JANUARY 7, 2025
In 2024, Evanta, a Gartner Company, held 193 CIO community gatherings across North America, 85 CIO programs across Europe, and 13 CIO events in Australia. CIO communities around the world continue to gain value from peer-led sessions and discussions, thought leadership from practitioners and strategic partners, and presentations from Gartner experts.
This year, CIO agendas, topics and discussions were guided by three recurring themes:
- Delivering Digital Innovation to Drive Value Across the Enterprise
- Maximizing Existing Resources to Optimize Emerging Costs
- Leading the Organization Through Advanced Technology Adoption
With these themes in mind, here is a look at our top-rated content of the year for CIOs in Evanta communities.
Highly-Rated Presentations By CIOs, For CIOs®
Keynote Session: The Essential Qualities of an Effective and Respected Leader
Truly exceptional leaders create a culture of trust and respect, inspire innovation, and drive high performance. In this fireside chat, three executives shared stories of how they impacted their organization to build high-performing teams.
Keynote Session: Winning in a World Without Truth
Attacks have become increasingly sophisticated with tools like AI-generated deepfakes, causing what Gartner calls ‘malinformation’ to erode trust. In this keynote presentation, Gartner Research Fellow Dave Aron shared insights into how leaders and businesses can evolve in a world where the truth is sometimes hard to decipher.
Breakout Session: A Data & Analytics Dialogue
Heineken’s US CIO Frank Iannella led this breakout session on empowering the enterprise to use data to ensure better business outcomes. His discussion covered balancing the benefits of data control with data democratization and building a successful foundation for AI implementation.
Breakout Session: Becoming a Board-Ready CIO
As technology continues to drive business growth, more organizations are looking for CIOs to join their boards. Ron Guerrier, CTO at Save the Children, shared how leaders can increase their visibility for board positions and attract role inquiries.
Town Hall: Value vs. Risk – A Thoughtful Approach to AI
In the new age of AI, CIOs must position themselves as transformational leaders who ensure a thoughtful approach to using AI models. During this town hall discussion, executives shared how to identify use cases for AI implementation and manage proprietary data.
Town Hall: Analyzing Your Application Infrastructure Strategy to Enhance Efficiency
Applications can make or break an organization’s growth. Too many and there’s opportunity for inefficiencies; too few risks being behind the curve. During this virtual town hall, CIOs discussed building a case to rationalize technology and communicating value to senior stakeholders.
Most Popular Content for CIOs
Infographic: 2024 CIO Leadership Perspectives
As IT leaders launched their key initiatives for 2024, more than 1,100 CIOs shared their top priorities in our annual survey – this was a snapshot of what they reported.
Blog: Three Areas of Focus for CIOs in 2024
At the close of our CIO community gatherings in 2023, we took a look back at the key trends and predicted the critical areas of focus for technology leaders in 2024.
Town Hall Insights: Predictions for the Future of Cloud
CIOs in the Toronto Community came together for a Town Hall discussion to explore how AI will impact the application lifecycle, the range of AI solutions available, and how to turn AI predictions into reality – these were their takeaways.
Session Insights: Technology’s Role in Transforming Customer Engagement at U.S. Bank
Chief Information and Technology Officer Dilip Venkatachari of U.S. Bank shared how the technology team collaborated to deploy award-winning, redesigned experiences for their customers in this summary of his keynote session.
Town Hall Insights: AI-Driven Advancement – Strategies for Success
Generative AI is emerging as a revolutionary concept that will redefine productivity, strategy, and leadership. These are takeaways from a discussion among CIOs in our DACH Community on how to use AI in meaningful ways.
Looking ahead to 2025, we think CIOs will be focusing on the following three areas:
- Collaborating for Co-Ownership to Drive Digital Innovation
- Empowering Business
- Focusing on Architecture and Innovation
If you are a C-level technology leader looking to validate strategies with your CIO peers, apply to join your local CIO community. Or, if you are already a member, sign in to MyEvanta to find upcoming opportunities to connect with your community.
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