A CTO’s views on the new Fed CTO

I’m very pleased with the pick of Aneesh Chopra as the Federal Government’s CTO.  I wish I could add more context than that, and was thinking of a quick biographical sketch of Aneesh and some ideas on why this is great news.  Then I read Tim O’Reilly’s post at OReilly Radar, and frankly I just totally agree with everything Tim said.  Please check out his post at:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/aneesh-chopra-great-federal-cto.html

Here is an excerpt that particullarly resonated with me:

“Chopra has been focused for the past three years on the specific technology challenges of government. Industry experience does little to prepare you for the additional complexities of working within the bounds of government policy, competing constituencies, budgets that
often contain legislative mandates, regulations that may no longer be relevant but are still in force, and many other unique constraints. In his three year tenure as Secretary for Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Chopra has demonstrated that he has these skills. In fact, last year, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers ranked Virginia #1 in technology management. ”

Vivek Kundra: Still the Alpha CTO and now the First Fed CIO

Today’s news on Vivek Kundra’s role in the federal space made me think of another CTO, Yuvi Kochar. Yuvi, the CTO of the Washington Post, is a great connector of CTOs who leads the informal collective of the Washington Area CTO Roundtable.  Although I had heard Vivek speak a time or two, the first really deep interactions I had with
Vivek were through Yuvi’s work in service to the tech community and I much appreciate that.

For a quick update on Vivek from a CTO perspective see:

A Blog I Like: Haft of the Spear

Michael Tanji brings a perspective forged in years of intelligence work and a successful stint protecting information in the financial sector.  He is a well published author who focuses on national security issues and is also a thought leader in the computer security domain.

At Haft of the Spear he writes primarily about technology related/enabled national security issues, which includes a heavy dose of information warfare. 

Read HOTS at: http://haftofthespear.com/

Next week I write about Nicholas Carr and his Rough Type blog.

A Blog I Like: Devost.net

Matt Devost has been a thought leader in information technology, cyber warfare, counter terrorism and security training for over a decade.  He has built successful companies, taught warriors security, helped protect industry and taught (and still teaches) information warfare at Georgetown university.

Through history great thoughts have come from leaders who work at the intersection of multiple domains of practice and Matt continues to demonstrate his thought leadership at is blog.  As proof let me mention his winning of NDU’s Sun Tzu infrormation warfare essay contest in 1996. The article he co-authored titled “Information Terrorism: Can You Trust Your Toaster?” remains a classic thought piece that should be read by every IT professional and military strategist today.

Read that article and Matt’s more recent thoughts at: http://blog.devost.net/

Next week I write about Mike Tanji and Haft of the Speer.

Vivek Kundra: The Alpha CTO

Every CTO I know has heard of Vivek Kundra, CTO of
the District of Columbia.  We have all been following his accomplishments
in transforming the technology program in DC and have watched in excitement as
more and more capabilities have been rolled out to serve the city and its
citizens. We have followed reports of bold moves he put in place to ensure
technology programs deliver.  We have read about his new approaches to
technology portfolio management and watched as he discussed the leap ahead he
delivered to his enterprise by his audacious, courageous use of Google Apps and
other cloud-based solutions.

If you are not one of those familiar with Vivek, here
is a short bio: Vivek Kundra is the CTO for the
District of Columbia where he leads an organization of over 600 staff that
provides technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees,
residents, businesses, and 14 million annual visitors. He brings to the role of
CTO a diverse record that combines technology and public policy experience in
government, private industry, and academia. Previously, Vivek
served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology for the Commonwealth
of Virginia, the first dual cabinet role in the state’s history.  In the
private sector, Vivek led technology companies
serving national and international customers. Earlier he served as Director of
Infrastructure Technology for Arlington, Virginia. He also taught classes on
emerging and disruptive technologies at the University of Maryland. Since Vivek became District CTO, he has been honored with major
IT awards. In 2008, the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium recognized him among
outstanding IT innovators. In addition, InfoWorld Magazine named Vivek among
its “CTO 25″.

