Track: IT for Community Development

Presenters: Dr. Neal Grandgenett - Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Nebraska at Omaha; Dr. Elliott Ostler - Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Nebraska at Omaha; Nancy Mawson - Director, Technology Academy of Northeast Nebraska (TANN); Lynn Spady - Technology Specialist, Westside Community Schools; Robert Jensen - Technology Facilitator, Pawnee Elementary School

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The panelists described different ways that information technologies are being integrated within K-12 education. They also discussed how Nebraska K-12 and higher education institutions have partnered to support IT efforts.

Elliott Ostler described the new tools that are available such as graphing calculator robots.

Lynn Spady described the 1-to-1 Initiative at Westside Community Schools and other innovative ideas they are incorporating into Westside schools.

Nancy Mawson discussed the TANN Academy, a collaborative effort that started with five rural Northeast Nebraska high schools and two colleges to provide enriched IT classes to high school students. The TANN partnership has enabled high school juniors and seniors to take advanced-level technology classes while earning high school credit and receiving college credit with free tuition.

Robert Jensen discussed Smart Board technologies and how these and other information technologies can be integrated with school curriculums.

Track: Infrastructure and IT Support

Presenter: Toby Velte - Global Account Technology Strategist, Microsoft

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Toby Velte described how to identify, plan and execute ‘Green’ initiatives within an organization. He described what it means to have a Green IT organization and how this benefits the environment both in and outside your office building. He described how IT power and cooling costs have risen for organizations and how “Earth Friendly” has now become “Budget Friendly”.

Toby outlined the four main areas of Green IT: Data Center Optimization, Desktop Transformation, Application Rationalization, and the Green IT Platform.  He walked through a fictional example of a company greening their IT and showed the financial and environmental benefits we can create through Green IT.

He also offered practical tips on how to approach management and get buy-in on your green initiatives, large or small.

Track: Infrastructure and IT Support

Presenters: Dr. Ken Dick - Sr. Research Fellow, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Robin Gandhi, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor of Information Assurance, University of Nebraska at Omaha,  Bill Mahoney - Assistant Professor of Information Assurance, University of Nebraska at Omaha

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This presentation focused on securing distributed control systems infrastructure.  SCADA systems are defined as providing supervisory control for distributed assets using centralized data acquisition. Essentially, a SCADA computer system controls and monitors a process, all remotely!

As more organizations replace proprietary solutions with low-cost Internet Protocol (IP) devices, these infrastructure systems become increasingly vulnerable to cyber-securiity threats.  Examples were provided of how hackers have penetrated water treatment operations and transportation systems. Many others are vulnerable as well.

The panel then presented an overview of standards and their ongoing research.

By Kathy Allen

Keynote Speaker: Jason Dorsey, known as The Gen Y Guy,

Jason Dorsey, known as the Gen Y Guy, entertained the Infotec 2009 luncheon audience, as he educated them about the four generations that make up today’s workforce. Featured in Fortune Magazine and on 60 Minutes, Dorsey helps business leaders bridge the generations within their organizations by finding common ground and understanding between them.

Dorsey identified the four generations as the Matures, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation Y. Each was uniquely shaped by parenting trends, technology, economics and anticipated lifespan, and as a result, each is guided by a different set of values, beliefs and expectations.

Dorsey characterized Gen Y as people born between 1977 and 1995 and the only generation to start their work life with no expectation of lifetime employment or social security. Although they typically wait longer to start their first job, they will have roughly 60 years of work life ahead of them. They tend to not save money and possess a huge feeling of entitlement, due largely to the parenting style of their baby-boomer parents who “want it to be easier for our children than it was for us.”

And, although Gen Ys are perceived as tech-savvy, Dorsey says it is more accurate to describe them as tech-dependent, for it is hard for them to function without their technical gadgets.

Dorsey offered bridging ideas to help each generation work more effectively as a team.  For Gen Y workers, he urged employers to model the behavior they want their young employees to follow because chances are high they have never been taught the basics such as office etiquette. Employers would also benefit from giving ongoing feedback, but scrap the quarterly appraisal. Instead, text message your praise when you catch them doing something well.  Finally, try offering an incentives menu for good performance. Surprisingly, one of the biggest incentives for this age group is unpaid time off.

For more information about Jason Dorsey and about Generation Y, visit www.jasondorsey.com

By Kathy Allen

Keynote Speaker: Sam Taylor, CEO, Oriental Trading Co.

Sam Taylor was named CEO of Oriental Trading Co. a year ago and brings with him a wealth of experience that encompasses retail, e-commerce, direct marketing and international business. Prior to OTC, Taylor served in senior positions at Hewlett-Packard Co., Best Buy and The Disney Store Online.

