HDI Executive Forum has the Delta Blues
I am very excited to attend my first HDI Executive Forum meeting. I have been working with this group for about 5 years now, but never attended one of their meetings. After meeting with this group this week, I hope to never miss one of these meetings again....what a great group!
The HDI Executive Forum met in Memphis, TN at The Peabody Hotel on September 15-17, 2008. First, let me say that The Peabody Hotel is beautiful. It is one of those amazing hotels that is rich in history and culture. 
The Peabody Hotel is a Mid-South institution, its name considered synonymous with Southern hospitality and Delta style. The 13-story hotel is an excellent example of Italian Renaissance Revival architecture and is Memphis' only historic hotel.
One of the very interesting things about The Peabody Hotel is the ducks...Yes, I said ducks. Everyday, twice a day, the ducks march in and out of the fountain in the lobby of this amazing hotel. I will share the history of these ducks with you as told by The Peabody Hotel...
...In the 1930s, General Manager Frank Schutt began a Peabody tradition that continues today. Returning from a weekend hunting trip in Arkansas, Schutt and his friends thought it would be humorous to leave some of their live duck decoys, which were legal at the time, in the beautiful Peabody fountain. Three small English call ducks were placed in the fountain, to the delight of hotel guests. Since then, ducks have been in the fountain every day. In 1940, Bellman Edward Pembroke, formerly a circus animal trainer, volunteered to care for the ducks and taught them to march into the Lobby – initiating the famous Peabody Duck March. The late Mr. Pembroke was named Duckmaster and served in that position until 1991. The Peabody Duck March has become a tradition that has made the hotel famous.
I have shared a little history with you about the location of this HDI Executive Forum meeting, but I now want to provide you with some of the topics discussed during this meeting. Remember that each topic discussed during an HDI Forum meeting is chosen by the participants of that group. This group chose some very interesting topics during this meeting, including "consumerization of IT", "Self-Help Portals", and "Virtual Service/Support Desks".
You may ask...what is the consumerization of IT?...
The consumerization of IT is the growing use of consumer grade products within the workplace is known as the consumerization of IT. Instant messaging is just one of the many consumer products and services working their way into the office, or indirectly placing pressure on IT infrastructure and policies. Other examples of consumers products that continue to grow within the workplace include:
- Collaboration and social computing: blogs, wikis, and social networking sites (i.e. MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn)
- Multimedia, email, IM
- Mobile Internet devices, i.e. iPhone
- Online gaming
- Public Infrastructure
Dr. Jonathan Reichental, IT Innovations Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, joined the group to discuss "Consumerization and the Emergence ofthe Newly Empowered Employee". The basic question of this discussion was, as consumer grade products continue to grow, how do they get adapted within the work environment and what implications does this have for service desks?
During the next topic discussion, Self-Help Portals, three members of the group actually provided demos of their self-help portals. These members included JPMorgan Chase, T-Mobile, and CompuCom. These demos were a mixture of internal facing portals and external facing portal.
Moving on to the last topic of discussion during this meeting, Virtual Service/Support Desks, Bette Snyder, Help Desk Manager at Varian Medical Systems provided a case study. Bette showed the group how Varian developed and implemented a virtual service/support desk in their environment.
Bette presented Varian’s experience with a Virtual Support Help Desk and a Virtual Service Desk. The objective of the discussion was to to outline how they did it, what they learned along the way, and where they are going. Also addressed was the challenges of team building, and communications with remote support agents.
Bette's main objectives for this discussion was to provide detail on how they started a virtual center and why they did it. She Identified the components necessary to facilitate change in technology and procedures and how they implemented new procedures and technology. Lastly she compared productivity factors and quality improvement between old and new procedures.
All of these discussions were very lively and interactive, all generating some great debate between group members. It has been a treat for me to attend this meeting. I truly gained knowledge by taking part in these discussion and look forward to the next HDI Executive Forum meeting.
The next HDI Executive Forum meeting will take place December 8-10, 2008 in La Quinta, CA. If you are interested in being a part of this group, please don't hesitate to contact me at lcook@thinkhdi.com.
Nice bloggin with you...
Leslie Cook, Forum Program Manager
HDI
719-268-0338
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