With Canada Day coming up tomorrow, I thought it’s an appropriatetime to celebrate some of the individuals that I see making adifference in this sector. Yes, I’m leaving lots of people out and thislist could probably have been a lot longer, but how many role models doyou need anyway? Aspire to match the achievements of this handful ofall-stars and you’ll be far ahead of anyone else in your field:
1. Reuven Cohen:Cloud computing has been the biggest trend of the last two years, andReuven has been at the forefront of developing standards, community anda greater understanding of both the technology and the business issues.
2. Catherine Boivie:She helped found the CIO Association of Canada, she’s formed allianceswith European IT organizations and continues to contribute herexperiences as a front-line technology decision-maker to her peerswhenever possible.
3. Rick Claus: He works for Microsoft, but the IT Pro advisor (and my Ignite Your Career Webcastseries co-host) avoids the hard-sell approach in favour of identifyingopportunities to help developers and IT managers educate each otherabout software, business best practices and career-building.
4. Mark Kuznicki:ChangeCamp has been the most influential event among public sectoremployees in years, creating an ongoing dialogue about what the idea of“open government” really means. We were thrilled to have him take partin Lac Carling this year.
5. CATA’s John Reid and ITAC’s Bernard Courtois:This is a tie because while they compete as association leaders, theyshare an agenda that’s consultative, policy-driven and collaborativewith the federal government. If it’s a national issue that affects thewell-being of Canadian high-tech organizations, John and Bernard arethere.
Wishing everyone a great holiday. I’ll be taking a few days off but will be back on Monday.