Taylor described how he is changing the traditional catalog mindset at OTC by leveraging IT as a customer-relationship builder during a difficult economy. His business plan includes using e-commerce as both a revenue and profit growth engine.

Taylor focused on how OTC is benefiting from its new Product Reviews and Ratings feature. While it is easy and profitable to display positive reviews, Taylor insists upon displaying all reviews regardless of how embarrassing they may be. Not only does this help OTC achieve credibility, it also helps the company identify bad products, correct inaccurate product descriptions and demonstrate to customers that it is intent on serving their needs.

Negative reviews have even helped OTC create community and increase revenue, as happy customers offer discouraged customers advice on how to make better use of a product, often leading to cross-selling of craft tools and adhesives.

Taylor concluded with his top-five recommendations:

1. Allocate resources to read and act upon all customer reviews and ratings.
2. Embrace the power of negative reviews.
3. Leverage online customer data to drive revenue in other channels.
4. Segment customers to provide customized messages.
5. Let your best customers create content for you.

By Kathy Allen

Keynote Speaker: Terry Jones, managing principal of Essential Ideas and founder of Travelocity.com

As keynote speaker of AIM’s 2009 Technology Celebration Banquet, Terry Jones engaged the gathering of almost 500 area leaders with the finer points of how to foster and drive innovation. Anybody who loves to travel has Jones to thank for placing flights, hotels and rental cars at their finger tips. For Jones has stood at the helm of the companies that have revolutionized the way people book their travel arrangements — chairman of Kayak.com, founder and former CEO of Travelocity.com and former CIO of Sabre Inc.

Jones earned his stripes during the mid-90s, when he took a small team and built a multi-billion dollar enterprise based on an innovative idea that most of his colleagues thought would fail. He created a culture of innovation where new ideas were celebrated, mistakes became fast learning loops and employees learned that anyone can innovate.  As a result, Travelocity.com was born.

But as we all know, most dot-com companies did not fare as well as Travelocity. Jones walked the audience through a quick history lesson of the dot-com boom and bust, describing what he refers to as the Dopeler Effect, “where stupid ideas seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.”

The dot-coms’ ultimate undoing was their failure to transfer the buyer-seller relationship to the Internet, Jones said. However, technique follows technology so that today the power is there to recreate those relationships, just not in the way we might have imagined.

“Information has found its freedom. Power is shifting to the buyer, and marketing is now a two-way street,” as buyers’ experiences are shared on the Internet through blogs, forums, social networks, and shared video, Jones said.

But marketers also have new power. With today’s direct marketing technology, it is possible to capture individual customer’s preferences and shopping habits so that campaigns and interactions with them can be personalized.

Jones argues that to truly capitalize on the technology requires a culture of innovation. To foster such a culture, he recommended that organizations:

• Encourage experimentation and treat failure as part of the learning process.

• Create small work teams that blend “old-world knowledge” with “new-world exuberance” so that the young and old can learn from each other and engage in real debate.

• Think like customers by watching them and listening to them.  All staff should be required to listen to customer calls on a regular basis. Customers are Internet-empowered, time-starved and technologically savvy. Give them what they can’t get in the physical world, tell them what others think, and simplify their lives.

For more information about Terry Jones, see http://www.tbjones.com/about/

By Kathy Allen

Keynote Speaker: Erik Wahl, Founder of The Wahl Group, San Diego

Recognized artist and speaker Erik Wahl challenged the Infotec09 audience to reach to new levels of vision and performance through creativity.

As much performance as presentation, Wahl periodically burst into manic motion to paint portraits of Bono, Tiger Woods and Abraham Lincoln. His on-stage painting exemplified his message of discovering ones untapped potential to create vision.

Wahl began a traditional career path, earning a degree in business communications and serving eight years as a partner in a corporate firm.  After a series of personal and professional events, Wahl reignited his passion for painting and “began seeing the dynamic tension of the right and left sides of my brain coming together.”

He urged people to not let unfounded fears paralyze them, but to instead look for the creative ideas that can come from the need to innovate. He himself had to learn to ignore the logic of the experts who told him his idea to paint during his presentations would never work.

“We are all taught to be logical,” Wahl said, lamenting that our school system is “maniacally obsessed with linear, data-driven, one-dimensional answers.” He warned left-brained thinking alone is no longer adequate.

Wahl sees value in bringing ones experience and disciplined thinking to a problem, but then it helps to slow down, step back and “twist it and look for something extraordinary.”

