Christmas cheer for the Canadian IT industry

I leave this year feeling profoundly grateful to many people. Before I head off for the holidays, it’s time to thank some of them publicly.

Thank you editors, writers and staff of IT World Canada, for working so hard amid so much pressure and achieving some amazing results.

Thank you to all the contestants of Blogging Idol who helped us win a Canadian Online Publishing Award for Best Community Feature. Thanks also to all the other 60-plus bloggers who don’t get paid but who are becoming marquee stars on our various portals.

Thank you to the dozens of talented technology professionals who entered and helped celebrate our first-ever IT Leadership Awards (and ComputerWorld Canada’s 25^th anniversary).

Thank you to the subscribers who wrote in to complain to me about the stories we got wrong, the outlandish typos and the occasionally annoying ads on our sites. We’re listening and learning.

Thanks to all the IT industry people who have helped us make the transition from text to multimedia by agreeing to be interviewed on camera, either in our studio or elsewhere.

Thank you to all the people who filled out our ComputerWorld Canada Salary Survey, which will continue to help demonstrate that excellence in IT management doesn’t come cheap.

Thanks to the people who filled out our white papers, tried out our assessment tools and took the quizzes. We throw a lot at you during your office hours, but you keep helping us finance the best technology journalism in this country.

Thanks to the crowds at CIO Exchange, Technicity, Lac Carling, the Channel Elite Awards and all our other signature events and breakfast seminars, for listening carefully and asking questions. I loved getting to talk to you and shake your hands.

Thank you to our partners like JobServe Canada, IDC Canada, Info-Tech Research and the University of Waterloo, for bringing powerful content and expertise to the products and services we offer.

Thank you to all the worthy competitors, many of you unexpected and emerging, who force us to keep reinventing and, ultimately, crushing you (Just kidding. Not really).

Thank you to the advertisers, especially the ones who are keeping print a part of our publishing mix. I still like paper, and I know many of our readers do, too.

And thank you, finally, to the IT industry, for staying so interesting after more than a dozen years that I’m still occasionally stunned by what happens and inspired by the people who are trying to create positive change in this world.

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth. Good will towards all IT people.