In May the Chinese Institute of Electronics (CIE) co-organized their 8th Chinese Cloud Computing Conference in Beijing. A conference which even was promoted on Times Square, New York. Over 3000 delegates attended this 3 day conference. CIONET was asked to present and help allocate specific speakers. So, Frits Bussemaker, CIONET together with Maarten Hillenaar, former CIO of the Dutch Government and Smart City Lead of the city of The Hague and Jaap Haenen, Former CIO of the ministry of Finance and CIO of the City of Eindhoven traveled to Beijing. We also managed to invite as a speaker from the local Dutch Embassy Taake Manning, Counsellor for Innovation, Technology & Science. On day 1 Bussemaker gave a presentation on the ‘Blended CIO’, the shift from a Digital Strategy to a Strategy which is Digital.  A shift where CIOs will organize value by collaborating with the internal value chain and where suppliers are seen as the ‘extended part of their own enterprise’.

An outline of the presentation can be found here. On day 2 Hillenaar gave a presentation on his experience and vision as a former CIO of the Dutch Government with a cameo of Haenen endorsing Hillenaar’s presentation when he was CIO of Finance. On day 3 the roles were reversed. Haenen presented what the Brainport Eindhoven Region was doing to maintain its status as one of the high tech centres of Europe. And, how Eindhoven became the ‘smartest region in the world’ according to the New York based ‘Intelligent Community Forum’. Here Hillenaar gave a cameo in his current role in The Hague. Having both present in each other’s presentation very much proved the point they both were making: it is all about connect and collaboration. Having this type of interaction on stage was unique for the conference and highly appreciated as it truely demonstrated ‘practice-what-you-preach’. Finally, Manning presented an overview of how the Dutch innovate by collaboration making the Dutch contribution very consistent in content and vision.

The conference was also a place where we could share best practices on running CIO communities. Bussemaker was invited to spend an afternoon with representatives of regional Chinese, Taiwanese and Japenese CIO communities exchanging experience and building relations. The key question was: ‘what do we have in common?’ And, it turn out to be a lot. The challenges, issues and topics are realy global.  During the conference we were treated to real Chinese hospitality which was stellar as always. Evenings were spent sharing common insights and getting to know each other. Lots of “Gānbēi” – Chinese for Cheers – were shared.