Looking forward to another busy season

I’m very excited to be taking over the IT Education and Training newsletter from Sandra Gittlen, whom I know is highly respected by many of you who have followed her columns and possibly have met her in person at a Network World Technology Tour. We wish Sandra the best of luck with her new endeavors and thank her for her hard work over the years. To kick of my first newsletter, I’d like to introduce myself.

As associate online news editor, I am responsible for many of the e-mail newsletters that we offer here at Network World, I also help to ensure that we provide timely and informative content within the news pages of our Web site, Network World Fusion. I am particularly excited to be writing this column as I’ve had the opportunity to co-moderate some of the Tech Tours this past season. I also write for Network World’s Management Strategies section, which focuses on career and management issues, so I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I learn.

Our events team is also working hard to prepare our fall Tech Tours. Although I don’t have the specific dates yet, I can tell you that we are planning to tackle VoIP and messaging/spam in September, and in November, we’ll dedicate the month to security. For those who attended the VoIP tour earlier this year, you’ll know that it was packed at nearly every city we came to, which I must say was a very pleasant surprise but also speaks to the fact that many organizations are seriously considering the technology, if not deploying it already.

And in December, John Gallant, Network World president and editorial director will be on the road with “The IT Guide to 2005.” In this not-to-miss event, John will review and wrap up our events of the past year and provide some guidance as to where network executives should be keeping watch in 2005.

As always, we welcome your comments about the Tech Tours. If there are any issues in particular you’d like us to explore at either the upcoming VoIP, messaging/spam or enterprise security events please let me know and I will pass on the message to the relevant moderators.

At our past VoIP tour, there was a lot of discussion over implications of a state and federal government decision to tax VoIP, as well as debates over voice quality and other deployment issues. At our messaging/spam tour in March, we talked about whether network execs could ever get the upper hand over spammers or whether e-mail would cease to be an effective communications medium. And at our security tour, we asked whether we’ve surrounded ourselves with so much security that our infrastructure has become unwieldy and less nimble.

But there is so much more to discuss, so drop me a line and let me know the issues you’d like to see explored here in the newsletter and on the Technology Tours. E-mail me at mailto:lleung@nww.com