INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: What amazes me is that after so many years of reporting and attempting to demystify this subject, companies worldwide still have huge problems making technology deliver. Consumers on the other hand, have become more techno-literate and are demanding vendors deliver solutions that are effective.
As well as launching the first business tv channel for the IT industry – The Computer Channel (British Satellite Broadcasting in 1990 (see right) – I’m perhaps best known for editing Which Computer? in the 1980s. I edited the respected IT monthly (the style and content of which many of today’s business and computer, and consumer, publications have copied) for three years, and won a number of editorial and design awards (I was twice nominated for ‘Computer Journalist Of The Year’). I also chaired the magazine’s series of ‘Management Conferences’.
From 1984-1997 I was also a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph ‘Special Reports’ and The Times ‘Interface’ sections, covering many of the major events that have shaped today’s technology business, and explaining how business can best exploit the tools at its disposal.
EXPERTISE – enterprise intelligence and best practice support for CxOs: I possess a considerable knowledge of the decision support, executive information systems (EIS), business intelligence (BI) and on line analytical processing (OLAP), the so-called enterprise intelligence, market and its players. I was one of the first British journalists to cover the emergence of EIS and BI, and the first to report on the significance of OLAP, data warehousing and knowledge management in Europe.
I also worked on the pre-launch of CFO Europe in the late 1990s. I spent four years working for CIO Connect, advising the UK’s networking forum for CIOs and their direct reports how to manage their business technologies effectively by showing them how their peers were tackling everyday challenges and coming out winning.
Over the years, I’ve interviewed the US and Europe’s leading CIOs. In the 1990s, I was Secretary of The Open Group’s think-tank, The Inner Circle, providing support for the organisation’s much respected series of meetings for CIOs. This helped The Open Group establish policy and direction, and service the needs of its members. More recently, I’ve written for CIO US and MIS UK.
I’ve worked on a number of publications:
Lyonsdown’s: 48pp Information Security supplement for The Guardian which advised management how it should keep on top of the immensely complex process of making sure operations are secure. We’re all aware of the security threats that transacting business electronically can potentially introduce.
Which Computer?: Edited and managed the market’s leading computer publication; oversaw management conferences and Which Computer? Show – ‘the’ event of its day. As the UK’s first real computer magazine for business, it broke the mold – speaking to its readers in a language they could understand rather than fluent geek. It was a must-buy at the newsstand and lived up to its catchline: Where business and computers connect.
ERP Focus: VNU’s quarterly magazine that covers the wild and wacky world of enterprise resource planning for those who plan for and manage these complex systems. Like Which? it also introduced e-business to a new generation of company eager to take advantage of the technologies that had already transformed their multinational competitors. It featured actual companies doing real things with their investments and showed the results, warts and all.
Desktop Computing: A monthly electronic briefing paper for those who have the misfortune as managers to be lumbered with a complex, client server installation, and have to keep the peace between those using the technology on the desktop, and those maintaining it in the IT department.
Executive Systems International: Edited this fortnightly reference work for management support professionals and their suppliers, published by Business Intelligence: The OLAP Report and the annual EIS/Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing conferences and exhibitions), seeing the decision support and enterprise intelligence market grow from a mere handful of players, to over a hundred.