I recently saw Vivek at a meeting of the Washington Area CTO Roundtable,
an informal collective of area CTOs led by Yuvi Kochar, CTO of the Washington
Post Company. Before the meeting we chatted about mashup technologies (including his Apps for Democracy  contest and also JackBe).  During the meeting Vivek discussed several
aspects of his innovative efforts to transform the District’s information technology
infrastructure.   A point that struck me was his leadership through
principles.  Three key ones he articulated were: 1) Leveraging commercial
technology, 2) Driving transparency, and 3) Rethinking notions of IT
governance. 

Vivek and I just finished a phone call where we discussed these and other items
in more detail.  Here is a bit more on his approach. 

1) Leveraging commercial technology: Commercial radios and cell phones
allowed a rapid enhancement of the tactical communications infrastructure of
the DC workforce, including the police workforce.  Police squad cars are
also now equipped with commercial, but toughened, laptops.  Commercial web
technology has been leveraged in ways that leaped ahead of old clunky office
automation and also enable rapid development and mashups. 

2) Driving transparency and engaging citizens:  Technology
impediments to information access and information sharing were eliminated in
ways that enable citizens to see how government decisions are being made. 
Data was also exposed in ways that enabled mashups and agile
programing/development.  Examples include DCs digital public square and
Apps for Democracy efforts.

3) Rethinking notions of IT governance: Totally new, innovative ways to
manage IT portfolios were created and used to ensure all stakeholders could
evaluate the technology program and better make informed decisions on when to
terminate programs and where to invest more money.  Chief among these
innovations was an approach to portfolio management that replicates a stock
market trading floor.  More important, however is the relentless focus on
performance and innovation to support performance.  Beside rethinking
these notions of governance Vivek also took measures to smartly
watch/reduce/reprioritize IT costs.

I asked Vivek for thoughts that might be relevant to technologists who have set
their sites on careers where they can deliver results.  Many of us would
like to follow in his footsteps.  I wondered, if there is a particular
computer programing language we should all be learning now?  Should we be
diving into Python?  That’s hot now.  And what about databases? MySQL
and Hadoop are all the rage.  The thoughts I got back from Vivek were
incredibly insightful and far more relevant than the simplistic question I
asked. 

V:  Technology is important, and we do need to know technology.  But in these very exciting times where
Moore’s law pushes us all forward it is actually more important to be able to quickly learn new technology rather than focus on one and only one.  This is the beauty of the new world of
technology. There is always something to learn.  We should also always remember that the reason to learn is the mission.  To an enterprise CTO, technology by itself is worthless.  Technology
only has value if it addresses business problems and drives business success.
Therefore technologists must have an ability to translate between the worlds of
mission needs and technology and need an ability to rapidly learn and deeply
understand both.

I asked Vivek for his intention for sharing his models and methods, since they
have clearly delivered success in DC.  He is doing quite a bit there so
all of us who would like more info have plenty of ways to learn more:

V: The DC CTO site at http://octo.dc.gov
provides links to many of the ongoing activities of the office and for those
who would like more on the models that produce the results we link to policies,
guidelines and procedures.  We also provide information on how our
governance process works.   But additionally we host visits to our
office by interested parties and have begun blogging about them.  In
another effort we hope will help move the models forward we are pressing ahead
with plans to turn our stock market approach to portfolio management into an
open model and will open source the code that makes it work, which should help
drive more innovation there.

Speaking of innovation, Vivek seems to have found a way to accelerate
innovation, which is something all CTOs are interested in doing.  I asked
him for his thoughts on where to look for innovation.  Another interesting
reply:

V:  You can look for innovation many places, but remembering that
necessity is the mother of invention you should keep an eye open for places
that innovate because they really need to.  I always keep an eye on the
developing world and am so incredibly amazed at the tech innovation
there.  Enterprise IT does not mean that every program and project must be
delivered with huge budgets and huge staffs and the incredible innovations
coming out of the developing world prove that time and time again.  I’m
excited and enthused about developments like cell phone voting in Estonia,
electronic census that works in Chili, fishing villages around the world using
instant direct data to plan movement.  Innovation occurs many places, but
some of the greatest lessons for innovation are coming from the developing
world.

I asked Vivek about how to find balance between setting standards and enabling
innovation:

V:  Standards are important, but if a standard gets in the way of
innovation kill it.   Use standards that enable innovation. 
This is the role of the CTO.

Vivek also offered thoughts on social networks.

