PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
One of the best parts about my job is the ability to sit and have a cup of coffee (OK, sometimes wine) with execs who are in the midst of defining and redefining the technology marketplace. Sometimes we in the tech media get too involved in covering the latest pronouncements from Steve Ballmer or Michael Arrington or Eric Schmidt or any other members of the tech elite standing on the stage at the moment.
I don't object to the star coverage; I just think it is a questionable use of (dwindling) media resources to all be covering the same event.
What you end up with are hundreds of stories with only minute differences. That said, there are three people I've recently had the opportunity to speak with who reminded me that there is still lots of room for improvement and innovation in the tech space.
1. Neil Rasmussen. Neil was one of the founder's of APC in Rhode Island. He cared about things like data center efficiency when frankly few people even knew where their company's data center was located.
APC was purchased by Schneider Electric, and Neil could easily have taken his pot of gold and spent the days windsurfing and perfecting his golf game. Instead, he has taken his MIT education, APC business experience and engineer's ability to deconstruct problems and find solutions, and turned his talents to the issue of global warming. He's on speaking terms with the U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Neil would be happy to show you all the charts and graphs you'd want to explain why saving energy is a whole lot more efficient than finding new ways to produce energy. I think you'll see Neil play a bigger and bigger part in the global warming discussion.
2. Sandy Carter. Sandy is the vice president of SOA & WebSphere marketing, strategy and channels for IBM. That is one long title, but she has been instrumental in attaching criteria and measurement tools to social media activities in the business-to-business market. Social media is a big topic and increasing budget item for B2B marketers, but some strong questions remain around the use of tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media choices. In a recent presentation at a MarketingProfs business-to-business conference and in an interview after, she was able to detail percentages of increased revenues, higher conference attendance and increased customer loyalty by fine-tuning your social media mix. I have a video interview with Sandy that I'll soon be posting.
3. Dan Bricklin. Dan is one of the mainstays of the Boston tech community. One of the co-developers of the VisiCalc spreadsheet, I've known Dan at least since he started attending the Spencer Katt parties in the heyday of PC Week. But the interesting thing about Dan is he is still at it. Recently, I attended one of the Massachusetts Tech Leadership Council's Tech Tuesday meet-ups. At those meet-ups, anyone with a good (or even questionable) tech idea can get up on-stage and make their pitch. It is at events like Tech Tuesday where technology innovation is found and connections start to get made between entrepreneurs, venture capital and experienced executives who know that creating a new company takes a lot more than simply a good idea. I have an interview with Dan that I'll soon be posting.
Any other suggestions for people to watch?
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