*ELC 2012 has since been cancelled due to inclement weather*
The annual Executive Leadership Conference (ELC), organized by the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), is scheduled for this weekend at the Williamsburg Lodge and Conference Center in Williamsburg, Virginia. WashingtonExec spoke with this year’s co-chairs, Casey Coleman, Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the General Services Administration (GSA), and Ted Davies, Senior Vice President of Federal Systems at Unisys.
Coleman and Davies are the 2012 ELC government and industry chairs, respectively, and discussed what to expect at this year’s event, the invited speakers, and why it is a “not to miss” experience.
“This year, Casey Coleman and I have had the opportunity to co-chair the event which means that we started almost a year ago planning out what we were going to do at the end of October in Williamsburg this year,” said Davies. “We did it with the view that this event will be taking place right before a presidential election and in a time of pretty dramatic change in our world – what’s going on in other countries and around the globe with the economies, what’s going on here at home and certainly what’s going on with the pending election.”
Davies also noted that we are seeing dramatic change in the technology industry, which is why “Charting a Course Through Changing Times” was selected as this year’s conference theme.
“The whole concept is to bring folks together and discuss the environment and the things that are changing and how the government should deal with that,” Davies added. “We’ve brought together, as we typically do, a two day session that includes notable speakers from the private sector as well as the government to talk along those themes.”
Coleman, a veteran of ELC and outspoken government participant at ACT-IAC, added, “Some of the key elements of the conference include big data, which has come upon us and you can’t open an issue of WashingtonExec or any other magazine without seeing how big of an issue that has become. Mobility continues to be a big issue for us. The workforce and the changing nature of the workforce and the changing nature of how we enable and equip employees to do their best work is a third track and the final one pertains to better, more innovative, more agile ways to purchase and deploy technology – better, faster and cheaper is our goal.”
Noting that government and industry leaders have a plethora of conferences, summits and roundtables to choose from, Davies said that his end goal for conference participants is that they are able to build stronger relationships within the federal IT community.
Davies added, “It may also be some ways that they are going to do their job differently because of something they learned there. We don’t want it to be a two day and then it goes on the shelf. It really should be the beginning of a dialogue for participants to really improve on what they do, whether they are in the government or whether they are in industry.”
Coleman said that she is personally looking forward to connecting with her core peer group – federal CIOs, as well as this year’s selected speakers.
“One of them is Dr. Michio Kaku, a world renowned physicist and futurist and he is going to be kicking off our Sunday night opening session talking about the future of technology and the future of science & engineering and how it’s changing our world in ways that we may not even quite realize yet,” Coleman said.
When asked about participation numbers, in the government as well as industry, the co-chairpersons were enthusiastic.
Coleman said, “We’ve got not only a lot of new participants in the speaker tracks we also have a new organization signed up to attend. I think there are at least a dozen new agencies represented. If anyone is on the fence they should commit to signing up and coming to ELC because it is going to be a ‘not to be missed’ experience.”
“I think as of the other day we have 50 percent more agencies in terms of the representatives being there than last year. We’re finding that the topics that we are covering are of broad relevance so we are bringing in some new parts of the government to talk about their experiences,” Davies said.
WashingtonExec will be attending and reporting at ACT-IAC’s ELC 2012.
