There are 2 things you can expect when you organize something like a forum. One is you can expect that things will be a lot different from the way you planned and the second is that when people share experiences, there's bound to be insights.

That essentially was the gist of what happened during yesterday's CIO Forum - lots of surprises and even better, plenty of actual CIO experience which mere data cannot fully hope to illustrate or capture. One thing in particular struck me as textbook lessons with how new technologies gain adoption within companies like the use of open source for example. It is true that we can often cite data, reports and even studies showing that open source isn't something of a passing fad and fact is that it is slowly becoming not just the software of choice per se, but more importantly perhaps is it's contribution to coming up with a new model of product innovation based on the efforts of a community.

Still, introducing open source or for that matter any new technology would often be subject to the laws that govern change and disruption.  As one attendee mentioned, introducing changes, despite obvious potential for cost savings and similar, and certainly not retrograde functionality  will always be met by resistance because it is a disruption of comfort levels for the existing users.  Besides strong management sponsorship, it would take a bit of strategizing to be able to facilitate such changes.  As one corporate CIO has done inside their company, instead of sweeping changes, he focused on implementing use of open source by small departments.  Instead of an overhaul, he went for small but sustained efforts and kept the belief that ultimately, all will realize that not only is there tremendous cost savings but that these applications work just as good as the ones they're used to.

Which leads me to a timely article that begins with the value of purpose and big ideas but illustrates from an execution perspective how this can be done: Think Big, Act Small, and Scale Fast.  The importance of building gradually and "not getting ahead of the parade" as Mats Lederhausen would say it.

Thinking carefully, that is one great piece of  advice when it come to promoting technology - and on a greater degree, a valuable skill we could apply to our own lives as well.

A big thank you to those who helped making yesterday's CIO Forum as flawless as possible and to the guests who made it all worth it.