It’s been a great few days at the itSMF Fusion 10 conference and I have to say I definitely had a great time.  Met a lot of brilliant people, came across some new and useful information (as well as not so new information – but that’s expected), and I had opportunities to meet some other like-minded IT professionals

Without further delay, here’s the absolute best of the information, observations and lessons learned from the conference:

1.  Culture, culture, culture.  I’ve read and written how culture is crucial for any process improvement initiative, and it must have been the most widely spoken critical success factor.

2.  Be as transparent as possible and show everything that I.T. is doing.  This has two goals.  First, being transparent exposes all the dysfunctions of the department so people realize that improvements do need to be made.  Secondly, when the department is doing very well it’s important to show “the business” where the money is being spent.

3.  Just about everyone has the same set of challenges with process and customer service improvement.  As much as I love to be original I hate to admit that the challenges I see in health care are the same challenges that everyone else is seeing, both within the same industry and across the general I.T. spectrum.

4.  The easiest way to make a change is with leadership approval.  Do I really need to explain this one?

5.  The most difficult way to make a change is by waiting for someone to do it for you.

6.  Malcolm Fry is pretty damn intelligent.  If you live in ITIL or ITSM, don’t pass up a chance to hear him speak, especially if you love British humor.

7.  I’m not the only one that has difficulty in being direct with verbal communication.

8.  If you want to know where I.T. will be in five years, have an economist map out future trends.  I’ll have to write more on this topic.

9.  Don’t wear blue shirts.

10.  There are a lot of nice vendors out there and as much as my head was about to explode with hearing their speeches, I forget that the vendor life is not an easy one.

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.