Day 2 opened with several industry awards being presented. It was quite poignant and special that these included honouring the luminary Robert Stroud with a posthumous award for his contribution to the industry plus his long-term international support and friendship for the itSMF.
In the second half of the conference I attended a “Women in Tech” panel with strong role models including Jayne Groll of the DevOps Institute.
These women were generous in sharing their personal stories and insights into the way forward for women and girls in STEM careers.
It is worth noting that in comparison to other IT disciplines, service management attracts a higher percentage of women. We can certainly do better towards parity, however, with just 25% women
speakers at this conference.
The social activities were also quite full in providing our service management
community many great ways to engage over food, drink, plus some fun games and prizes. I was keen to win the drone but sadly that didn’t happen.
Charles Araujo presented a ‘fireside chat’ towards the end of the conference which was a nice wrap up for me. It began as a campfire conversation reminiscing on the significant changes in IT delivery and operations over the last couple of decades.
He then led us into an interactive conversation on where the attendees
saw the future of service delivery and management going.
In short, the key conference message was a wakeup call to disruption and
transformation. After many days spent with my international friends and
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