V:  In seeking ways to make your cycles of innovation move faster, never
underestimate the power of social networking tools and the networks you can
build with them.  Facebook is the example most talked about but there are
many others including networks built around ecommerce like eBay and
Amazon.  I believe we should not only embrace them to enable the power of
social networking but to help us leverage, in a large way, the IT
infrastructure of these platforms.   The new generations today are making
maximum use of these platforms and I view this as a very optimistic point.

As for me, I view the results of Vivek Kundra and his models as optimistic
points.  The great thing about being a CTO is the learning never stops in
this field and Vivek is a great teacher we should all be learning from.

For more on Vivek and the way hew views technology, including some of his inputs to the Obama adminstration, see: http://www.ctovision.com/2009/01/federal-government-technology-directions-and-the-fed-cto.html

A Blog I Like: ShepherdsPi

The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Microsoft’s Institute for Advanced Technologies in Governments, Lewis Shepherd, publishes a blog on technologies relevant to enterprises big and small. 

Lewis writes about tools, techniques and concepts in ways that bring home the real utility of advanced technologies.  Recent posts have been on word-clouds and other ways of visualizing information, semantic constructs, flexible devices and of course recent developments from the tech industry. 

Lewis’s blog should be on any technologist reading list and I consider him a “must follow” connection on twitter. 

You can read Lewis and find his twitter account at:  http://shepherdspi.com/

Next week I write about Matt Devost at: http://blog.devost.net/

Vint Cerf of Google and Bob Gourley of CTOvision.com on CIO Talk Radio

On Wednesday 28 Jan 2009 at 10am Eastern I’ll be on CIO Talk Radio with one of the stars of the global technology community, Vint Cerf.  

The topic we will be discussing is the next technology revolution in the US and how it will start.  Vint is fantastically qualified to discuss this topic, and I’m honored to be sharing a microphone with him and look forward to learning from the interaction.  Every time I get the pleasure of interacting with Vint it ends up influencing me.  I hope to capture some of our interaction for future blog posts here at ctovision.com

Vint’s bio is incredible and I learn something every time I read it.  I’ve pasted it below.  

But first more on CIO Talk Radio.  CIO Talk Radio is an Internet radio talk show, broadcasted live every Wednesday at 9:00 AM Central/ 10:00 AM Eastern, about how technology has changed and is changing the way we live our lives as well as do business.  Guests are business leaders, subject matter experts, and thought leader who are responsible for shaping the way we use technology. Visit the site at: http://ciotalkradio.com and click on LIVE BROADCAST to listen. A popup window will open and if you have Windows Media Player installed, in 10 – 15 seconds, you will listen to the live radio. In case of issues you may also open broadcasting station websites.  Call 866.472.5790 to ask questions during the live broadcast.

Now for that incredibly interesting bio:

Vint Cerf
Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google

Vinton G. Cerf has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google since October 2005. In this role, he is responsible for identifying new enabling technologies to support the development of advanced, Internet-based products and services from Google. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet world.

Cerf is the former senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI. Previously, Cerf served as MCI’s senior vice president of Architecture and Technology.

Widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet,” Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. In December 1997, President Clinton presented the U.S. National Medal of Technology to Cerf and his colleague, Robert E. Kahn, for founding and developing the Internet. Kahn and Cerf were named the recipients of the ACM Alan M. Turing award in 2004 (sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”) for their work on the Internet protocols. In November 2005, President George Bush awarded Cerf and Kahn the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award given by the United States to its citizens. In April 2008, Cerf and Kahn received the prestigious Japan Prize.

Prior to rejoining MCI in 1994, Cerf was vice president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI). As vice president of MCI Digital Information Services from 1982-1986, he led the engineering of MCI Mail, the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet.

During his tenure from 1976-1982 with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Cerf played a key role leading the development of Internet and Internet-related packet data and security technologies.

Vint Cerf served as chairman of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2000-2007. Cerf also served as founding president of the Internet Society from 1992-1995 and in 1999 served a term as chairman of the Board. In addition, Cerf is honorary chairman of the IPv6 Forum, dedicated to raising awareness and speeding introduction of the new Internet protocol. Cerf served as a member of the U.S. Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 1997 to 2001 and serves on several national, state and industry committees focused on cyber-security. Cerf sits on the Board of Directors for the Endowment for Excellence in Education, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Advisory Committee and the Board of the Avanex Corporation. He also serves as 1st Vice President and Treasurer of the National Science & Technology Medals Foundation. Cerf is a Fellow of the IEEE, ACM, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the Annenberg Center for Communications at USC and the National Academy of Engineering.

Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet. These include the Marconi Fellowship, Charles Stark Draper award of the National Academy of Engineering, the Prince of Asturias award for science and technology, the National Medal of Science from Tunisia, the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Order (Grand Cross) of Bulgaria, the Alexander Graham Bell Award presented by the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, the NEC Computer and Communications Prize, the Silver Medal of the International Telecommunications Union, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Award, the ACM Software and Systems Award, the ACM SIGCOMM Award, the Computer and Communications Industries Association Industry Legend Award, installation in the Inventors Hall of Fame, the Yuri Rubinsky Web Award, the Kilby Award, the Rotary Club International Paul P. Harris Medal, the Joseph Priestley Award from Dickinson College, the Yankee Group/Interop/Network World Lifetime Achievement Award, the George R. Stibitz Award, the Werner Wolter Award, the Andrew Saks Engineering Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal, the Computerworld/Smithsonian Leadership Award, the J.D. Edwards Leadership Award for Collaboration, World Institute on Disability Annual award and the Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend medal. Cerf was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2006.

Federal Government Technology Directions and the Fed CTO

Technologists in and out of government have been very excited about the work of the Obama transition team, especially the work of their technologists.   A group known as the TIGR (Technology, Innovation and Government Reform) Team has brought some of the best and brightest minds together to strategize and impact the action plans of the federal government.

We have now been treated to an insider’s view into the workings of this team.  The Change.gov website posted a 4 minute video introducing these thinkers and showing us some of the dialog underway.  See it below:

The video shows glimpses of the entire team, but features :

• Vivek Kundra, CTO of Washington DC
• Beth Noveck, Author and idea generator who has written on topics like “Wiki-Government”
• Andrew McLaughlin, head of global policy and government for Google.
• Dan Chenok, a former IT executive and Obama advisor.
• Blair Levin, Telecom analyst and former FCC executive.

Watch the video to see them in action!  Listen for the term “mashups.”  And a good definition of cloud computing relevant to the federal enterprise.

For those who have made it a hobby to speculate on who Obama’s CTO will be, I think the answer now is that it almost doesn’t matter which of the nation’s great tech leaders will be selected.  We know whoever it is will stand on the shoulders of giants and will be served with a group of advisors who have mapped out a vision and an action plan for success (whoever it is, I just hope to have dinner with periodically to pick his or her brain and see how I can serve from the outside- I sure want to see them succeed).

Now things are about to get exciting!  Time for all of us to do what we can to ensure the visions of this group become reality.

A look ahead: Some technology developments to expect in 2009

2008 was a year of rapid changes for Chief Technology Officers.  We should expect 2009 to move even faster.  Where will the biggest trends take us?  I offer some considerations below.  Please
look these over and give me your thoughts.   Push back if you have
disagreement.

First, my overall advice for CTOs in 2009… Just like the new thin interfaces you will be testing in your lab… be flexible.   Now here are some more thoughts on what's in store for CTO s in 2009:

• Here is a no-brainer: Increasingly CTOs will leverage social media to
  collaborate.  Things are moving so fast that we all like to network to
  seek help on big things and to get advanced warning on what is coming
  next.  More of us will be on Twitter, in Facebook, and writing blogs. 
  And this is a good thing.

• "Mashups" will still be very
  important as an enterprise objective in 2009 (and beyond).   And the
  company that will help accelerate them into the federal enterprise is
  JackBe.  They do things in a way that enterprise CTO s like.  They build
  in connections to governance, security, identity management.  And they
  play well with the entire ecosystem so you don't have to rework all
  legacy just to use them.  Of course web2.0 will remain a key trend, but mashups takes web2.0 to a new, more mission-oriented level and for enterprise players the mission is what is important.

• An approach we will all learn to love and follow is "context
  accumulation".   This very important term was coined by Jeff Jonas, and
  I think Jeff is going to have all of us moving out on that in the next
  12 months.   If you agree, visit his blog and by all means help others
  understand why this is really the only way we humans stand a chance of
  surviving/thriving in the onslaught of data.

