From the desk (and BlackBerry) of Keith Parnell

2009 Advertising Apple BlackBerry blog Brand CEO Christ Christmas CIO Coffee with the CEO commercial economy email Facebook God Google IT JASE JASE Group JASE Marketing JASEzone Javelin Jesus Keith Parnell Linux Lord Marketing Microsoft Norfolk Pearl RSS small business social community Social Media social network T-mobile Technology tv Twitter VA Video Windows Wireless YouTube

CIO UK picked up on a survey conducted by Harvey Nash asking Chief Information Officers and IT Executives what they thought about themselves and their colleagues having a strong personal brand.

67% of CIOs and IT execs believe having a strong personal brand is very important to the IT division. Although most say they are falling short on developing their personal brand, 65% of respondents say they are getting out and visiting within their office so their face and views become well-known.

CIO UK says, “CIOs told us that they believe the most important asset from having a strong brand is board level influence, followed by their brand giving the IT department a figurehead that can be identified with.”

How is your IT Chief’s Personal Brand?

Read the full CIO UK article here.

This is a follow-up to an earlier post about whether Chief Information Officers should have experienced technology, business or both backgrounds.

I made a statement that our CIO in 2009 must be the go-to person at the C-level conference table for social media topics. It went something like this -

… the role of the CIO, in 2009 we will be adding a specific requirement that satisfies marketing initiative requirements. The CIO must understand and must support social media. Period.

To further elaborate, I believe it is the CIO’s responsibility to be all over social networks for their company, to be knowledgeable in the environment and understand them architecturally. This means experience. This means active participation.

The CIO must know, in enough detail, the relationship between architecture, strategy and innovation. And must be able to establish goals for the IT division that will satisfy marketing on social platforms like JASEzone.

This is a tired conversation. It’s gone on for several years now, for as long as the Chief Information Officer title has been hip.

The answer is simple. Why not both?!

I’m not going to hire (or be) a CIO that doesn’t know tech. And I’m not going to hire (or be) a CIO that doesn’t fully understand how to align their division with the business goals of the organization.

To further expand on the role of the CIO, in 2009 we will be adding a specific requirement that satisfies marketing initiative requirements. The CIO must understand and must support social media. Period.

What do you think? Should the CIO shoulder this much expectation?

Paul Dunay has published a list of C-level executives that are active in the micro-blogging scene. He has subdivided the list by Chief Executive Officers, Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Technology Officers and Chief Information Officers.

See the full list of executives and links to their respective Twitter pages here.

Michael (Keith) Parnell

As Chief Information Officer of Stratum, Keith Parnell has led the company into a new era of leveraging information technology to deliver value to customers. Under his leadership, Stratum is on a path to development that has driven behavior change within the organization and garnered strong interest from other technology leaders. Keiths focus on converting IT investment into direct customer value has led to community excitement for creating total lifetime customer value.

Keith led visionary steps, architectural design and oversaw the implementation of a powerful yet user friendly Customer Relationship Management System, a well-known animal rights activist organization’s web-based business model, which simplifies the collection, storage and reporting of customer information processes and eliminates the added cost of technical support for large volumes of customers and donors. In addition, he directed the plan for multi-generational order fulfillment activities and synchronized it with plans for the restructuring of the organization’s website, ensuring that transacting business will consistently build and maintain the organization’s brand promises to customers globally.

Keith has been involved in several substantial initiatives in the automotive, sports, financial and government industries. Each initiative has been guided under his leadership to break ground in the technology arena garnering attention from both industry and technology professionals. Keith earned a bachelors degree in information science and a masters degree in software engineering.

Keith blogs at blog.keithparnell.com.