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?
I have always been involved in performance and capacity planning and was seeking a place where I could explore best practices and broaden my knowledge. A colleague of mine suggested that I should write a paper and submit it. I did that in 1991 and presented my first of many in Nashville.
2. What keeps you there?
The people keep me coming back each year to CMG. I am challenged in my thinking, I enjoy the conversation and every year the conference has new and interesting topics that I want to explore.
3. What inspired you to seek national office?
I decided to run for director because I thought I could make a difference. It seems to me that CMG has been seeking a direction ever since the rush of Y2K. The pressures on all businesses since 9/11 coupled with the leaps in technology have placed a premium on people. Often it is easier to throw money and hardware at a problem than to use people to figure it out. This puts pressure on the role CMG members have historically fulfilled becoming obsolete. We must transform ourselves, develop the skills for the next incarnation and mostly not forget. We are positioned to leverage what we know as we build for what we can't yet see.
4. If someone didn't know you well, what would be the 3 things you would want them know, prior to voting?
I am able to see outside the box for new ways to accomplish things, I can keep on course to a destination while making my way through the forest and I am very open to discussion and debate on ideas while not taking things personally.
5. If you could make one change to the organization or the conference, what would it be?
I would change our focus more on management - how to manage resources, how to manage IT in support of business, how to architect for successful IT. Measurement for measurements sake is not productive - just interesting. By building on measurements from a management perspective we will be ready to answer the "so what?" question. 6. What is working well now?
Measure IT is a fabulous vehicle for sharing thoughts and keeping CMG in front of people year round. It is not just a once a year event and is able to much more nimble and current in topics. We need more mindshare about what CMG has to offer and that is what Measure IT does.
7. What isn't?
I suspect that we are near to our core constituency for the annual conference. CMG competes with many conferences and events for the education dollar. We have to be better at aligning our vision of what we want CMG to be and drawing new and continuing participation. To accomplish this we have to open and discuss all aspects of the conference to prevent it from becoming stale. This includes venues, tracks, timing, paper process, competition, and target membership. All the things that go into making the value of CMG far surpass the cost of attending.
8. What are the 3 adjectives you would use to describe yourself