The MIT Sloan CIO Symposium is an annual one-day conference where CIOs and other senior execs gather to “explore how academic research and innovative technologies can help address the practical challenges in today’s changing economy.” I sat through four panels. Here are my notes on the first one. The other three will follow in separate posts.

I found it interesting to hear what the various speakers are thinking but, with a few exceptions, did not hear much new stuff. However, I still thought the day worthwhile to see what positions people in these positions are holding. 

This panel looked at virtualized workspaces and collaboration. It did not focus on hardware of software services virtualization. That is oaky, just a clarification as the terms is used for several things these days. 

Moderator: Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, Chairman Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, and Visiting Professor of Engineering Systems MIT. He said the virtual organization is very hot these days and asked why? Ten answering his own question offered three issues. First, for last 100 to 200 years hierarchical organization was the way, However, hierarchical organizations only work up to a point. When get global hierarchy does not work. You need to be more distributed groups.

Second, the nature of problems companies are now addressing are so complex they need to work in groups. They need to overcome silos and bring other different groups within and outside organization into play so need a distributed virtual approach to problem solving is required.  Third, the technology now allows us to do things that we could not before in virtual collaboration.

Irving also mentioned the need for transparency in for complex systems and virtualization to work. Our children are growing up in a virtualized and transparent world with web presence. The older generation is learning, often from the younger ones.

Ms. Lorie Buckingham, CIO Avaya. Avaya provides communication center software and unified business communication platforms to enable multiple channels. Lorie feels that virtualization leads to more access to unstructured data to drive innovation, I would agree that this is a byproduct of allowing for communication within tools that archive the process outcomes. She said it is an important time for CIO to lead in this space. They need to create the road map for virtualization.

Teams operate best with the right balance of personal contact and virtualization. They need to pick the right parts for co-location. Work cannot be all virtual. I would say that it depends on the work.  

Lorie said people need to put more personal context into virtual communication so people can connect to them better in virtual way. Good point. She aid that younger people are better at this.

Mr. Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division Citrix Systems. They do virtual desktop applications that work in the cloud. They develop in Open Source. He said the CIO is facing changing and higher expectations of the workforce. Most employees go beyond internal capabilities out on the web. The younger generation would see this panel odd because it should be a given not a debate.  

Simon said that you can build virtual worlds that are more focused than real world. He constructs virtual worlds with key team members to be aware of presence and signal such things as open and closed access. This is like what Godard said to paraphrase, “truth can be too complex, fiction gives it form.”

Simon added that many people now build their public personal resumes that go beyond their workplace. Their online identity is not limited to their employment or even their profession.  He added that such focused passions also drive open source work and build personal credibility. I would agree that personal control is more energizing. I established a more robust web presence once I left a large organization and became an enterprise of one. I also put more energy into the process.

Simon feels that there is a way to go for social media platforms to be useful an business tools. Here I disagree.

Simon Crosby said, “social sites are building database for the planet.” I would add that the ability to go across them to break down silos will be important. One small step in this direction, Tweetdeck allows you to see Facebook friend statuses. However, I am thinking of something much deeper here such as search across all platforms.

Simon said that firms need to throw things off the cliff every once in a while. I wonder if he meant they should do this to test recovery or clear the deck?

Mr. Bilal Husain, Director of eServices Projects Saudi eGovernment Program, Saudi Arabia. His agency is helping all government agencies to transform how they work with end users on a coordinated basis. He said that past attempts had failed because of lack of integration.

Bilal said there are challenges for transformation. Many people happy with way things are, especially those who benefit from corruption. The government needs to provide incentives for employees because transformation requires more work during the process. If employees to do not use and support transformation, it will not work, he added that in his country, the private sector has also taken best employees. Another challenge to eGov is the lack of infrastructure in some areas, especially rural ones.

Mr. John Stone, President CrossTech Partners, LLC. John was at IBM when Irving was there. His firm provides services as well as VC. Funding. They focus on “second circle” startups that are new but not bleeding edge, e.g., event technology arena, social networking and collaboration. He sees the market forces for virtual workspaces as: going green, cost reduction, as well as productivity improvement.

John said that 80% of the effort is in business process and people only 20% in technology to make the transformation to virtual world. He finds much social media engagement at his firm and there is approval to do this. He does business on Facebook and Twitter.

John said the virtual workspaces provide innovation on the knowledge management side over the very structured intranets of the past.  Now with to user generated content that is tagged you can better identify and manage expertise in organizations. This comes from applying concepts first seen on the web. Currently, people are concerned about their brand on social web. However, firms are beginning to be concerned with this also.