Find more information about Wahl at http://www.theartofvision.com

By James Swanson

Track: Innovation

Date / Time: 15 April 15 2009, 3:45 - 4:45 PM

Panel:

• Ash ElDifrawi - CMO, NetShops
• Robb Nansel - President and Co-Founder of Saddle Creek Records and Partner, Slowdown
• Chris Petersen - CEO, Integrated Marketing Solutions

Joe Olsen of Phenomblue moderated a lively panel discussion looking at innovation as a business driver.  Each of the panel members related their experience with taking a passion or innovative idea and making a profitable business out of it.

The relationship between consumer and producer has fundamentally changed.  The retailer is much less important in the distribution channel these days as consumers take greater advantage of the product information available to them through the World Wide Web. Disintermediation has also affected advertising. The panel noted some examples of companies encouraging users of their product to make their own commercials.

From his experience leading brand advertising efforts for Google, YouTube, and Netshops, Ash ElDifrawi had much to say about online marketing and working with innovative people. Chris Peterson, with 25 years of experience consulting for Fortune 500 companies, talked about the increasing consolidation of retailing and the expansion of warehouse club stores like Costco. He related what he believes has made his company successful: asking customers what information they want, and then figuring out how to get it for them.

Robb Nansel points often differed from the other two panelists in that his business decisions are not usually driven by a need to innovate. Mr. Nansel and his friends started the Saddle Creek label because they enjoyed the same music and artists. While major labels struggle, their increasing use of technology hasn’t affected their relationship with the bands and consumers. In fact, digitally distributed music is actually proving more profitable for them because it negates the costs of manufacturing and shipping.

When the panel was opened up for questions, discussion initially revolved around recommendations for finding an audience. It takes more than a good product to be profitable. Sometimes you have to also be innovative in targeting your consumer. Another topic of discussion was prompted by a question asking how to protect intellectual property when the digital domain makes it simple to pirate your creations. The consensus was that the best way to protect your ideas is to build your brand.

By Dave Coover

Track: Web Technologies

Speaker:  Gary Overgard - Sr. Software Engineer, Northern Natural Gas

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Gary is a self-proclaimed geek who enjoys the challenge of optimizing systems that have a known, high degree of failure.  His process involves agents, ruleforms, animation engines, and Hox software genes.  Gary used the natural gas transport system as an example of a system that has to balance and allocate itself.

Ruleforms serve as precursors to theories of emergence and eventually serve as the process itself by the execution of simple rules.  This presentation offered techniques for simplifying large network problems with node-spanning relationships that are rule-bound. The example used was a natural gas transport system that has to balance and allocate itself. The focus was on concepts that were used to implement a prototype, which was demonstrated. Gary looked at a combination of ruleforms, software Hox genes, agents, animators and specialized iterators.

By John Jeanetta

Room Number: 207

Track: Business Skills for the IT Professional

Session Date/Time: 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm

About the Speakers: Kris Lappala, Vice President, First National Bank, and Chair of the AIM IT Leadership Academy Steering Committee facilitated this presentation along with John Jeanetta, Vice President of Organizational Development at the AIM Institute.  

Panelists included four current participants in Class 1 of the AIM IT Leadership Academy: Jonathan Becker, Systems Engineer, Omaha Public Schools; Nicole Becker, Director of Systems, HDR, Inc.; Ricky Johnson, Manager, First Data; and Nancy Williams, Technology Director, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Midlands.

Essence of Track Session: The AIM IT Leadership Academy was developed and implemented last fall with an inaugural class of 24 IT professionals from a diverse group of area businesses, educational institutions, governmental entities, and nonprofit organizations.  

Given the challenges of global competition and a changing workforce, the AIM IT Leadership Academy was created to help IT managers, and those IT professionals who aspire to be managers, develop and enhance their leadership skills to more fully leverage the talents and contributions of the local IT workforce and maximize its effectiveness.  

The program consists of an orientation and seven monthly day-long seminars which focus on the following topics: Authentic Leadership; Global Mindset; Strategic Planning; Creativity / Innovation; Developing and Retaining an IT Workforce; Communication Skills; and Self-management.  

According to the panelists, the program has had a tremendous impact on those who participated in Class 1. Citing both personal and organizational impact, the panelists described how the content of the seminars and the networking that occurred with the other participants was invaluable.

Conclusion: Applications for Class 2 of the AIM IT Leadership Academy are currently being accepted.  The deadline for submission is September 18, 2009.  The class will be selected and the participants notified by October 2 and the orientation will take place on October 15.  For additional information please visit the AIM IT Leadership Academy website at itleader.aiminstitute.org.  For an application packet, please contact Jean Munger at 345-5025, x158, or jmunger@aiminstitute.org