September, 2007
by Denise P. Kalm
Denise Kalm has 30 years experience in IT including application programming, enterprise systems management and performance management/capacity planning at Pacific Telephone and Bank of America. She moved to vendor land in 2000, spending 5 ½ years with BMC on the EPA product line, then recently became the senior product marketing manager for enterprise job scheduling products at CA, Inc., formerly Cybermation. She is a regional officer of CMG, has held many volunteer positions within that organization and is a frequent contributing author. Prior to entering the IT profession, she was a biochemical geneticist. Her hobbies include flying, Jazzercise, writing and scuba diving. Her book, Lifestorm, on the Oakland Hills fire, is available on Amazon. She is an executive and personal coach as well, offering phone and in-person coaching.
About the Author
Denise P. Kalm, CA, Inc. formerly Cybermation
1. What drew you to CMG in the first place?
A gentleman whom I greatly admire and respect, Dr. H. Pat Artis, recommended that I attend CMG's Conference and become a member. Dr. Pat's recommendation was right on the money, and I've become a very active participant/volunteer in CMG ever since.
2. What keeps you there?
Getting to interact and work with the smartest and most dedicated people in the IT industry. The conference material in terms of training is superb. The things I have learned in CMG have greatly benefited me. I now view being a CMG member as mandatory for myself.
3. What inspired you to seek national office?
Well, I really did not seek it. I was very surprised, honored, and humbled first by someone thinking highly enough of me to put my name in with the nominating committee, and then by the nominating committee putting me on the ballot. In my life I've been fortunate enough to have doors open for me from time to time, and since some people feel that I have what it takes to be a leader in CMG and serve on the Board of Directors, I thought, "Why not, let's give it a shot"
4. If someone didn't know you well, what would be the 3 things you would want them know, prior to voting?
First, people who do not know me very well do not know that I had a career prior to IT: I was a Navy Officer/ aviator (weapon systems officer) and I'm a decorated combat veteran. It is not something I normally bring up with people, but I am very proud of what I did and for something like this, I think I should let people know because that experience really helped shape who I am, and being able to lead people in the stress of combat prepared me well for leading in less stressful situations. Secondly, when Steve Guendert gives you his word that he will do something, he does it. Honesty, integrity and responsibility are my 3 core principles. Finally, I, or the organization I was part of have never failed or lost at something because somebody worked harder at achieving success for myself or my team than I did.
5. If you could make one change to the organization or the conference, what would it be?
I would like to see us do something similar to what SHARE has done with their zNextGen initiative. That is, I would like us to focus on developing a group within CMG of new performance/capacity planning-management professionals. Something to help keep our field an attractive career for people new to IT. CMG-T could be a great part of this. I see this type of group being a great way to attract new CMG members.
6. What is working well now?
From my perspective as the 2007 Conference Committee Storage SAC, I thought the conference preparation and planning system in place works very well. From the early organizational efforts, through the call for papers, paper refereeing process, and invited speaker selection things worked very well. I'm really excited about the 2007 Conference.
7. What isn't?
While we do a great job of internal marketing, I think for us to grow and succeed we need to do a better job of marketing CMG externally. From my perspective, most of the marketing we do is focused internally. By that I mean we are marketing to our current membership. We need to keep that up, but at the same time come up with some new ways to try and attract new members. To do that we need to market more to the IT professionals in our field who are non-members.
8. What are the 3 adjectives you would use to describe yourself