Jonathan Feldman, director of IT services for the City of Asheville, N.C., is one of the most sought-after speakers on the IT and innovation circuit. He's no ordinary local government CIO.
He's a contributing analyst at InformationWeek. He's the author of Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting and a contributing editor at Network Computing. As far as enterprise and organizational IT goes, he's been around the block, working with the government, military, law enforcement, financial services, and healthcare sectors.
Heading up Asheville's IT services since February 2005, he has worked to improve customer service scores and reduce costs. His innovations have garnered awards for the IT services department, including the International Economic Development Council's new media award and Excellence in Public Service award.
Jonathan is a rare example of an IT director working at the cutting edge of new technology and customer service, and a thought leader with strong views on everything from cloud security to project management to email.
Join us for a tour around Jonathan Feldman's IT world, today at 2:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. PT).
I look forward to hearing what Feldman has to say, in part because Asheville is such a pretty city and in part because he must be a very dynamic person to have accomplished so much in a relatively short time. I think press and inustry recognition often feeds off itself: Once someone's been lauded publicly, others often follow suit. Feldman's continued list of accomplishments is intriguing and I can't wait to hear more!
The hot new position in government is a city's Chief Innovation Officer.
About five cities have gone this route and many are looking at it.
The innovation officer is part IT/part auditor, it seems to me. Innovation can come from technology implementation, but also in looking at more creative ways to make government effective. That may involve changing fees for services (lowering them so more use them or comply--lower price of a permit may have more compliers), removing fees, or moving the needle in some other way.
It will be interesting to see, over time, if this is a trend or a fad. The title feels fadish, but the concept seems needed.
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Neal Stephenson is best known as the author of science fiction novels such as SnowCrash and Anathem. But he does other things as well. Among them: He's assembled a team of scientists and engineers to figure out how to build a 20-kilometer-tall tower to use as a platform for launching rockets into space.
While interstellar travel presents huge challenges, it's "almost inevitable," according to a speaker at the Starship Century symposium here in San Diego.
Catch up on the week with one simple serving of Friday File. We've pieced together 10 interesting news bites you may have missed and put them together in bite-size morsels.
Dave Austin, communications director for Multnomah County, discusses why he's excited to move from the county's "old and clunky" intranet and onto an open-source platform, and how this change will help him do his job.
The medical instruments manufacturer looks to metrics to quantify its social business engagement, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution editor in chief Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
"Social Enterprise" is an increasingly trendy term, and Salesforce.com has been leading the way. At its Dreamforce conference last week, the theme was clear: From here on, enterprise applications must have social capabilities built in.
Enterprises are discovering that using social networking within the secure setting of a SaaS provider's network gives them an unusual opportunity to freely collaborate with partners, suppliers, and even competitors.
Elizabeth Pizzinato, SVP of marketing and communications at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, calls content marketing "the new black" and explains how her brand engages its target audience.
Linda Descano, President and CEO of Women & Co., and managing director of partnerships and branded content of North America marketing at Citi, explains her firm's marketing opportunities and challenges.
Gil Elbaz, CEO of Factual, talks about the importance of data and analytics for marketers and how the technology is evolving to better assist automated, real-time decisions.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
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