. Our continued investment in our brand via our recent refresh of the Computerworld website, launch of our vertical sites, and redesign of the publication, serve to enhance our value in the marketplace by better enabling us to deliver our award winning content to an audience that relies on our brand to make informed and strategic decisions.

Speaking to the refresh of our site specifically, our goals were to enhance the user experience of the more than 3 million unique visitors that come to Computerworld.com each month and to offer new sponsorship opportunities for vendors interested in reaching our highly sought-after audience of senior IT management decision makers and influencers. Our team did an amazing job of achieving a friendlier and more functional user interface across our home page, article and news pages, which allows visitors to optimize their time on our site. The result is a very clean look with robust navigation options and newly defined content channels that speed access to the content and resources of greatest interest to them. In addition to significant changes made to topic categories, we incorporated more direct access to our vertical sites. Other notable changes include new headline and body fonts and larger type on the article pages for increased readability. The site also features a new horizontal navigation system (eliminating the left-hand navigation column) and wider story pages, which gives the site a more open and contemporary look and allows us to incorporate images and rich content such as videos at the top of articles.

In addition, at the start of this year, we launched Computerworld IT Health Care, IT Finance and IT Government. Our goals in doing this were to extend the reach of Computerworld.com to these audiences by providing them with dedicated content. As a result we are able to offer a unique opportunity for sponsors to engage with these targeted and highly valuable segments of IT professionals.

As I look to the redesign of Computerworld magazine, our goal was to create a more contemporary look designed to better showcase the incredible content offered in every issue. The new design is very comprehensive in that we’ve removed any vestiges of being a news tabloid and have gone to a full magazine look. At the same time, the magazine is still very recognizable as Computerworld in that the logo, content, editorial personality and resulting editorial journey are all intact. The redesign was unveiled with the May 24th, issue, the cover story of which was written by Executive Editor Julia King entitled “Beyond Alignment.” I encourage anyone seeing this blog to read this as it’s an insightful look at how IT and Business continue to converge as seen through IT Leaders who aren’t just talking about it, but actually making it happen! This article IS the essence of what Computerworld is all about.

Because of all these great innovations, we have a lot to talk about with our customers! For that reason, in addition to the Computerworld executive conferences we’ve hosted, we also held two customer events where we were able to inform clients of the exciting new opportunities Computerworld has to offer in a more intimate and relaxed setting. We look forward to holding more of these types of gatherings as we
continue to invest in the Computerworld brand and advance our ability to provide value to the IT Management and vendor communities.
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