Activities
Activities of the Nashville CIO Council fall into three categories:
Meetings :
Regular monthly meetings are held in the Brentwood area on the second Friday of each month. These meetings last precisely an hour and a half with the first half hour set aside for social interaction.
These meetings are intended to provide non-biased information for the CIO Council members from a high-level perspective, without emphasis on specific vendors or technologies. Presentation topics are solicited from the membership along with the names of potential presenters. Occasionally, a member may be asked to make a presentation regarding their company and IT environment in an effort to inform others of the member’s business and issues and provide an opportunity for others to share their own experiences. These “roundtable” discussions have proven to be extremely valuable to the membership.
While most meetings are held in the Brentwood area, there have been instances where a CIO Council member will host the meeting at their company’s facility to demonstrate the results of a project of interest to the Council members. This allows Council members to view a working system installation without the bias of the vendor’s interpretation of the results. Council members are able to talk directly with the technical people responsible for the installation and the business users who must work with the installation on a daily basis.
Examples of past meeting topics include :
- IP Telephony
- Selective Outsourcing Techniques
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Recruiting and Retaining IT Talent
- Distance Learning Technology
- Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence
- Performance Management
Networking :
Independent and unbiased information regarding a vendor, product or technology is usually difficult to find, but through the networking opportunities of the Nashville CIO Council, it is easy for members to share their experiences and provide valuable information to other members.
Networking of the membership develops through a variety of methods.
| 1. |
There is the social time provided before each of the monthly meetings. Members are encouraged to talk with other members about their issues and locate others who may have already been through the challenges they’re currently facing. |
| 2. |
Pat Camm acts as a clearing house for requests from the membership. A member can submit a question or request for information to Pat who then distributes the request to the membership. Anyone with relevant information that is willing to share is then able to contact the member directly. |
| 3. |
The Council supports an evening dinner social event each year to provide additional time for members to develop personal relationships furthering the opportunities for sharing outside of the formal Council meetings. |
Community Events:
The Nashville CIO Council contains a vast pool of knowledge, experience and talent within its membership. In many ways, access to this knowledge base would not be possible without the existence of the CIO Council.
Requests from external organizations go to Pat Camm who then screens the requests and distributes to the membership as appropriate. Examples of community support include :
- Participating in the planning and preparation of a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation for creation of a Regional IT Center in Middle Tennessee.
- Support for the Nashville Summer Business Camp for the Metropolitan / Davidson County Schools.
- Input to a Nashville based IT Salary Survey in conjunction with the Nashville Chamber of Commerce and Nashville Technology Council.
Individual members of the Council are knowledgeable professionals who are committed to Nashville and the Information Technology industry. Establishment of the Nashville CIO Council has provided a unique method of tapping into this talent while preserving the privacy of the individual members and providing a screening mechanism for assistance requests.
