2012 InformationWeek 500 Conference Announces Theme and Initial Keynote Speakers

SAN FRANCISCO, June 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- InformationWeek 500 Conference announced the theme and initial keynote speakers headlining this year's executive event.  Conference chairs Fritz Nelson and Rob Preston of InformationWeek have crafted a compelling agenda around the theme "Throw Out the Old IT Rulebook."  The 21st annual InformationWeek 500 Conference takes place September 9-11, 2012, at the St. Regis Monarch Beach in Dana Point, California.  For more information, go to www.informationweekconference.com.

"Most CIOs say they know the old IT rulebook is obsolete.  Yet most business technology teams cling to their legacy systems and practices," said Rob Preston, InformationWeek's Editor In Chief. "They insist on developing expensive native apps when the Web variety will do.  They focus on securing their companies' perimeters and devices rather than their most important data.  'Smaller,' 'lighter,' and 'more agile' IT are more than just buzzwords.  They're new IT rulebook imperatives.  IT organizations that fail to meet these challenges will get relegated to being cost centers.  We will challenge IT to become profit centers."

Among the initial keynote session and speaker lineup for this year's conference are:

• Pages From the New IT Rulebook – Union Pacific CIO Lynden Tennison will explain how the company, whose franchises cover 23 states across the western two-thirds of the U.S., does 50 million "pattern matches" a day on data gathered from sensors underneath its rail carriages in order to predict equipment problems and avoid derailments.
• Keynote Interview:  Procter & Gamble Group President and CIO Filippo Passerini –Passerini is thinking big when it comes to data analytics.  He has equipped tens of thousands of employees with business intelligence "cockpits," letting employees choose the sales, operations, or marketing data they get, eliminating as much as 90% of the canned reports in some business units.  His team has created a collaboration environment that combines data and video on wall-sized screens, delivering the facts and people needed to make decisions on the spot.  Now P&G is looking to extend these collaborative analytics capabilities to even more employees at its offices worldwide, while intensifying the scope of in-house analytics experts. 
• Keynote Interview:  Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas – Mascarenas will discuss how the automaker is innovating with customer-facing tech, including SYNC, the in-dash software used for vehicle controls and interaction with smartphones and music players. When Ford upgraded the software that's inside more than 300,000 vehicles this year, the company became a software company, making good on a promise to continually improve its in-vehicle software well after the car or truck is sold. Ford also has begun experimenting with open source development techniques to get more developers building innovations for its software. And Ford's testing ways to integrate mobile and social technology safely with driving.  

InformationWeek laid the groundwork for the conference with editorial coverage that includes: The New IT Rulebook: Not For The Faint Of Heart and 15 New Rules For IT To Live By, and most recently IT As Profit Maker, which challenges IT organizations to get more ambitious with their tech innovations.

Now in its 21st year, the InformationWeek 500 Conference celebrates the 500 most innovative users of business technology across America.  Past overall winners include PACCAR Inc., The Vanguard Group, CME Group, National Semiconductor, Con-Way, and Principal Financial Group.  The event also honors the top Government IT Innovators.  Past winners include The Internal Revenue Service, Transportation Security Administration's Office of Information Technology, and the U.S. Department of Justice's U.S. Marshals Service.

This year's conference sponsors include Riverbed, VMware, Rimini Street, T Systems, Vidyo, and Information Builders.

Attendance at the InformationWeek 500 Conference is limited to about 250 CIOs and other high-level business technology executives in order to foster dialog among participants.  General attendee registration can be found at the conference website; only qualified registrants will be accepted. Media credentials are also extended by request; interested media should contact Winnie Ng-Schuchman at wng@techweb.com.

About InformationWeek Business Technology Network (http://www.informationweek.com)
The InformationWeek Business Technology Network provides IT executives with unique analysis and tools that parallel their work flow—from defining and framing objectives through to the evaluation and recommendation of solutions. Anchored by InformationWeek, the multimedia powerhouse that looks across the enterprise, the network scales across the most critical technology categories with online properties like DarkReading.com (security), NetworkComputing.com (networking and communications) and BYTE (consumer technology). The network also provides focused content for key IT targets, such as CIOs, developers, and SMBs via InformationWeek Global CIO, Dr. Dobb's and InformationWeek SMB, as well as vital vertical industries with InformationWeek Financial Services, Government and Healthcare sites. Content is at the nucleus of our information distribution strategy—IT professionals turn to our experts and communities to stay informed, get advice and research technologies to make strategic business decisions.

Contact: Winnie Ng-Schuchman, VP of Marketing, InformationWeek; wng@techweb.com

SOURCE UBM Technology