2004: What do you need to know?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been on the road with our Storage Technology Tour, Voice over IP Technology Tour and Security Technology Tour. On each of these, attendees – IT managers like you – have sought me out to thank Network World for providing free education on topics that vex them in their everyday jobs.

I’ve gained insight on how to improve our seminars: what to add and what to leave out, how to coach the presenters so that attendees get more out of their discussions, and what network challenges we can help address.

Now that I’m back at home base, I’m working closely with our team here to develop our 2004 schedule, taking into account all the feedback we’ve received. But the more information I gather, the better our lineup of educational opportunities will be.

So here’s my challenge to all of you – the 30,000-plus IT folks who are part of this newsletter’s subscriber base. Tell me in an e-mail (sgittlen@nww.com) how we can improve our events to better suit your needs.

I know times have changed: budgets are limited (cliché, but true) and time is even more constrained. You don’t have enough staff to rotate out to educational events and even if you did, when would you be able to implement new technologies anyway?

But the truth is, and attendees tell me this all the time, you need to be prepared for the eventual economic turnaround. You need the knowledge we are offering at our multitude of seminars to keep your motivation up and your career moving forward. You need to add to what you know to continue to be a valuable part of your team. If you stop learning, your career path will become muddied.

And that’s where we come in. We have access to the best moderators – experts who are close to the action and can offer timely and practical advice on the hottest technologies. And our stable of moderators is growing all the time: This year we added a host of new names to our lineup, including Tom Henderson, principal researcher at Extreme Labs and a member of Network World’s Global Test Alliance, and Johna Till Johnson, founder of Nemertes Research and author of Network World’s “Eye on the Carriers” column. 

We also bring together the top companies in each market – veterans in the industry present alongside promising start-ups. Among the networking leaders that have stepped onto our stage over the past year: Cisco, Foundry, IBM, HP, Aruba, Compuware, Lancope, Visual Networks, BlueSocket and many more.

That said, what could we do better? What topics aren’t we covering? What do you see as your biggest challenge that we aren’t addressing yet? What experts have you seen during your travels that you’d like to hear from in our forum? Does our format of keynoters, sponsor presentations and roundtable discussions work for you? Or would you rather see a different approach?

Do you need more access to the sponsors? Do you need to hear more from the keynoters? Do you want more of an opportunity to network with your peers?

Please send me your comments at sgittlen@nww.com Here’s your chance to affect your own future by helping us offer the best education possible.