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CTO Connection
Chad Dickerson
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Boundless generosity
AS DID ALL of you, I struggled with my personal response to the tragedies in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. As the recovery effort continues, and brave rescue workers continue sifting through the rubble, I think all of us share the unfortunate realization that this horrible situation to which we seek an end is actually only the beginning. "We're at war," President Bush warns. These are stark words.
In this atmosphere, the outpouring of donations of all types of goods is heartening and touching. Giving helps all of us deal with our grief in this tragedy of immeasurable loss; but as I write this, just six days after the attack, it's becoming clear that our boundless generosity is creating unforeseen problems. A spokesman for the American Red Cross in New York said, "I wish people would back off and pace themselves, because there's going to be work to do for months ... there are now more donated materials on hand than will ever be used." A vice president of operations for a New Jersey food bank said the flood of donations is now creating a "minidisaster."
I have been thinking about what I can do to help channel the overwhelming generosity and spirit into something tangible and useful. Although sending food and clothing to New York remains a generous gesture, the donations are now purely symbolic, and symbolism will only go so far in rebuilding real infrastructure. We must begin to make a realistic assessment and understand that although we are powerless to replace the incalculable human loss, each CTO has unique abilities that can be leveraged in the rebuilding process.
In the coming days and weeks, businesses that lost employees in the attack are faced with realities of rebuilding business infrastructure to serve their customers amid the bottomless grieving for their colleagues. The loss of so many people means a catastrophic loss of intellectual capital. As CTOs, I think we can and should leverage our collective intellectual capital to help these businesses recover from the tragedy. We owe it to the friends and families of the victims, we owe it to our country, and we owe it to ourselves as human beings.
Last week I created the "CTO Crisis Response" mailing list for InfoWorld's CTO Network, an invitation-only group of 100 CTOs from companies ranging from Fortune 500 to small startups. Typically, InfoWorld's editors contact this group to take the pulse of the latest technology trends from CTOs, but now we have opened it up for discussion among the members. It is my hope that this mailing list can be leveraged to go beyond symbolic gestures and that CTO Network members can work together to solve the real logistical problems that will certainly arise in the days, weeks, and months to come. I believe that the resources, intelligence, and compassion that can be leveraged by this influential and well-networked group of CTOs will result in tangible actions that will help the IT community -- and the fabric of our nation -- recover more quickly. Although the outpouring of support around the country for various relief efforts is heartening and touching, I think a smaller group with more focused and tactical discussion can have real impact. In the first few days of the list's operation, we have struggled with specific tactics in the face of such massive human loss, and solid ideas are emerging: assigning one of our CTOs as a resource for any affected business; making technology recommendations to the government, and implementing them to battle terrorism; and urging vendors to use their available resources to help those in need.
Stay tuned -- this is a work in progress, and we're in this for the long haul.
If you are a CTO and are interested in helping out (or know a CTO who might be), please e-mail me at chad_dickerson@infoworld.com for more information.
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