There are of course a lot more organizations arranging ITSM events than the local Chapters of itSMF; both commercial and non-commercial organizers. One such event is the annual“ Service Manager Dag( Day)” in the Netherlands arranged by the local Dutch IT society NGI-NGN. This year the event took place on March 23 rd in the charming city of Amersfoort approximately 50 km southeast of Amsterdam. The venue was an old train garage and the rustic interior contributed positively to the atmosphere of the event, together with the 300 + participants, the sponsors and their stands, the speakers and the toastmaster Mark Smalley. Like so many other conferences there were quite a few international speakers and participants, including yours truly. The conference program had several key-notes and four breakout tracks, all marked with Dutch or English flags, indicating the language. Since my Dutch is somewhat limited to say the least it made my selection of track sessions a lot easier. Below is a little overview of the sessions I chose, without going into the details. Mark Smalley of course welcomed everybody and explained some of the practical details for the day. First key-note was Niels Loader from Quint Wellington Redwood, who emphasized the challenges and changes ahead of us as service managers. Next key-note was a welcoming reunion with Mike Orzen, whom I last met at the itSMF Norway conference back in 2012. This time Mike spoke about lean IT, DevOps, learning cycles and continuous learning. Later on the day Mike reminded me that during breakfast back in 2012 I promised to invite him for the itSMF Denmark conference. I have now forwarded the latest call for speakers to him. Final key-note for the morning was professor Rini van Solingen. Just using a flip-over he gave a very interesting presentation with the title“ The Responsive Enterprise”. On one page, he had written three numbers: 1543, 1687 and 1859. They appeared to be years, but what exactly happened those years? He revealed that 1543 was the year Copernicus discovered that the earth wasn’ t the center of the universe, 1687 was the year Newton made his second law and 1859 Darwin published his book“ On the Origin of Species”. But to fully understand how this fits with ITSM you need to see it live or a recording. 10 itSMFI Forum Focus— June 2017
After the break, the break-out sessions started. I chose to listen to Dr. Martin Goble from TCS in the UK and the session“ The road to SIAM”. Service Integration And Management is a hot topic at the moment. Martin did a good job of explaining what SIAM is and gave some good examples, of both successful and some not so successful implementations. Next break-out session was with Benno Peperkamp, who, based on a thesis on a research program, gave a presentation with the title“ Successful IT sourcing constructs: The tension between trust and formal contract”. A somewhat theoretical presentation, but quite interesting in my opinion. After lunch, there was one more key-note by Paul Bessems. The subject being blockchain and how that will change our lives, especially our work life. First afternoon break-out for my part was one more session on SIAM. This time with Claire Agutter on the SIAM Body of Knowledge and the SIAM Foundation education and certification. I’ ve since started on the SIAM e-learning and will bring a review later of this education. Also interesting to hear that work is in progress for the next level of education. The final session I could participate in was with Rob Akershoek, one of the key architects behind IT4IT from the OpenGroup. A lot of information on the framework and how it can be applied. IT4IT is also one of the hot topics at the moment. An important part of any conference is of course networking. I had the pleasure to meet people I had only met in cyberspace including Barclay Rae from the UK, Christian Tijsmans from Belgium, Mark O ' Loughlin from Ireland, Daniel Breston from the UK / US and Aala Roos from Finland. I also met with“ the usual suspects” such as Sofi Fahlberg from Norway, Elina Pirjanti from Switzerland / Finland, Simone Jo Moore from France / Australia and Kaimar Karu from UK / Estonia. And, not the least, people from the events committee including Dave van Herpen, Gerard de Jong, Robert de Koning, Philippe Lardinois, Murat Kocamis, Stephen Ley, Maarten Bordewijk and especially Ester van der Wal, whom I suspect had a big stake in the successful execution of the event. More information about the conference can be found here.