After months of planning and organising, my team successfully delivered our annual CompTIA Member Conference at Ascot Racecourse. It was a resounding success and more than 250 people left very satisfied. James Caan was excellent and a talking point throughout the day, Steve Clayton from Microsoft’s International team gave a brilliant vision of the future to 2019, our US executive management were a fantastic support throughout the week and I shared my own mad-cap presentation on technologies, trends and people! I feel a bit deflated today, now that it is all over, but I am pleased with the results. Roll on the planning for next year, but first a weekend of rest.

Joined the CRN Conference this week, and met some interesting players in the IT channel. Intel had some very visionary things to share and for Dell the emphasis was on their partner programme. A good day, well organised and attended. Whittlebury is also a great venue, and as there was little signal for mobile phones, it meant we spent more time talking face to face with people. Refreshing. I focused my presentation on technologies, trends and people as the principle asset of organisations today. Great example of that was the headline guest, Sir Peter Rigby, founder and chairman of SCH. Humble, hardworking, private, but very successful man – my kind of person.

Presented on technology and education for NAACE this week, at Hellidon Lakes. This was the view from my seat as I waited to go on stage – how calming, my mind was wandering. The presentation went very well and lots of debate afterwards, largely around do our students know more about technology than we do? We concluded that the students don’t necessarily know more, but they are more prepared to give things a try, and they learn as they go. The key point for me from the session was that the future of education must be about ‘learning how to learn’.

Just back from an express trip to Asia, covering Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand – this was the view from my room in Kuala Lumpur. Rushed through 17 meetings, 32 hours of flying and plates brimming with mouthwatering sushi. Lots of government and partner interest for CompTIA certifications and our association work, and presented at the NECTEC conference which was very well received. A satisfying week (and they cover as much of the Premier League in Asia as we get in the UK), so I didn’t miss a thing!

A computer that is super fast, that remains on even when switched off, that can change direction and decision instantly. The BRAIN – firmly tied to the human body, and the best computer of all.

Remember Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Spooked me the first time I read it, but here is a version of it in our world of IT. Companies able to adapt to this new world of cloud computing, open source, software-as-service (SaaS) have a geuine opportunity to steal a march on the competition. This is where the future lies and doing things the old way wont cut it – customers know what they want (and if they don’t it’s a door open for managed services!). Lots of change, lots of opportunity, the digital natives will eat this up!

Nobody has any time for anything. Anything not immediate is deemed too slow. We want fast food, nuked in the microwave because we can’t be bothered to cook (and yet we all watch cookery programmes), we can’t bare to stand in a queue so we bank online and we expect news to reach us as it happens. Shops stay open 24 hours just to remain competitive, or to satisfy our need for doughnuts at 3am. And yet loyalty to stores and brands is old hat, itself having disappeared with time.