• Federal acquisition of IT will still be criticized for all the
  reasons it always has been.  But there will also be an acceleration of
  a dramatic positive change brought about because of open source
  software and a new appreciation that IT acquisition processes
  (RFI/RFP/FAR/DFAR based purchases) do not apply to software that is
  free.  Free software is not being bought, it is being used, for free. 
  The whole reason the FAR exists is to ensure when the taxpayer's money
  gets spent it gets spent wisely.  When things are free the FAR has less
  applicability.  Services for open source are being bought and since
  that uses government money of course the taxpayers will continued to be
  served by the same FAR-type processes that are meant to ensure open
  competition, but that is not for free open source software, that is for
  services to configure and manage the software.

• Will this be the year of enterprise security?  We have been banking on that for a long long time.  We know the answers on how to make enterprises more secure.  There is a great recap of some of the most important components of security in the CSIS report.  But there are many more things that can be done as well. My goal, as captured here, is to improve security by two orders of magnitude within the next 24 months. 

• Netbooks, Thin Clients and Cloud Computing will accelerate
  throughout the technology landscape, especially inside the federal
  government.  These trends in both devices and the cloud components are directly related and are also benefiting from the global, unstoppable trend toward open computing
  (open software and open standards).  One to watch in this area:  Sun
  Microsystems.   But also track the dynamics of the netbooks providers. 
  Dell will get serious about netbooks, but Acer will continue to grow
  market share.

• A key accelerator of Cloud Computing has been the powerful technologies of virtualization, especially those of VMware.  Open source and other virtualization capabilities are coming fast too.  Trend to watch in 2009 is the arrival of higher order, more elagant capabilities to manage virtualizaiton accross large enterprises.  VMware and Opsware (HP) will continue to evolve to do this, but Appistry, Vizioncore, Xsigo and Sun (and others?) are coming fast.    
• Increasingly leaders will recognize that concepts of operation that
  require humans to tag and create metadata are sub-optimized.  When busy
  people are tasked with burdensome tagging operations they too
  frequently become tempted to cut corners and rush the process.  Over
  time, meta data generated this way just becomes meta crap.  This
  growing recognition in the federal space will sweep in new technologies
  and new approaches to discovery of content.  One to watch to solve this
  issue:  Endeca, because of their approach to visualizing information and enabling human to computer iterative examination of data. 

  

• Flexible computers will arrive in production this year for early
  adopters and many CTOs will use them in labs to assess applicability
  for massive deployment in the coming years.   These flexible computers
  are the ultimate thin clients.   Backends/servers/architectures
  developed for the cloud perfectly suit ultra thin, flexible computing
  devices. For more on this hot topic, start at the site of the Flexible Display Center at ASU.

• Collaboration will increasingly be seen as the means to link human
  brains together.   Collaboration tools that are stand alone stovepipes
  will be a thing of the past.  Users will collaborate using the entire
  technology environment:  voice, video, data, whiteboard, chat,
  application sharing, info discovery will increasingly be integrated
  into a single fabric.  Key players here:  Adobe, Microsoft and Cisco.

• In a big change for how money is moved in major enterprises, the CIO
  will be given responsibility for the energy budget.  This will encourage
  CIOs to modernize to conserve energy, since money saved from energy
  costs can be invested back in modern IT.  This will be a very virtuous
  cycle, that saves money for organizations, saves energy, and modernizes
  IT.   

• In a stunning turn, IPv6 will be rapidly adopted, not by enterprises,
  but in homes.  The major home communications provider that delivers
  full IPv6 to home environments (and to cell phones) will have an incredible advantage over
  competitors and will dominate.  The many rich features of IPv6
  delivered to consumers will finally push enterprises everywhere to move
  out on IPv6. 

• In 2009, as in every year prior and for most into the future, there
  will continue to be bad people using technology to do bad things. 
  Enterprises will move to protect info, but bad guys will keep moving to
  get the data.   And the use of social networking tools by terrorists
  will likely grow.  This is not a foregone conclusion, but I'm not
  personally sure what can be done to mitigate the use of advanced
  technology by bad people, other than to say that we good people need to
  work together more to stop them, and my hope is that we can keep 2009
  safe and secure.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions?  Please let me know what you think.

