Downtown Lunch Meeting

Agenda:
11:15 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Informal Networking
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Lunch and Announcements
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Keynote Speaker and Q&A
2:00 p.m. – Presentation concludes

Cost:
Members: $40 if registered by Friday, February 13th, $50 thereafter
*Guests: $60 if registered by Friday, February 13th, $70 thereafter
*Must be accompanied by a SIM member

GUEST POLICY: Guests who are vendors or represent IT service providers are allowed only when accompanied by another guest who is an IT practitioner.

About Harwell Thrasher:
Harwell Thrasher is an author, speaker and coach specializing in the human side of Information Technology. He sometimes describes himself as a "jiggler" because he helps unstick companies and IT organizations who are stuck in their old ways of doing things. Harwell founded MakingITclear, Inc. in 2002 after more than thirty years of previous experience in Information Technology.

Harwell specializes in improving IT effectiveness by helping IT and business people understand each other's issues and needs. He's been a speaker at Microsoft's CIO Summit, at the University of Georgia Executive MBA program, and for meetings of various technical and non-technical societies. In 2005 he was the keynote speaker for the Annual Computing Conference of the University System of Georgia, and in 2008 he was a speaker at SIMposium, the annual conference of the Society for Information Management.

Harwell has been writing and publishing a monthly email newsletter for CIO's since April, 2003. In 2007 he published his first book, Boiling the IT Frog: How to Make Your Business Information Technology Wildly Successful Without Having to Learn Anything Technical, which explains IT issues to a business audience, and gives business people advice on how to improve the effectiveness of their IT organizations.

Previous Experience
As Vice-President of Technology Architecture & Strategy at Ceridian Corporation, Harwell performed technology due diligence for over twenty prospective Ceridian acquisitions in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Switzerland, and helped the acquired companies integrate their IT strategy with the strategy of the parent company. Harwell's experience at Ceridian included a number of business process reengineering efforts. He led a major effort to automate a financial services business, and he led the creation of Ceridian's first Internet payroll product.

Prior to Ceridian, Harwell worked at the headquarters for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), where he developed and managed MRP (Material Requirements Planning) systems for DEC's 29 manufacturing plants around the world.

A graduate of M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management, Harwell is an Atlanta native.

Topic Summary
Information Technology is a lot like the Wizard of Oz. It’s impressive, it seems to work miracles, but in the end it’s just a bunch of gadgets being controlled by some people hidden behind a curtain. Business and IT can partner to make their business Information Technology wildly successful, but only if they understand the secrets revealed in this presentation. Pull back the curtain to learn about the hidden issues that IT organizations have to face on a day-to-day basis. Learn the secrets of successful communication between business and IT people. Discover the best ways to set IT strategy, choose projects, and make IT projects successful. Find out how to measure IT success.

Who Should Attend This Presentation
This presentation is for everyone who is frustrated with Information Technology, and for every non-technical person who is at the mercy of a seemingly uncooperative IT organization. It’s for business people who want to better understand IT, and for IT people who want to know why their jobs are so difficult and unappreciated. This presentation gives you the information you need to improve the relationship between business and IT. And with that improved relationship, you can make your own job more successful.

This is not a technical presentation. Driving a car doesn’t require knowledge of cylinder heads and compression ratios, and you don’t have to understand software and hardware to make optimum use of Information Technology. It’s the people managing and using the technology who are important – not the technology itself – and this is a presentation about those people, their limitations in coping with technology, and how they can better deal with those limitations.