Published: August 20 2008, 07:33 AM
by Steve Romero

I attended the ISACA International Conference in Toronto the last week of July to speak on IT Governance. The presentation was to provide an overview on the genesis and purpose of IT Governance along with my views of how IT Governance addresses the goals and challenges of an enterprise. I had mixed feelings about the conference.

I have been a member of ISACA for almost 6 years now. I have never worked in an IT audit organization but I have always believed in a strong partnership between IT audit and the IT organization. I have spoken at a number of regional ISACA conferences but this was my first international conference. It was also taking place in Canada and I always enjoy my trips to the Great White North - especially in the summer.

The downside of the visit was my assigned timeslot in the 3-day event. You guessed it, the last presentation on the last day. To make matters just a bit worse, it was a full day so I was scheduled to start at 3:30 and finish at 5:00. I am sure you have been to your share of multi-day conferences. What happens on the last day? There is an early exodus so people can catch planes and get back home to family and work. Many conferences acknowledge this by ending the last day early--not the case for this conference.

I didn't attend any forums on the last day, opting instead to get some work done before my presentation at 3:30. I could not help but continue to wish my presentation had been scheduled for Day 1. Instead, here I was relegated to presenting my view of what IT Governance is at the end of an IT Governance conference. This was coupled with the fact I would probably have about 15 folks in attendance out of the 400 registered.

Despite the less-than-optimal circumstances, I managed to muster my usual level of enthusiasm. I sincerely enjoy talking about IT Governance, no matter how large or small the audience. I arrived in the large conference room early so I could make some adjustments. I moved 3 easels to the center of the room and wrote "This Section Closed" on them. This cut the room in half so the 15 people attending my session would be forced to sit on the same side and choose from 75 seats instead of 150.

To my complete and utter shock, we had to open the side of the room I had closed. Here it was the final session of the final day of a 3-day conference and I had about 80 people attending the session. Even more shocking was that only two left before 5:00! Everyone stayed for the Q&A and quite a few stayed to chat with me after the forum.

So I once again found inspiration in the level of interest in the power and promise of IT Governance.