Tips for the new CTO: How to engineer a miracle

I ran into so many friends at the AFCEA solutions conference this week.  One guy I have not seen in person for years is  Mike “Ziggy” Steinmetz.  Ziggy is a great leader and thinker at Northrop Grumman.  He is also a tremendous collector of wisdom and a teacher who helped prepare me for my position as CTO of DIA.  Seeing him made me think I should share some of these lessons with you.

The lessons come from the true story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team. The guys that did the impossible by defeating the Soviets.  We all know the story.  And there is a GREAT movie titled “Miracle” that captures it very very well.  From the Amazon description of the movie: "Kurt Russell gives a brilliant performance as the dynamic and
determined coach Herb Brooks, who had an impossible dream — beat the
seemingly unbeatable Soviets at their own game. Starting with a
handpicked group of 26 undisciplined kids, Brooks coached them to play
like they never played before, and turned 20 of them into a team that
believed they could achieve the unachievable — and in the process,
united a nation with a new feeling of hope."

Think of the coach of that team, Herb Brooks, and his strategy for winning.  He took players who once played for competing teams with long standing rivalries and forged a new team unlike any team that had ever played before.  The way he did it has direct lessons for many areas of leadership, especially technology leadership. 

Watch the movie and look for these lessons/thoughts:

• Coach Herb Brooks convinced everyone that something different had to occur than had been occurring in the past.   ”Only way to succeed is to change the way we play the game. “  Then he engineered a strategy.
• Herb picked his team, not based on who the best technicians were, but who the best team players were:  "Not looking for the best players I am looking for the right players."   How does this translate to technologists?  CTOs want skilled technical experts, but just as important is getting skilled technical experts who can work as part of a team.
• Cheap shots however self justified, hurt the team "This is not about old rivalries."   As enterprises transition from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things they must forget about our own old rivalries.
• Orientation early is by region:  "I'm Ralph Cox and I'm from where ever won't get me hit.”   Herb worked them till they realized—they are on a new team now.   Frequently technologists must have the same light bulb go off.   Enterprise technologists sometimes need to be reminded they play for a bigger team than they used to.  
• This is the same point Herb drives home when he says “ The name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”
• The team’s identity crisis had to be fixed as it was the source of a lot of the early problems. "Think you can win on talent alone…you don't have enough talent to win on talent alone!"  "Name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the name on the back”  “Win loose tie…you are going to play like champions" "If you want to make this team you had better start playing at a level that forces me to keep you here".   Herb understood the consequences of the identity crisis the team faced he also understood he could not tell the team what their identity was; they had to figure that out for themselves.
• Herb's unexpected personal comments of concern towards Jimmy Craig…"I've got to know why you are here and where you are coming from"  "I'm here aren't I?"  "Don't forget to bring your game".
• NHL all stars lost because they played as individual all stars and not as a team.
• "All Stars won't change their game” No one has ever worked hard enough to skate with the Soviets for an entire game…. we will!
• Dedication to improvement and personal improvement were key.
• The Carter "Crisis in Confidence speech" is a metaphor for many old, legacy enterprise technology environments.  "More believe they will be less better off in the next 5 years".  “Stop crying start sweating, stop talking start walking".
• 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Mark Johnson looks at the Soviet Captain and it is still evident he is thinking in terms of individual vs. team effort.  "Jimmy Craig's comment "you gotta listen to me" is a metaphor for the communications breakdown that led to the performance on the ice"
• O'Callaghan injury and the decision to keep him.  Herb knew that once the team was set it was less disruptive to go down a man than to introduce a new member of a successful team.
• "Pulling the goalie"  "Jimmy I Know there is more"  "Coach It's my net.” “Jimmy, They just scored 10 goals…right now its anybodies net"
• ”Lets not turn this game into something it is not.”  “I’m not sure we have any control over that”.
• ”You earn opportunity” Through hard work you make it “your time”.
• Face-off to the 3rd period.  Compare Mark Johnson’s face to that 1st face-off in Madison Sq garden.  Finally they meet as mental and physical equals.  The difference…attitude and a string of “small successes.”   I have seen technology teams like this.  I've seen engineering teams who have decided to be world class best and so they are.  I've seen technologists set goals for themselves that have them walking among the giants of computer science and enterprise operations. 

A CTO needs to do more than watch a movie to be a great CTO.  But this movie sure gives you things to think about.  So, a big thumbs up from the CTOvision movie review team.